Sounding Board
Bishop comments on the impact of words
When I was a child, I was taught a phrase: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." ...I suspect the point of the saying was to teach us that we can decide how we will respond to the words of others.
The problem is that the saying is not true. While it might be true that we have capacity over how we respond to many things, it is also true that words have power to hurt, as well as to heal.
We can use words to lift up and tear down, inspire and incite, bring calm and bring rage. Words are powerful and words matter. When we use words to demean, denigrate or dismiss, when we with our words imply or say that some people are not worthy of respect or have no inherent dignity or worth, we speak in ways that are against our values as followers of Jesus.
When we use words to bring peace, to offer love, respect and uplift, to seek understanding or to offer forgiveness, we are speaking as followers of Jesus.
I listen to words around me in our society today and I hear words that hurt. I can hear myself sometimes using words about others that are hurtful. This is not what I want from myself, and not what I want from my community. Fortunately, we do not have to stay stuck in the language of violence and hurt.
We are still in the great 50 days of Easter, a time to celebrate the reality of resurrection life. The resurrection is not simply something we hope for in our death, it is something we can live in our life. We have the gift of resurrection here and now. We can live love, live peace, live forgiveness, live justice, live mercy—we can live resurrection!
When we live resurrection, we offer a different way, a way not of hurt but of healing, not of violence but of peace, not of dismissing but of inclusion. This is the way of Jesus. In this increasingly divided and divisive time, let us claim resurrection, live resurrection, speak resurrection and be agents of healing and love in a hurting world.
Bishop Gretchen Rehberg
Episcopal Diocese of Spokane
