On making a living out of words, and what happens to the empty ones.
August 25, 2026
by Richard Yung Chung
So … my brothers have a joke about me, and they’ve been telling it for years.
“Richard. You and your tongue.”
And then one of them will say: “You know what, when we all get to heaven we come looking for you .The only thing we’re going to see of you is your tongue. Just a tongue. Floating there. Still going.”
They find this hilarious. They have found it hilarious for decades. And the worst part is I can’t mount a defense, because they’re not entirely wrong. I have made my living, my whole adult life, out of talking. Words are the tool, the product, and the profession. I stand up every week and use several thousand of them, and then I go home and use several thousand more.
And lately, as if that weren’t enough, I have taken up writing. More words. Voluntarily. In my sixties.
I’ve doubled down.
Now. There’s a line in the Gospels I try not to think about too often, and I’d be grateful if you’d forget it as soon as you’ve read it.
Jesus says that we will each have to give an account, on the day of judgment, for every empty word we have spoken.
Every empty word.
Folks, I have been preaching for over thirty years. Do you know how many words that is? I’ve never wanted to do the arithmetic, and I’m not going to start now. But I can tell you that when I first came across that verse properly … really let it land … I thought: if I’d known about this earlier, I might have chosen a different profession.
Something quieter. Something with fewer words per hour. Accounting, perhaps.
There’s an old proverb that says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Which is a lovely thought when you’re using yours well, and a slightly terrifying one when you talk for a living and you know exactly how many Sundays you’ve stood up there hoping something would come.
Because here’s the confession, and it’s the real one.
Not every sermon I have preached has been necessary.
Some Sundays I have genuinely had something to say, and I knew it, and I could feel the room lean in, and the words went where they were supposed to go. Those are the good days. There aren’t as many of them as I’d like.
And other Sundays I have stood up with twenty-five minutes to fill and a text I hadn’t cracked and a week that got away from me – and I have talked. Skilfully, even. I know the moves. I can hold a room with very little underneath me, which is a dangerous skill for a preacher to have, because it means you can go a long time without anyone noticing you’ve said nothing at all.
Those are the empty words I think about. Not the careless ones. The competent ones. The ones that sounded fine.
My other quiet worry is subtler and I’ll admit it too: it’s the temptation to preach my gospel instead of the one I was given. To use the words to prop up my own ideas, my own causes, the things I happen to be exercised about that week and to dress it in something holier so it carries more weight. That’s the struggle every Sunday. Not how do I sound good. How do I say the true thing rather than my thing.
So when my brothers make the joke about the tongue, I laugh. And then it sits with me for a day or two.
Because the answer to a life made of words was never use fewer words. I’ve tried; it doesn’t take. The answer, as far as I can tell, is that the words have to become something. They have to turn into a life somewhere, or they were only ever noise.
There’s a phrase for that in my line of work … the Word became flesh. Not the Word became a better speech. Became flesh. Showed up. Did something.
And I think that’s the whole of it, really. I will not be judged, in the end, on how well I spoke. Anyone can learn to speak well; I’ve spent thirty years learning it. I’ll be judged on whether any of it ever walked out of the room and became something a person could live in.
That’s a harder standard, and I don’t always meet it.
So if you happen to get there before I do, I have a favour to ask.
Put in a word for me. Say: Go easy on Richard. He tried. He got wrapped up in his own ideas sometimes, went down the odd rabbit hole, took a while to find his way back but he usually did. And he talked about Jesus a lot.
I’d appreciate it. Genuinely.
And when my brothers finally come looking for me I’d like there to be a bit more of me there than the tongue.
Richard
Subscribe NOW to Richard’s Slow Wisdom Newsletter & Get It Fast
Prior Newsletters from Slow Wisdom :
The Secret To My Vegetables … August 18th
Me and My Rabbits … August 11th
The City That Forgot Me … August 4th
The Day Jesus Was Rude … July 28th
My Fifty Dollar Titanic … July 21st
I Shouted At The Prime Minister … July 15th
I Told My Church I Ate Grasshoppers … July 7th
Thankful For The Hospital Food … July 1st
My Goal Was To Finish and Not Die … June 24th
The Wedding Afro … June 17th