Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger

                  As we continue in our series on the book of James, we come today to verse 19 where it says be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. To some, being a good listener might sound like a simple skill that we all should have mastered sometime in elementary school. But most adults know that being a good listener is often more difficult than it seems. Take for example, when you’re meeting someone for the first time. How often does someone say their name to you and 30 seconds later you’ve already forgotten it? Or, how often when you’re in a conversation with someone have you found that you are no longer really listening, you’re just formulating in your head what you want to say next? To be a good listener you have to be intentional about it. It is not merely not interrupting or not multitasking, it’s not merely being still with your ears open, good listening is active. It requires you showing with your body language that you are really listening, it might involve asking deeper follow up questions to better understand what someone is really saying, it may require your brain to be activated and engaged, to work at storing what is being said into long term memory.

We are to be quick to listen, and we are to be slow to speak too. This is sometimes related to being a good listener. If we are too eager to speak, it may indicate that we have no real desire to hear what someone else has to say. Many of us are more interested in telling and teaching than in learning and listening. But there are other applications of this advice to be slow to speak. It might apply to someone who dominates a conversation when it might be more polite to make sure that other people have equal turns to talk. And it certainly implies what our posture should be when daring to speak on complex issues. Before we open our mouths to speak we should really think deeply on the issue, read up on the issue from both sides, and not just speak carelessly and blurt out something that one might have to retract later.

There is a funny quote often attributed to Mark Twain that speaks to the wisdom of being slow to speak. It says, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” The wise do not need to pretend to know everything or to offer forth hasty answers. The wise sometimes say, “I don’t know.” or “Give me time to think about that.”

And then lastly James urges us to be slow to anger. That is an increasingly rare trait in our culture. We seem, for example, to reward television hosts who are the quickest to anger, whether they be political commentators or even just sports commentators. Why do these type of people garner the best ratings? It seems that a lot of us must like looking for things to get riled up about. We’re angry and we want people to be as angry as we are. But the Bible cautions us to live differently. Proverbs says that hotheads have entangled themselves in a snare. In other words, anger rarely solves problems, but if often makes things a lot worse. Proverbs says that it is wisdom and glory to overlook an offense and hold back one’s anger.

And let’s explore why that might be wisdom. James says your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. And James here is attacking one of the biggest temptations with anger. The temptation with anger is that in regards to a cause that we are passionate about and we just know we are so clearly in the right and it is such an important issue, the temptation is that any who think wrongly on that issues deserve our anger and wrath. We think if they get yelled at maybe they’ll finally fall in line and start living how we think they should be living. But James says your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. In fact, in Romans 2 it says kind of the opposite, it says the kindness of God is meant to lead to repentance. Here’s the truth: people are very rarely bullied or yelled at into a change of heart. When they are verbally attacked, they get defensive and hunker down all the more. You are far more likely to change someone’s mind if you are nice to them. If you show yourself to be a kind and loving person in your actions they might come to better consider that the view that you hold must also be kind and loving. As a side note, we are often quickest to anger online where the virtual medium makes us forget that we are talking to real humans. We rashly say things we would never say in-person.

But think of the power of kindness to change hearts this way: what message that you heard about God was the one that instilled faith and repentance in you? Was the message that God really hates your sin and will punish you for your iniquity what caused you to start being a faithful Christian? Or was it the message that God loves you so much that even though you constantly sin against him, that he died for you while you were still a sinner and enemy of God and took the punishment you deserved upon himself? For most of us, I would guess that it was the latter, it was the gospel message of God’s love that got us started on the path of faith. Kindness is far more likely than anger to lead to repentance and to produce God’s righteousness.

James’ words today on being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger have so much application for us when we enter into conversations with people. When we have first taken the time to listen to someone, really listen to them, we are likely opening the door for even greater communication. When they feel heard, they will be more willing to hear our side. If in the midst of an argument or a debate we can really hear what our opponent is trying to say, what’s really at stake for them in it, why they care about it so much, and why they believe as they do. If we can recite back to them what they believe in a manner that they would agree with. Then they’ll be more willing to hear our side and our pushback against their ideas, knowing that we are addressing what they really believe, and not merely attacking some strawman position that they don’t really hold to. Listening that well and that respectfully is hard to do well, and I know I do not always do it as well as I should. And we are wise to remember that anger will close the door to communication, listening will open the door wider. If we can keep level heads, we will be more persuasive. 

Now, here’s what I think is really cool when you hear James telling us to be slow to anger. You know where that phrase slow to anger most often shows up? It most often shows up as a description of God himself. This is how God is described and self-describes himself over and over in the Bible. In Exodus 34, Numbers 14, Psalm 86, Psalm 103, Psalm 145, Nahum 1, Jonah 4, Joel 2, Nehemiah 9, in all these places it is said of God that he is slow to anger, merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love. We should be slow to anger because God is slow to anger, and we are to be imitators of God. Think of all the reasons God has to be angry with you for, now think of all the reasons God has reason to be angry at our world for with its various injustices and wars, and think how God loves us still, and how God is far more interested in finding ways to redeem us and save us than to smite us. If God is slow to be angry with us, we can be slow to be angry with others. God is so patient with us and yet we can be so impatient with others, we can write others off after one offense.

Well, let’s go back now to being quick to listen. I think this instruction from James 1:19 makes even more sense when we read it in light of verse 21. Because there it speaks of us welcoming with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls. So, I think at least one major implication of how we are to be quick to listen, is that we are to be quick to listen to the word of God. Take listening to sermons as an example. If you are wise when you come to church on Sundays you will be listening very closely to the sermon, perhaps occasionally writing down a quote or a thought or a question that springs from the sermon, and pondering the words that are spoken about how they might apply to your life or spark change. And you should do this because these words that I speak each Sunday, these words from the Bible, they have the power to save your soul. But a lot of people aren’t good listeners during sermons, are they? Some might fall asleep. Some might daydream. Some might be planning in their heads a to-do list of things they have to do later that day. But we need to be quick to listen to the word of God such that we can welcome it until it is implanted in our hearts.

Listening to God’s words can be hard. We are often judgmental listeners. We hear something in the Bible and we are quick to dismiss it because it contradicts with our moral intuitions or because it would ask too much of us. We are quick to dismiss huge swaths of the Bible as outdated or wrong or not really God’s word, but just human conjecture. But we must be careful that we listen open-mindedly to the Bible. Perhaps something is in there for a reason and if we sit and really think about it that might become more apparent to us over time, or perhaps there is a specific context that the words apply to and make sense in. Some, in history, like Thomas Jefferson, were not generous listeners to the Bible. He went through and crossed out sentence after sentence he didn’t like. We must be careful though, that in critiquing the word of God we do not chop off the branch that upholds the entire hope of our religion: the power of salvation, a power we can only know through the witness of the Bible.

We must be good listeners in how we listen to God, and today, I’m not just telling you that, I’m actually giving you a chance to practice, right now, during this very sermon. Well, some of you might be thinking, it’s not fair, you the preacher get to do all the talking and never have to sit back and listen. Well, that’s not quite true. I do get to speak up here nearly every week, but I promise you that I strive to be slow to speak. What that means is that before I preach to you all I spend a lot of time listening to what others have said about the biblical passage. I listen to other preachers or I read in commentaries and devotionals and see what others have to say about such and such a passage before I relay a lot of their wisdom to you all. When preachers don’t have good sermons, one cause is that they often haven’t done the proper amount of listening before they preached on it. They are speaking only with their own individual opinions, and not with the scoured wisdom of many other smart and faithful people. So, know that my message today is not don’t speak, it’s just be slow to speak. Remember that you have 2 ears and only 1 mouth for a reason.

Well, I want to end this sermon by reflecting on the role of listening in the life of a minister. The importance of listening became most apparent to me when I worked a summer as a hospital chaplain, something everyone who goes through the Presbyterian ordination process has to do. And the burning question on the young chaplain’s mind is this: what do I have to offer when I walk into a hospital room and a person is in the midst of a major life crisis. You see, I’m not a doctor, I can’t heal the person, I can’t fix the situation. And neither do I have any magic bullet advice to offer them. In the midst of the tragedies of life, one’s words often fall short. What does one have to say other than, “I’m sorry, that must be really difficult.” It does a number on you to be the one being called into stressful situations in the hospital when you walk in feeling like you have nothing to offer. But our supervisor reminded us of the 2 main things we did have to offer: we could listen, and we could pray. And those 2 tools, though they didn’t feel like much, could really be quite powerful. So often when someone is going through a deep struggle they don’t really expect you to have a solution, and they might not really want to hear your ideas anyways. Often all they really want is your empathy, to know that you care, and to know that God cares. They want you to listen and pray.

            I found a quote by David Augsburger that sums it up best. He says, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.” Let me say that once more, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.” Friends, if we want to love one another, we have to become good listeners. Bonhoeffer talks of how love for God often begins with listening to God. And in the same way love for our neighbor often begins with listening to them. He notes that for the Christian it is easy to presume that what we really have to offer is a certain word to speak, and indeed we have a great word to share, but we forget too often that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

            So, this week I want you to go out and practice the ministry of listening deeply. Take time to listen to a family member or friend more deeply than you normally would. And of course, make time this week to listen deeply to God. Make time to listen to Him in prayer, to look for Him in creation, to listen for all the ways in which a certain Bible passage might be speaking to you this week. Friends, we have a God who listens to us deeply, who listens to our every thought and longing, our every fear and worry, and who cares for us. Let us too be good listeners.