Message for worship at West Richmond Friends Meeting, 7th of Seventh month, 2024.
Speaker: Donne Hayden
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Jesus taught that it’s all about love, and in the end, that’s all we’re all going to be judged for. Did we love? Did we love life? Did we love ourselves? Did we love God, and did we love our neighbor?
—Richard Rohr
If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you will recognize the advice to “show, don’t tell.” Writers may tell the reader how a character feels or what their personality is like, but the best writers follow up by showing the characters in action. Here’s a sample from the novel Plainsong by Kent Haruf.
Telling: Harold and his brother Raymond didn’t know what to say to Maggie.
Showing: They were dumbfounded. They looked at her, regarding her as if she might be dangerous. Then they peered into the palms of their thick-callused hands spread out before them on the kitchen table and lastly they looked out the window toward the leafless and stunted elm trees.1
We’ve always understood that there is more truth in what people do than in what people say. “Talk is cheap,” “Actions speak louder than words,” and the classic from George Fox: “Let your life preach.” Even in Hebrew scripture (Micah), the God of Abraham and Moses indicates he prefers His people show their allegiance to Him, not by declaring it in ritual, ceremony, sacrifice, or lofty words, but through actions that manifest justice, kindness, and humility.2 In essence, show your faith, don’t just say you have it. I’m going to tell you a couple of stories today which I hope will SHOW this truth rather than simply tell it.
The first story is a parable by Peter Rollins, an Irish theologian who spoke at ESR a few years ago. Rollins wrote it after he saw this bumper sticker: “If Christianity were illegal would there be enough evidence to convict you?” The parable begins with a trial, which really could have happened almost anywhere, almost any time in the past two thousand years. “You” are being tried for “following Christ,” which in the world of this parable is “a subversive and illegal activity.”
“You have been under clandestine surveillance for some time now, and so the prosecution has been able to build up quite a case against you.” The accumulated evidence includes photographs of you at church meetings and of you “speaking at religious events and participating in various prayer and worship services.” In addition, the authorities have confiscated from your home: “religious books,” “worship CDs, and other Christian artifacts.” They also found your journal and other writings including poems and prose you wrote about your faith. Perhaps most damning of all, they found your Bible, “a well-worn book with scribbles, notes, drawings and underlinings throughout, evidence . . . that you had read and reread this sacred text many times.” When all the evidence has been presented, the judge asks if “you have anything to add, but you remain silent and resolute, terrified that if you open your mouth, even for a moment, you might deny the charges made against you.” After hours of waiting, you are brought back to the courtroom to hear the verdict. The judge announces, “Of the charges that have been brought forward I find the accused not guilty.” Not guilty of Christianity! On hearing this, you are shocked, and then outraged. What about all that evidence, you demand of the judge.
“What evidence?” he [asks] . . .
“What about the poems and prose that I wrote?” you reply.
“They simply show that you think of yourself as a poet, nothing more.”
“But what about the services I spoke at, the times I wept in church and the long, sleepless nights of prayer?”
“Evidence that you are a good speaker and actor, nothing more,” replies the judge. “It is obvious that you deluded those around you, and perhaps at times you even fooled yourself, but this foolishness is not enough to convict you in a court of law.”
You demand to know precisely what evidence would convince the judge, who tells you:
“The court is indifferent toward your Bible reading and church attendance; it has no concern for worship with words and a pen. . . . until you live as Christ and his followers did, until you challenge this system and become a thorn in our side . . . until then, my friend, you are no enemy of ours.”
This parable may seem far-fetched, but recently a former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, left it in part because pastors reported some of the good Christians in their churches complained about “liberal talking points” in sermons, which is how they perceived quotations from the teachings of Jesus. Even after being told the pastor was quoting Jesus, these people complain that such things are “too soft” and no longer work.
The next story comes from a conversation I had with “Mike,” a student in my Introduction to Quakerism class at Wilmington College a few years ago.
One day Mike was in the classroom early and we started chatting. “How are things going?” I asked.
“Really good,” Mike answered. He said that he and his fiancée were getting married soon and had been looking for a house to rent. He was glad to be moving, in part because there were twelve people in the house where he currently lived.
“Twelve!” I exclaimed. “Are you sharing a house with other students?”
“No,” he replied. The twelve people included, in addition to himself, his mother, his grandparents, and eight foster kids.
“Eight foster kids!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he said, “Right now that’s how many we have. Over the years, we’ve had more than fifty.”
“Fifty!” I exclaimed. . . .
I asked him how the family decided to take in foster kids, and he told me this story.
His father died when he was five, Mike said, so for most of his life, it was just him and his Mom. She was a pre-school and kindergarten teacher, who knew the awful circumstances of some children. When Mike was about twelve, she talked it over with him, and with his agreement, they both went through “foster family” training to offer a home to a series of lost and abused kids. “My mom will take only the hard cases that no one else wants,” Mike said. He spoke warmly of these kids, who had all sorts of mental and emotional problems, some quite severe; some violent. For instance, he had been hospitalized a few years ago when a boy broke some of his ribs. Another time, a different boy twisted his mother’s arm so badly that it severed all the tendons. But that boy, paranoid and schizophrenic, stayed with them until he “aged out” of foster care. Mike and his mom were still in contact with him—he was now institutionalized in Toledo—and they visited him when they could. Mike said he and his fiancée had talked about taking in foster kids. He would like to, but he’s afraid she’s too easily “attached,” and wouldn’t be able to handle it when kids were sent back to abusive homes.
From earlier conversations in class, I knew that Mike was interested in some of what Quakers believed, but he didn’t believe in God, much less Christ as the Son of God. “People do what they do,” he said. I didn’t know what Mike’s mother would say she believed, but I did know she was “guilty” of practicing Christianity and had influenced her son to act the same way. I suppose it depends on your definition of Christianity, of course, and whether you think of it as a noun—something I am—or a verb—something I do. But I believe the two of them were more pleasing than many self-labeled Christians to the God who advises his children to “uphold the rights of the fatherless,” to care for widows, orphans and foreigners.
The Force we call God in our faith tradition is smarter and more loving than we are. That God, who sent us messengers like Jesus, is not fooled by sycophants and groupies. That God is not a Christian, does not speak only English, nor live in church buildings. That God does not care if we are Muslin, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist or something else. As the Source of Love and all that is good, that God is best pleased when our actions show, not judgment, but mercy; not strict adherence to rules, but kindness; and not certainty we are right, but faithful humility in the face of great mystery.
1 Henneke, “21 ‘Show Don’t Tell’ Examples: How to Turn Bland Writing Into a Colorful Story.”
2 The original American Standard Version of the Bible, published in 1901, and the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952, both translate Micah 6:8 like this: “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The verb translated as “showed,” is now more often translated as “told,” but the root word in Hebrew has the idea of manifesting something. Declaring or reporting tells; manifesting shows.
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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