Because Talk Is Cheap--June 8, 2023

Because Talk Is Cheap--June 8, 2023

"We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." [1 John 3:16-18]

I'm tired of talk that stays just talk.  And I'll bet you are, too.

The trouble is, we live in a time and culture that has invented a million different ways to talk, and we are so completely overwhelmed by the messages that bombard us that sometimes we don't notice how little is actually done beyond that messaging.

We have a near infinite list of social media platforms on which we are prodded to broadcast every opinion we have, usually with no effect on the actual choices or actions of those who see what we post.  We have a host of channels of television, streaming services, and talking heads shouting at us all the time.  We have ads hitting our eyeballs on big angry billboards and microtargeted ads on the smart-phones in our shirt pockets.  And with all of their noise, sometimes we fail to see that there's very little substance in all that smoke-blowing, no quality buried inside the sheer quantity of talk constantly buzzing in our ears. (Okay, I know--I see the irony of being a pastor, whose day-job is preaching, writing a blogpost, all about how there is too much "talk" out there.  Let this be a warning to myself as well not to just be another talking head.)

Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of living in this noisy time of endlessly empty talk is that we have just gotten used to people saying things without embodying them.  We're used to the empty promises of politicians and candidates.  We're used to the product not living up to the marketing campaign.  And frankly, a lot of people are just so used to the Respectable Religious Crowd mouthing platitudes about "thoughts and prayers" when atrocities are committed or neighbors are suffering or disaster strikes that they are no longer surprised when our pious talk has no follow-through.  They are used to being disappointed in us.  They are used to hearing empty talk, not just from the pundits on screens, but from pulpits in sanctuaries and publicly pious people surrounding them.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The writers of the New Testament are pleading with us, in fact, not to settle for a words-only witness. They call us to love, as First John does here, not just in memes and messages, but in action, sacrifice, and generosity.  They call us to put our money where our mouth is, quite literally, and to do it as our way of following Jesus, who first laid his life down for us. That's the difference the world is aching for, because it turns out that the whole wide world is just as tired of the hot air and empty talk as you and I are.  Sometimes we just forget that we don't have to keep perpetuating what we hear and see around us.  We can be the difference.  We can show to the world what love really does by the ways we embody it, rather than just talk about it.

It's not that Christians have never taken concrete action before to embody the love they talk about.  It's just that we often think it's "enough" to settle for less.  Christian communities marched and walked (and took beatings and firehoses and jail time) in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to end Jim Crow segregation--it wasn't just nice talk, but it was action from those who stood arm-in-arm marching across the Pettus Bridge.  There were Christ-following families who housed and hid Jewish neighbors or resisted the Nazi regime in the 1930s--it was action beyond mere talk.  And of course in this present moment, we have a myriad opportunities to do just what John has called us to do--to love in truth and action.  When we host homeless families or give time to distribute food at our local food bank (or to grow that food), when we spend time visiting with sick or homebound neighbors who easily feel overlooked, when we help to resettle immigrants and refugees, or when we gather resources to be distributed around the world in the wake of disasters, we have the chance to live into the love we are good at talking about.  There are a million other ways we can move beyond empty talk--the only question is whether we will take any of those steps, on this day, and then the next, and then the next, until it becomes our whole way of life.  For a watching world that is tired of hot air, that might just be the way we Christians earn the right to be heard.

Talk is cheap.  Love is costly.

When the world around us sees us move beyond the noise of talk to sacrificial love, they'll catch a glimpse of the Christ we want to tell them about.  That might be where we need to start, because honestly, the nobody needs another meme.

Jesus, let our mouths be closed and our hands be opened to act in ways that embody your love. Let that authenticity set us apart so that we truly reflect your goodness.