Talking the talk and walking the walk

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

If we say that someone talks the talk but does not walk the walk, we mean that they do not act in a way that agrees with the things they say.

In politics, Dan Hodges has written, “there are a multitude of forgivable sins. Cheat on your wife. Lie about your record. Stab your colleague in the back. Lie with your colleague’s back-stabbing wife. The voters will tut, shake their heads, and move on. But there is one offence for which there is no pardon. Never, ever, under any circumstances, get caught preaching one thing at the public while practising another. Incompetence, duplicity, arrogance – each one hurts. Hypocrisy kills.”

Consistency also applies in business. William C. Taylor, author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself, has written that, “One of the most ubiquitous aphorisms in business is that the best leaders understand the need to “walk the talk” — that is, their behavior and day-to-day actions have to match the aspirations they have for their colleagues and organization.”

Investors in People argue that “Everybody needs someone to look up to in the workplace. They want role models. This may seem like a daunting responsibility for a manager or employer, but it needn't be. It's largely just a matter of what we call ‘walking the talk’” and leading by example. “A manager's behaviour has an impact on everyone around them, and an effective manager is one who inspires their team by showing the way with their own actions.”

So, if we say that someone talks the talk but does not walk the walk, we mean that they do not act in a way that agrees with the things they say. The phrase “if you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk” is a modern version of old sayings like “actions speak louder than words” and “practice what you preach.” Another early form of the expression was “walk it like you talk it.” Many people now condense this to “walk the talk.”

All these are essentially versions of James 1. 22, “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers” (James 1.19-27). If we are hearers of the word and not doers, we are like those who look at themselves in a mirror and immediately forget what they were like. “A first century mirror was not the silvered glass one without which no bathroom is complete today. It was beaten bronze and gave a fuzzy image. If you wanted to be sure your face was not dirty a quick glance was not sufficient. You would need to peer intently, work out what was required, then go and find some clean water to do something about it. The same is true of the way we react to encountering God. The real blessing of the Christian faith does not lie in listening to sermons or reciting liturgies, but in dwelling on what is true until it transforms what we do. A genuine encounter with Jesus provokes action.”

The action it produces is “care for orphans and widows in their distress.” Jesus said, in the Parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25.31-46), that God’s judgement on us will be based on our actions; giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting those in prison. These actions are to be the end result of our faith. If our looking deeply into God’s word does not result in our doing these things, our faith is not genuine and we are not walking the walk as Christians.

Too often we live life, James says, like people who look in the mirror and then immediately forget what we are actually like. The confession which precedes our Eucharist is our weekly opportunity to acknowledge the reality that we often talk the talk without walking the walk. It is our opportunity to turn away from insincerity and to seek the consistency in our faith to which James calls here. “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

God’s vision for human beings is that we become holy servants. But this is not something that we can do by ourselves. It is something that happens together with God. It is God who has provided the mirror and God who has come into our world to show us in Jesus what living as a holy servant looks like. We see in Jesus’ life what that way of being human looks like in practice. But more than that, in Jesus, God is reaching out to us to show us that we are loved by him and that he sees our potential for change and for beauty.

In Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15. 11-32), the son rejects his identity as a child of his Father and leaves home to waste his life. Finally, when he is eating the food of pigs the son looks in the mirror to see himself as he actually is and decides to return home to his father and ask to become one of his servants. But the Father rejoices at his return and welcomes him home as the son he has always been although for a time he rejected that identity. This is a story about us and God. We reject our rightful identity as children of God living as holy servants. We forget what we really look like in the mirror and live as we choose. But when we come to see ourselves as we truly are and return to God we are welcomed as God’s children with all of our potential for becoming the people that he wants us to be.

David Runcorn has said that “the deepest awakening of all is to the discovery that we are loved with a wild, prodigal love – without condition.” We are then able to become those who love God with all their being and who love their neighbours as ourselves, because God has first loved us.

James says that if we look closely at ourselves in the mirror of God’s perfect law, paying attention and knowing ourselves to be sinners loved by God then we will go on to become the holy servants that God intended all human beings to become. May it be so for each one of us. Amen

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Against whom should we compare ourselves?

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

Against whom should we compare ourselves? Our answer makes all the difference in the world. The Pharisee in Jesus’s parable (Luke 18. 9 - 14) compared himself against other people: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’

This is generally what we do when we make comparisons; we compare ourselves with others and so compare ourselves with those we think are worse than or similar to ourselves. We’ve all heard others and, maybe, ourselves saying ‘I’m alright, Jack!’ or ‘I’m as good as the next person, if not better!’ On the basis of these comparisons we think we are ok; at least no better or worse than others, at best, better than many others around us. On the basis of these comparisons we are comfortable with who we are and see no need to change.

The Pharisee in this story lived in a simplistic world of legalism where he could look down on those like the publican because he kept certain rules and fulfilled certain practices. Therefore he could say, I am not like other people because I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all my income. For him, there was no wrestling with difficulty and no struggling with conscience but the world he inhabited was, ultimately, a harsh world without understanding, without compassion, without forgiveness. Our common response as human beings to our own fallibility and failure is that, instead of acknowledging our own shortcoming, we attempt to distract attention away from our selves by identifying a scapegoat and angrily pointing out that person’s many failings. We are often very successful in covering up our own shortcomings when we adopt this tactic but, of course, the reality is that we are being hypocritical.

The true comparison that we make should not be with others, but with God. Jesus challenged us to ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ On the basis of that comparison, we all fall short. As St Paul writes, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we come up well short and are in real need of change. In the light of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, we see our inherent selfishness and recognise our need for change. Those are the kind of comparisons that the publican in the parable was making when he stood far off, not even looking up to heaven, beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

In the light of the way that Jesus lived his life, we see our lack of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, remain in darkness, and there is no truth in us. But when we live in the light of Christ, seeing ourselves as we really are, then we become honest with ourselves and with God. By coming into that honesty we confess our sins and are purified; as we say in this service, we make our humble confession to Almighty God truly and earnestly repenting of our sins.

That honesty undermines the simplistic legalism of the Pharisee’s world by revealing the hypocrisy at its heart. The reality is that each one of us has broken the Law and each one of us is a sinner. If that is so, on what basis can one sinner presume to judge or condemn another? To do so is a gross act of hypocrisy which multiplies one sin upon another. The publican, by contrast, lives in a world of without condemnation because he lives in a world where second chances and fresh starts are available.

On Ash Wednesday the sign of the cross is marked in ash on our foreheads and these words are said: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." In that service, we acknowledge both our sinfulness and our mortality recognising the link between the two – that the wages of sin are death. The ash mark on our forehead is a public acknowledgement of our sinfulness but, because it is formed as a cross, it is also a sign of the forgiveness we have received. We are saying that we no longer live in the legalistic, unforgiving world of the Pharisaical Law where we compare ourselves with others in order that we come out best; instead, like the publican, we are those who compare themselves against God only to then realise that we have been accepted and welcomed into the world of love by Jesus himself.

Against whom should we compare ourselves? Our answer makes all the difference in the world. Jesus said one of the two men went down to his house justified; and it certainly wasn’t the Pharisee!

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Kindred Spirit - Ask Me No Questions.

Actions speak louder than words

Here is the text of my most recent sermon preached at St Stephen Walbrook (click here to listen to this sermon on the London Internet Church site):

Actions speak louder than words. This proverb can be traced at least as far back as a speech made by J. Pym in Parliament in 1628 in which he said: ‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.’

The proverb is, however, ultimately based on Biblical ideas and phrases such as 1 John 3. 18 where we read: ‘let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.’ This teaching probably then derives from Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 7. 15 – 21) where he argues that we are known by our fruits, meaning our actions, and that simply saying ‘Lord, Lord’ without then acting on that confession is not enough to guarantee our salvation.

In the Parable of the sheep and goats Jesus emphasises that it is actions, not words, that will count in the final judgement, when he says: ‘‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

St Francis of Assisi summed up this aspect of Jesus’ teaching well, when he said: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’

Despite this we all know how easy it is to be a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ by saying one thing and doing another. We also know how much those who are found out in their hypocrisy, most recently Lord Sewel, are then criticised. Christians are often criticised on the basis of hypocrisy by those who think we have a holier-than-thou attitude. However, Christians should actually be those who are most aware of their fallibilities and failings because of our recognition of our need to regularly confess our sins, as we will do later in this service when we say, in the general Confession: ‘We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.’

This means that a full and consistent meshing of our words and our actions is often more than we can manage, which still remaining something towards which we strive.

The Bible gives us at least two sources of help in doing so. The first can be noted in the very first Psalm which uses the image of good fruit growing on a tree in order to say that good fruit grows in our lives when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate of that law day and night. Regular meditation on scripture feeds our ability to better integrate our words and actions.

Our second source is found in Galatians 5 where the fruit that we are called to produce is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The originator of these behaviours in us is the Holy Spirit. The fruit are of the Spirit whenever and however they show up in our lives and actions.

Being led by the Spirit and regularly meditating on the scripture are the two keys to a closer meshing of words and actions in our lives.

What kind of fruit – behaviours leading to actions – are evident is our lives? Do we, like Lord Sewel, effectively lead a double live in which we live out the reverse of those things we say in public? The honest place for us to be is to acknowledge and state that there is often a gap between our words and our actions. In other words that we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness while also asking for and allowing the Spirit and scriptures to combine in bring change within our lives.

In this way we, can avoid becoming one who says ‘Lord, Lord’ but does not do the will of our Father in heaven. In this way, we can avoid becoming those who are wolves in sheep’s clothing and will become like good trees which bear good fruit.

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Belle & Sebastian - My Wandering Days Are Over.

Transparency and authenticity

Today's sermon at St Stephen Walbrook was entitled Transparency and authenticity. The podcast of this sermon can be found in the sermon section of the London Internet Church website:

In May I will be leading the Memorial Service for Robert Fell at St Martin-in-the-Fields. In 1974 Fell became the first Chief Executive of the Stock Exchange and later went on to help regulate Hong Kong Securities.

He writes in his memoirs: “My first meeting … was on the consequences of the Burmah oil collapse. The next day, my first full council meeting was about how to deal with the financial crisis. Two days later, on January 6th … was the day of the City’s Epiphany Service. I attended with the Chairman and Deputy Chairman. As we walked down the aisle the Deputy remarked that he did not see Burmah Oil on the Order of Service. But when we reached our pew no three men ever knelt in more fervent prayer … As I knelt I could hardly have anticipated that my regulatory experience (over the next decade) would encompass the ‘hammering’ of one major London firm and the suspension of two others, the murder of a banker, three suicides … the jailing of two exchange chairmen and an assortment of bankers and, as a last straw, the sentencing to eight years imprisonment of the Crown Prosecutor who dealt with most of the commercial crimes I had uncovered.”

Most of what he was referring to happened whilst he was in Hong Kong. A cartoon published in Hong Kong depicted him as a knight in shining armour riding to the rescue of the banking system. He was called ‘a one-man cavalry’ who brought corruption into the light, even when it was dangerous to do so, and by doing so saved Hong Kong’s financial reputation from international oblivion.

In today’s epistle (Ephesians 5.1-14) a similar level of transparency is being commended for our own personal lives: ‘… you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light … and find out what pleases the Lord.’

Jesus, our Lord, is the light of the world. He is God fully revealed in human form, so shows us what God is actually like as well as revealing all that we, as humans, can become. We come into the light of Christ by comparing our lives to his. As we do so, inevitably we find that we fall short; that our capacity to do what pleases him (by living out all goodness, righteousness and truth) is less than his capacity for these things. Our reality, as our Gospel reading states, is that we are divided people. As St Paul so accurately states in Romans 7: ‘… what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.’

So coming into the light of Christ initially reveals our fallibilities and failures to be Christ-like. As a result, if we are to be transparent in the light of Christ, we make our humble confession to Almighty God truly and earnestly repenting of our sins.

But the light of Christ does not just expose and make visible our fallibilities. When we learn what pleases our Lord (which is all goodness, righteousness and truth; or, as our confession says, intending to lead a new life by following the commandments of God, walking in his holy ways and living in love and charity with our neighbours) we are then illuminated by him and become a light to others. This is what Jesus means when he tells us to let our light shine before others, that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.

In today’s business terms we would call this being transparent. One business dictionary definition of transparency is a “lack of hidden agendas or conditions, accompanied by the availability of full information required for collaboration, cooperation, and collective decision making.” That is essentially what Bob Fell brought to his work in the City and in Hong Kong. The true purpose of transparency is not simply to appease regulators, to increase profits, or to please shareholders. The true purpose of transparency is authenticity. This is the quality of being genuine, and ultimately of being trusted, which allows your message to be heard and believed.

The Church of England has recently been accused in the press of hypocrisy – a lack of authenticity – over its statements on the Living Wage. When told that the Church was full of hypocrites, Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Chelmsford, replied, "Not full – there's still room for one more." Of course the Church doesn't always live up to the standards of the Gospel. That’s why we regularly and consistently confess our sins and shortcomings.

But, as Canon Dr Angus Ritchie has written, “I'm glad the Church is speaking out on these issues. If it wasn't for the lead of our Bishops – and the powerful grassroots work of churches … many more people would earning poverty wages and living at the mercy of Britain's loan sharks … It would be a disaster if the Church stopped speaking out, silenced by fear of the next negative headline.”

May we, like Bob Fell and our Bishops, continue to practice transparency and authenticity, while acknowledging our own shortcomings, and do so even in the face of accusations of hypocrisy.

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Crux Fidelis Kng John IV of Portugal.

Closing the gap between beliefs and actions

Simone Weil was a French Jewess who, in the opinion of Malcolm Muggeridge, was the most luminous intelligence of the twentieth century and who was reckoned by others to have had the most powerful mind of those in her generation. She was a Marxist who experienced Christ taking possession of her. Throughout her life she sought to close the gap between her beliefs and her life.

After completing her studies, instead of becoming an academic, as those with her abilities were expected to do, she began working on the production line of a factory to identify with working people. She later fought in the Spanish Civil War, worked on the land during World War II. Each of these decisions and actions affected her health and her life later ended because, while in hospital in England, she would only eat what those in the Resistance were able to eat and, as a result, starved herself to death. She has been an inspiration to many, partly for his writings but also for the committed, and even extreme, way in which she attempted to eliminate the gap between what she believed and how she lived.

That gap is there for all of us, which is one reason why it is so important that the letter from James, of which we have heard an extract this morning, is included in the Bible. James argues that if we allow the gap between what we believe and what we do to grow too great, then our faith is dead:

“Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you?” “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2. 14-17)

This letter is arguing that we must consistently re-examine the gap between what we believe and what we do in our lives because our tendency as human beings is to say the right things and then do something completely different. Our tendency can even be to deceive ourselves about the way that we live our lives. Church can be used as part of that process of deception so that, for example, we might subconsciously think that by coming to church – praying the confession, reciting the creed and so on – we have done our Christian duty and can therefore relax and be ourselves for the rest of the week before coming to church again to, in a sense, baptise our hypocrisy once again.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that this is a particular fault of people here at St Johns but I am saying that it is something that applies to some extent to all Christians. At the end of the day, we generally aren’t prepared to do what Simone Weil did and die for our beliefs. Some sort of gap always exists between the demands that our faith makes of us and what we are prepared to do. That what the letter of James points out and that is perhaps what Jesus was testing out in our Gospel reading when he was so awkward with the Phoenician women. What he discovered by way of his unhelpful and discouraging responses was that her faith was not just words but was real.

One way in which we are able to re-examine our lives and the extent to which we still need to marry up our faith and our lives is through Stewardship. In thinking about Stewardship we think about the way in which we use our time and talents for God, the extent that we give financially towards God’s work plus our involvement in the community and our care of the environment. Stewardship is about going through the self-examination process of which I have been speaking together and seeing what results. Let us pray for good results as each of us re-examine our lives and actions to ensure that our faith is not dead because it continues to result in action.

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Philip Bailey - I Am Gold.