Is Gossip Ever Good?

Scripture: Proverbs 20; Proverbs 25

Sermon: Is Gossip Ever Good?

Topics: gossip, words, power, secrets,

Preached; January 10, 2010

Rev. Mike Abma

Proverbs 20: 19;

A gossip reveals secrets;

   therefore do not associate with a babbler.

Proverbs 25: 11-12

A word fitly spoken

   is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.

¹²Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold

   is a wise rebuke to a listening ear.

New Testament Lesson: 2 Corinthians 12: 19-21

Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves before you? We are speaking in Christ before God. Everything we do, beloved, is for the sake of building you up. ²⁰For I fear that when I come, I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish; I fear that there may perhaps be quarrelling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. ²¹I fear that when I come again, my God may humble me before you, and that I may have to mourn over many who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practised.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

The idea for this sermon came in the mail.

A few weeks ago, John and Marian Bouwer sent an article out of the Wall St. Journal. It was e ntitled “When Gossip is Good.”^[1] That article got me thinking about this topic of gossip:

What is it?

Why is it so bad?

Is it always bad?

Does it have any redeeming qualities?

I guess the first thing to admit is that we are a culture addicted to gossip.

We love it ….too much.

Magazines like National Enquirer have been publishing gossip for years.

And now there are more television shows devoted to so-called “celebrity news” than imaginable:

Entertainment Tonight

The Insider

Inside Edition

Access Hollywood

TMZ

And this is the tip of the iceberg.

A whole industry is built on gossip packaged as “celebrity news.”

It has sprung up because we have an almost insatiable appetite for the latest on

Tiger Woods’ infidelities

or the details surrounding Casey Johnson’s tragic death

or Charlie Sheen’s latest misdeeds.

To be honest, it is hard for me to find much redeemable about this industry.

The article out of the Wall Street Journal points out that gossiping about, say Tiger Woods’ unfaithfulness, can provide some form of moral instruction. And that is true, to a point. In a way, it does reinforce the value of marital faithfulness.

However, I do not think people read National Enquirer or watch any of these rather dubious celebrity gossip shows to receive moral instruction. I think most do it as a form of guilty pleasure. I think most of us do it in a kind of self-righteous way — to revel in someone else’s sins so that in comparison, we do not look nearly so bad. And the celebrities we like to hear “news” about tend to be rich and famous and there is something about human beings that likes to see these kinds of people slip and fall.

But I do not want to talk about celebrity gossip tonight.

I want to talk about the more local variety of talk that happens

at work

or at church

or at home

about our co-workers,

our fellow congregation members,

our family members,

our neighbors.

I want to talk about the gossip that is close to home.

Oscar Wilde once quipped,

“If you have nothing good to say about someone….

then come here and sit right beside me.”

That is the type of gossip I would like to start talking about this evening.

POWER OF WORDS

There is that old rhyme,

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,

but words will never hurt me.”

Bah, humbug!

We all know that isn’t true.

Words have power.

Words can hurt.

The book of Proverbs knows this very well.

Proverbs spends a lot of time counseling us on how to use our words wisely.

According to Proverbs,

words have the power of death.

Words can be as dangerous as sword thrusts.

Now the first type of gossip that needs to be avoided is the spreading of things that are untrue, purposely exaggerated, or that are based on false assumptions.

In the book of Exodus, 23:1, spreading a false report was absolutely forbidden.

But it is pretty easy and pretty tempting to do, isn’t it?

Especially when it makes us look a little better in comparison.

I remember in the first church we served, the parsonage was next door to the church. In fact, from the fellowship hall, you could see the whole backyard. Well, the rumor started that we – Shirlene and I – did our laundry on Sunday mornings. Apparently, people noticed steam coming from the back of the house on Sunday mornings and assumed the dryer was on.

It just so happened that the parsonage had recently had a furnace upgrade. The new furnace vented out the back of the house. The steam was the furnace, not the dryer. So how could this kind of gossip gain any traction? Well, I think some people may have had a bit of a guilty pleasure in catching the minister and his family doing something well …..vorboeten…..forbidden.

In our 2 Corinthians passage, the word translated as gossip is the Greek word of “whisper.” The same word occurs at the end of Romans 1. Notice how this word gossip or whispering is grouped with some pretty toxic stuff:

Quarreling

Jealousy,

Anger

Selfishness,

Slander

Conceit

Disorder.

In the Romans 1:28-30 passage, gossip gets grouped with even a broader range of wickedness:

Covetousness,

Malice

Envy

Murder

Strife

Deceit

Craftiness

God-haters etc.

The end of that Romans passage says that the people who practice this kind of thing deserve to die. Tough words. Why so tough? Because all these things, including gossip, tend to divide people. They set people against one another.

In the movie Doubt, the priest preaches a homily that compares gossip to breaking open a feather pillow on a breezy day. The feathers are like words — once the feathers fly away, there is no way of gathering them up again. Gossip pollutes the air. Gossip tars and feathers people from afar — if you have heard gossip about someone, it is often impossible to see them in the same way.

Bad gossip is basically bad-mouthing someone – it is talk about someone that actually stirs up strife and seeks to tear someone down. The bad-mouthing involves words that hurt, that wound, that divide.

We know this. There are many sins we may say “That isn’t me.” But gossip is something many, if not most of us, struggle with.

GOSSIP — CAN IT EVER BE GOOD?

But can gossip ever be good?

Can gossip ever be used to help rather than hurt people?

Can it be used to heal rather than wound?

Can it be used to unite rather than to divide?

According to the book of Proverbs, yes it can.

Words have the power of death.

But words also have the power of life.

Words can hurt.

They can also heal.

When used properly, words, even gossip can help a church.

In his book Open Secrets, Richard Lischer writes about being a young pastor fresh out of seminary. He, his young wife, and two young children, were serving a small Lutheran Church in Southern Illinois in the 1970’s. He writes about driving his 1971 Ford Pinto to this small farming town, and it was stuffed full with all his theological ideals, and clergy dreams.

One of the things Lischer did was introduce some new music.

He had guitars accompanying the youth group as they sang that Oh-so-70’s song:

“We are one in the Spirit, we are One in the Lord…..

And they’ll know we are Christians by our Love.”

Right after they were finished, a large red-faced, big-handed farmer named Ferdie – who hated these new-fangled songs – stood up, and derisively began clapping very loudly. He clapped and clapped as he walked right out of church in protest.

After church, Lischer writes that he quickly gathered some church elders together and said something had to be done.

One of the elders said, “Aw, Pestur, we don’t have to do anything;

everyone knows Ferdie is a horse’s behind.”

To which, all the other elders solemnly nodded their heads in agreement.

They did nothing.

At first Lischer was disappointed.

But in time, Lischer learned that was the wisest thing they could have done. According to Lischer, Ferdie had already been properly “gossiped.”

Lischer learned that there is proper and improper gossip.

We’ve already talked about improper gossip.

But what is proper gossip?

Lischer learned that in his small town and his small church, every life was gossiped about, and everyone was a gossip.

He learned that this wasn’t the first outlandish thing Ferdie had done.

They knew the best thing was to let it go and not to blow it up.

They knew this because in their small town, Ferdie had been properly gossiped.

Proper gossip is rooted in the origins of the word “Gossip.”

Do you know where the word “gossip” comes from?

I was surprised myself, but here is the origin of this word.

The word “Gossip” actually comes from 2 English words: God and sib or sibling.

Gossip is the talk between God’s siblings.

Gossip is properly the wholesome talk of brothers and sisters in Christ.

In fact, a gossip came to be the name of the sponsor of an infant presented for baptism.

The gossip (also called a sponsor or god-parent) had the job of providing spiritual guidance to the child as he or she grew up.

So what does this proper gossip look like?

Lischer also writes about how he and his wife were the subject of this proper gossip.

While Lischer was pastoring this Lutheran church, his wife Tracey would sometimes hire a baby-sitter for the afternoon – usually some high school student from church – to babysit their two kids. Tracy would change into a bathing suit, get a lawn chair, park it in their back yard, put a whole stack of books beside it, and read.

The babysitter went home and told grandma.

Grandma went to quilting night at the church on Wednesday night.

The quilters told their husbands.

By Thursday morning, everyone in town knew the minister’s wife spent the afternoons in a lawn chair reading books.

The community was a-buzz about the preacher’s wife — clearly trying to make sense of what they thought was peculiar behavior. Eventually it came out that Tracy was a PhD student and was trying to finish up a dissertation she was working on.

But, Lischer writes, gossiping was the way the community tried to come to a moral consensus.

Lischer concludes by writing that gossip can only be good when it is practiced in a pastoral context.

In other words, gossip is worst when it is dividing people, pushing people away, talking about things in a very unforgiving manner.

But gossip is best when its goal is to draw people in, to embrace them, to correct them, to forgive them.

Wisdom comes in knowing when you are practicing one and when you are practicing the other.

Lischer writes that he witnessed one instance in which gossip turned from being toxic and sinful, to being something blessed and even saintly.

A young woman began attending their church.

She was single and pregnant.

It turned out, this young woman’s own mother had a jaded past in that same town some 20 years earlier.

So when this young woman showed up, tongues began to wag.

The gossip was unhealthy.

The goal of that gossip seemed to be to push her out, to get her to move on.

But, Lischer writes, the longer she stayed, the more church people began to get to know her and help her.

Some of the most gracious church members

found her an apartment to live in,

helped her get it furnished.

They threw a shower for her at church.

Eventually the tone of the gossip changed.

It changed from how terrible this young woman was

and how best to be rid of her,

to how needy this woman was

and how best to help her out.

The gossip turned from improper to proper,

from toxic to holy.

In the end, it was some church people who were there with this young woman in the delivery room as her baby daughter was born;

In the end, when that young mother presented her little baby for baptism,

the whole church seemed to have a stake in that baby’s future.

The whole church had become “gossips” in the old sense of the word –

people ready to protect this baby;

people pledged to give this baby the guidance and nurture she needed.

Lischer writes that he learned in that first church that his job was not to get rid of all gossip – that would have been impossible.

He writes that his job was to keep the gossip as redeemed as possible.

To keep it the speech of the baptized

who are pledged to pastor one another

in this pilgrimage of faith.

He realized that a church is a community in which

we know secrets about one another.

But it is a community that will not use those secrets

to hurt or destroy one another.

Thus the title of his book, Open Secrets.

CONCLUSION

We are talkers.

We love to talk.

And now we don’t only talk – we email, Facebook, twitter, skype….

But however we communicate with others, we have to always keep in mind the power of our words.

They have the power of death and they have the power of life.

They can hurt, but they can also heal.

Gossip at its worst can destroy a community and eviscerate a church.

But gossip at its best,

gossip without malice,

gossip with the goal to speak the truth in love

with the goal a repentance and reconciliation

that kind of gossip can be one of the church’s greatest strengths.

No wonder the author of Proverbs writes

That a word fitly spoken

Is like apples of gold in a setting of silver;

Like a gold ring or ornament of gold

Is a wise rebuke to a listening ear.

1. Nicholas DiFonzo, “When Gossip is Good,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12-13, 2009. ↑