Actions Speak Louder

Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Matthew 28:16-20
on Trinity Sunday, Year A, May 11, 2008, at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston

    Bill Cosby asked a boy of nine named Peter: "Do you try to do the things that Jesus told you to do?"
      "He didn't tell me to do nothin'," Peter fervently replied.
    "I mean things like turning the other cheek."
        "What's that mean?"
    "If somebody hits you, you don't hit him back."
        "Jesus said be a wimp?"
    "No, not a wimp, a lover of peace."
        "It don't sound too smart. Why don't the guy who hits me love peace first?"
    "Well, that's the whole point of Jesus' message: You have to be bigger than the other person."
        For a moment, Peter fell into fervent reflection.
        "If you're bigger," he then said, "you should definitely him him back."
    Cosby concludes, "Not all Peters are saints. (Kids Say the Darndest Things, 21)

    There was a man who was not bigger than the others but he was not afraid to hit someone back. Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay Jr.) is a retired American boxer and former three-time World Heavyweight Champion and winner of an Olympic Light-heavyweight gold medal. In 1999, Ali was crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and the BBC. Mohammad Ali is remembered as much for his showmanship as his boxing. He says he got his showmanship from a championship wrestler named Gorgeous George, whom he met when doing a radio program. After his encounter with Gorgeous George, Ali started shouting, "I am beautiful. I am the greatest. I can't be beat, I'm the fastest thing on two feet, and I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. If you talk jive, you'll fall in five ..."

    He started writing poetry for the first time when he fought Archie Moore:

When you come to the fight
Don't block the aisles
And don't block the door
For you all may go home
After round four.

    He won the fight in the fourth round, as he predicted he would. And over the years, 17 out of 21 of his predictions came true. He started making predictions to sell tickets and his predictions started coming true.
    Ali had his critics. They said his poems were terrible. They said they were the ravings of a madman.
    He told those critics that his poetry would be quoted and published more than any of the poems written by poets they liked. He never paid much attention to his critics about anything negative.
    He says, "Every time I opened my mouth, I could back it up." He says, "The critics only made me work harder."

    Jesus also had his critics. Open any page of the gospels and you are likely to find Jesus being attacked by his critics, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Inspite of the criticism, Jesus persevered with his mission in life. Finally, in the last chapter of Matthew, in the final scene, Jesus is with his 11 disciples in Galilee. They are down to 11 disciples because Judas has already betrayed Jesus which set the stage for his crucifixion. On the third day, God raised him from the dead. Now, after his resurrection, Jesus and his 11 disciples are up on a mountain. The disciples see the risen Jesus and worship him. But some doubt him. Even after his resurrection Jesus had doubters among his 11 disciples! So we shouldn't be shocked if we have some critics. We shouldn't be surprised if some people doubt us. Jesus experienced critics and so shall we. The key to the kingdom is how we handle our critics. Like Jesus, we should persevere in the face of our critics. We should stand tall in the presence of our doubters. Like Mohammad Ali, our critics should make us work harder.

    The story is told that when a much-publicized Texas highwayman and train robber died, his brother went to a local pastor to persuade him to preach his brother's funeral.
    Fearing the possible bad publicity, the preacher politely declined. The brother offered the preacher $10,000 to officiate at his brother's funeral. "Why do you offer so much money for what is normally a routine church function?" asked the pastor.
    "Because you are a respected man of the cloth in West Texas and I have a special request. I want you to call my brother a saint" replied the brother. Badly in need of funds for repairs on the church where he was pastor, he reluctantly consented.
    On of the day of the service, the house was full of mourners. The pastor said, "We are here to pay our respects to 'Six-shooter' Henry Jones. Now we all know Henry was a thief, and a murderer, but, compared to his brother, Henry was a saint!"
(Bill Cannon, Treasury of Texas Humor, 44-45)

    We compare ourselves to others. We tear them down to build ourselves up. We play that game even though it leads to frustration. I wonder if there was still bickering among the 11 disciples after Jesus' resurrection. We know there had been conflicts among the 12 as the Sons of Thunder called down their mother upon Jesus to beseech him to give her boys thrones to rule over all. The mother suggested one son could sit on Jesus right hand and her other son could sit on Jesus left hand. Her suggestion did not go over well with the other disciples. Finally, Jesus called them all together and told them things were different in his world. In his world, those who were first would be last. Those who were last would be first. The ruler of all would be the servant of all. This blew their minds. We still have a hard time with the concept of the servant leader. Our culture trains us to work the angles for our own good. Our culture encourages us to to strive to get ahead of our neighbors. Our whole economic system is based on the underlying belief that humans will do whatever they can to get ahead. What if we proved them wrong? What if we proved Jesus right? On some occasions we follow Jesus' golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Other times, we stumble over our pride and fall down and look foolish.

    Woody Allen once wrote an obituary for a fictional character named Mr. Needleman. Here is one paragraph.
   At the opera in Milan with my daughter and me, Needleman leaned out of his box and fell into the orchestra pit. Too proud to admit it was a mistake, he attended the opera every night for a month and repeated it each time. Soon he developed a mild brain concussion. I pointed out that he could stop falling as his point had been made. He said, "No. A few more times. It's really not so bad." (The Insanity of Defense: The Complete Prose, 213)

Poor, Needleman, his pride would not let him admit he made a mistake. In order to prove his falling  out of the orchestra pit at the Opera was not an accident, he repeats his mistake each night until he gets a mild concussion. Even then he is reluctant to admit the foolishness of his ways. We laugh at Needleman. Yet, in our own small ways, we repeat his his mistake when we are willing to sacrifice a relationship rather than lose an argument. As Paul said, "I do not do what I want to do. Our spirits are willing but our flesh is weak." This is the human dilemma.

    Jesus knows all about the human dilemma, having lived as a human being himself. Jesus' approach to making disciples was to model the kind of life he wanted his disciples to live. If the disciples ever wanted to know what to do, they would ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?" They had been with him long enough and seen him in so many different kinds of situations that they intuitively knew the answer to that question. They knew what Jesus would do.

    How we live our lives is our best advertisement for the Christian faith. Presbyterians have always known this. Instead of talking about the importance of higher education we established colleges all over this country, such as Trinity University in San Antonio. Jesus challenges us to go and baptize, make and teach disciples. We are doing that at St. John's. We baptize believers. We teach disciples. And we meet human needs. We do all of this in Jesus' name. For we know that actions speak louder. Actions speak louder than words.