James begins with a warning to teachers, and he includes himself: 1"we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." Teachers talk more than most people, and more words mean more chances to fail, because 2"we all stumble in many ways." James then names the one place where the stumbling shows most. A person who never slips in speech would be perfect, able to bridle the whole body. He sets the bar there on purpose. Speech is the last part of a person to come under control, because it is the most direct road from the heart to the world.
Next come two small things that control large ones. A bit in a horse's mouth turns the whole animal. A rudder steers a ship 4"wherever the will of the pilot directs," even against strong winds. So far both pictures are good, a tiny instrument in skilled hands doing exactly what it should. Then James turns the same disproportion around. 5"The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things." A bit and a rudder accomplish something. A spark in dry brush accomplishes only ruin, a forest 5"set ablaze by such a small fire," and the fire spreads until it stains the whole body and sets the entire course of life alight. James traces it to its source, 6"set on fire by hell."
At the beginning, humanity was given rule over every living creature, and James recalls how well that has worked. Beasts, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures have all been tamed, but 8"no human being can tame the tongue." We have managed everything except the small muscle in our own mouths. There is a strange hope inside that flat despair: if no human being can do it, the work is left to God.
Then comes the scandal. 9"With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God." James means the ordinary bickering and backbiting that can follow believers out the door of a worship service. The mouth still warm from singing praise is already busy pulling down someone who bears God's likeness, and to curse the likeness is to insult the one who made it. 10"These things ought not to be so."
James closes with pictures from everyday Mediterranean life. A spring cannot pour out 11"both fresh and salt water." A fig tree cannot bear olives, and a vine cannot bear figs. A tree does not decide one morning to grow something else. If a mouth keeps producing both blessing and cursing, something in the person has not yet been made whole, however loudly they sing on Sunday.
Think of what your mouth produced today, and about whom. It came from the same place as your worship. Ask the God who can do what no one else can to do it for you, until blessing is what the mouth knows how to make.
Prayer
Father, we bless you with the same mouths we have used to curse people made in your image, and we know these things ought not to be so. We cannot tame our own tongues, however hard we try. Only you can. Set our speech on fire with something other than hell, until blessing is what our mouths know how to make. In Jesus' name, amen.