Show, Don’t Tell

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scriptures: Acts 7:55-60, John 14:1-14

Because of my conservative evangelical background—well, more because of my rebellion against it—I find that it’s sometimes a lot easier to see what is problematic about a scripture than to see what is lifegiving. After all, I grew up in a church that told me that I had to behave perfectly according to the rules of the Bible in order to get into heaven. And if I backslid even a half inch, I needed to repent as quickly as possible just in case I died before I got a chance to and was sent to hell forever

But over the past 15 years, I’ve slowly dismantled my fear of going to hell, of being left out. I’ve deconstructed and then reclaimed much of the Christian language around sin and salvation.

But old habits—or old traumas—they’re sticky. Sometimes I find their residue in places I don’t expect. So when I first read this gospel passage from John, all I could see was “No one comes to the Father—or as I prefer to say, the Creator—except through me.”

What the heck, Jesus? Are you trying to tell me that people can’t know God’s love and goodness if they don’t believe in you? Didn’t you just say a few chapters back that you have other sheep who do not belong to this fold?

Which is to say, if I get even the faintest whiff of exclusion, I get defensive. I pounce on that verse and interrogate it. Don’t you know how much harm you’ve done through the millennia? How dare you.

But then the Holy Spirit puts her hand gently on my shoulder and says, Maybe let’s look at this scripture again. Together. Through the lens of God’s expansive love that you’ve come to understand and trust in your journey back to faith.

She says, first let’s look at the chapter before. It’s the night before Jesus dies. He has just washed his disciples’ feet and told them that first, one of them would betray him, and second, he was about to go to a place where they cannot follow. They are starting to realize that Jesus isn’t going to be with them much longer. Their hearts are starting to break for their friend, and they can’t imagine what they’ll do without him.

Then the Spirit directs my eyes to the first sentence of today’s gospel: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” The Spirit squeezes my shoulder with firmness but care. “You see,” she says, “Jesus is comforting his disciples.” He’s saying, I’m not leaving you, because I am the way, the truth, and the life. “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Creator.”

The scales of defensiveness fall from my eyes. I give the Spirit an apologetic smile.

“I will be with you through your works of love and care and healing,” Jesus is saying, “which will be even greater than what I did while I was here with you.”

Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life isn’t about believing “correctly” and then telling others how to, it’s about the comfort and assurance of knowing that he is here with us, through us. When we demonstrate his love and care and healing with our lives, we bring Jesus into the world to all who need his love and goodness.

This is especially the deacon’s call. “Now every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ, serving God the Creator, through the power of the Holy Spirit,” says the liturgy of ordination for a deacon. But God calls deacons “to a special ministry of servanthood directly under their bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, they are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.” So a deacon’s call is to manifest Jesus in the world especially to those who are struggling, oppressed, and in need.

Stephen was among the first deacons of the church, and I think his ministry demonstrates the difference between telling people what they’re supposed to believe about Jesus and showing how Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Because Stephen did both.

What we hear about him today comes from Acts chapter 7 verses 55 through 60. Verses 1 through 53 are Stephen telling people what they’re supposed to believe. And not just any people, but the high priests, the religious authorities of the time. These are people who have studied scriptures all their lives and make religious and civil decisions on behalf of their people. They are extremely educated and, as far as Jews in the Roman Empire go, they are powerful.

It’s these people to whom Stephen decides to offer a long history lesson of their people from Abraham to the prophets. Imagine me going to the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church and spending an hour or two telling them about the Bible.

But Stephen doesn’t stop there. He ends his history lesson this way: “‘You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are for ever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.’”

Now listen, I am not against what is called a “prophetic” sermon. A prophetic sermon is one that, as theologian Walter Brueggeman defined it, “[nurtures, nourishes, and evokes] a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” In other words, it’s a sermon that pushes back on the world, a sermon that invites us to take action according to our faith even when it’s in conflict with our culture. But, as preaching professor Lenora Tubs Tisdale writes, “Brueggemann also reminds us that while the first task of the Biblical prophets was to criticize the old order, their second task was to energize their hearers with a hope-filled vision of the new reign of God that was to come.”

I think Stephen forgot about that second part. First, he preachersplained the Hebrew Bible to scholars of the Hebrew Bible, and then he called them stiff-necked and told them how, in his opinion, they were not keeping their own law. You’re wrong, and I’m right.

This is not the way to demonstrate the love and care and healing of Jesus.

And that’s when the high priests instigate the stoning of Stephen. Let me be clear: this is a lynching. Stephen is judged, sentenced, and executed by a mob led by people who feel their power is threatened. There is no justice in being executed for saying something someone else doesn’t like. It is evil, and there is no justifying it.

But that’s also the moment when Stephen shows the people, shows us, Jesus. Even as he is being pummelled to death, in his greatest moment of desperation and fear, he reaches for mercy, saying, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Stephen can see that these people who are hurting him are struggling, oppressed, and in need. And he wants to set them free, as Jesus set free the broken people he encountered.

Show, don’t tell. That is a deacon’s call. Well, that’s every Christian’s call, but a deacon is one who sets that example for all of us through their ordained ministry particularly to the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely. They show up where they are needed, and they come back to a parish on Sunday to let us know what they’ve seen and how we can follow them in demonstrating Jesus in our lives, in healing the world.

Our own Mel Foresman was ordained to the Holy Order of Deacons on Friday. She has already been living into that call over the past few years. I invite you to ask her today about her ministry at Hope and Bread, a church community that serves the unhoused in East Portland. I invite you to ask her about where she’ll be placed as a new deacon and what kind of work she’ll get to do there.

If you know Mel, you know she’s not the kind of person who speaks wastefully, and she certainly isn’t the type to preachersplain. But she does speak up when her voice is needed, and she shows up when her presence is needed. If you watch her move in the world long enough, if you have the pleasure of getting to be in relationship with her, you’ll get to know Jesus a little better.

Show, don’t tell. That’s how Mel moves in the world. Let her be an example to all of us.

Amen.