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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