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More Than Words · Faith at Work

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  SPEAKER_00: Four hours.
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  SPEAKER_00: Four hours.
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  SPEAKER_00: In four hours,
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  SPEAKER_00: you can watch the entire movie,
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  SPEAKER_00: The Godfather,
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  SPEAKER_00: and still have time to talk about whether Pacino or...
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  SPEAKER_00: What was the other guy?
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  SPEAKER_00: Brando provided a better performance.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could sit...
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  I'm told,
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  through the entire Super Bowl game,
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  watching halftime and all of the commercials.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could drive from here to Washington,
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  SPEAKER_00: DC,
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  SPEAKER_00: do a little circle around the mall,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then come back in four hours.
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  Or you could plant yourself in a stadium somewhere and watch an
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  entire NASCAR race.
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  SPEAKER_00: Four hours,
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  SPEAKER_00: interestingly enough,
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  is also the amount of time that it would take you to read every
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  single word of
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus recorded in all four of the Gospels.
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  Not the narrative descriptions about what he did,
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  just his red letter words.
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  Scholars have counted them and they have timed the reading and
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  the total comes out
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  SPEAKER_00: somewhere between three and four hours,
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  SPEAKER_00: depending on how fast you read out loud.
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  For the most pivotal life in all of human history,
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  that is a remarkably small archive of words.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't want to minimize what Jesus said.
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  SPEAKER_00: His words are staggering.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Sermon on the Mount alone could occupy a lifetime of reflection.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for some, it has literally occupied a lifetime of reflection.
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  His parables continue to unsettle and surprise readers even
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  2,000 years later.
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  When he said,
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  I am the way,
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  the truth,
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  and the life,
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  what he said cracked history wide open.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of his words were small words.
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  SPEAKER_00: But...
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is what John tells us at the very end of his gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: After recording the resurrection appearances,
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  after describing the moment Jesus breathed on his disciples and
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  sent them out into
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  SPEAKER_00: the world,
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  SPEAKER_00: John pauses and says,
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  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's more.
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  SPEAKER_00: so much more.
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  SPEAKER_00: The things Jesus did were so numerous,
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  SPEAKER_00: so vast,
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  SPEAKER_00: that if they were all written down,
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  John supposes that there would not be enough world to contain
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  all of the books.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it raises a question worth sitting with, I think, this morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean that the works of
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  SPEAKER_00: of Jesus so completely outpaced his words.
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  SPEAKER_00: John 20, 30, as we just heard, tells us something quite extraordinary.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples,
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  SPEAKER_00: which are not recorded in this book.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then in chapter 21, verse 25, he goes on further.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus did many other things as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: If every one of them were written down,
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  SPEAKER_00: I suppose the whole world would not have room for these books.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about what John is saying.
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  We are talking about a ministry that lasted,
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  I don't know,
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  roughly three years.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walked primarily in a small region.
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  SPEAKER_00: He traveled on foot.
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  SPEAKER_00: He had no platform, no publishing house, no broadcast social media reach.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet the scope of what he actually did was so enormous that John,
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  SPEAKER_00: the eyewitness who walked with him,
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  SPEAKER_00: found himself unable even to gesture at it fully.
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  SPEAKER_00: Scholars have debated whether this is hyperbole,
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  SPEAKER_00: a rhetorical exaggeration common in ancient writing,
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  SPEAKER_00: or whether John is pointing at something more literally true.
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  that the ripple effect of Jesus's actions were so far reaching
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  that the full
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  SPEAKER_00: accounting of them could never be completed.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a little bit of both.
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  John is using the language of impossibility to convey something
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  that is actually
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  SPEAKER_00: impossible to convey.
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  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus was not primarily a teacher with a curriculum.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was a presence with a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And lies, especially this one, cannot be fully documented ever.
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  SPEAKER_00: What we have in the Gospels is a curated selection.
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  SPEAKER_00: John tells us as much.
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  SPEAKER_00: He selected what he recorded for a specific purpose,
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  SPEAKER_00: that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Son of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that by believing,
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  SPEAKER_00: you may have life in his name.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Gospels are not biographies in our modern sense of the word.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are testimonies.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are invitations.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what they invite us to is not a system of teaching,
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  but an encounter with a person whose actions were apparently
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  without natural
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  SPEAKER_00: limits.
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  Set the words of Jesus alongside the works of Jesus,
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  and the imbalance is striking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not just in quantity,
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  SPEAKER_00: though four hours of words against a world full of deeds is quite a gap,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the imbalance runs deeper than that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Consider what actually changed people in the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: The disciples did not follow Jesus because he gave a compelling lecture.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were called, often mid-task, and they went.
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  SPEAKER_00: The woman at the well in John 4 was transformed,
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  SPEAKER_00: yes,
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  SPEAKER_00: by a conversation,
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  but the conversation was built around Jesus doing something
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  that respectable rabbis
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  SPEAKER_00: of his day did not do.
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  SPEAKER_00: sitting down at a Samaritan well and asking a woman for water.
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  SPEAKER_00: The action preceded the framed words.
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  SPEAKER_00: The ten leopards were not changed by a sermon.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were changed because Jesus reached out towards the untouchable.
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  SPEAKER_00: Zacchaeus did not climb that tree to hear a theology.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus called him down and invited himself to dinner,
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  SPEAKER_00: Zacharias was transformed not by what Jesus said,
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  SPEAKER_00: but by what Jesus did.
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  SPEAKER_00: He showed up at the table of a man whom everyone else had written off.
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  Even the crucifixion,
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  the hinge point of history,
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  was not primarily a speech.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said seven things from the cross.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each one was profound.
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  SPEAKER_00: The seven last words they are called.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what saved the world was not the statements.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was the act, the self-giving,
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  SPEAKER_00: the body broken,
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  SPEAKER_00: the blood poured out,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the resurrection,
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  the event that John spends the bulk of his final chapters
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  describing was not a
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  SPEAKER_00: proclamation.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was an event.
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  SPEAKER_00: It happened.
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  It was something that Jesus did,
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  and it was the most world-altering action ever taken.
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  SPEAKER_00: N.T.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wright,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the most respected New Testament scholars of our generation,
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  SPEAKER_00: argues in his landmark work,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus and the Victory of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: that studying the actions of Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially his symbolic actions,
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  is a far better starting point for understanding him than
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  studying isolated
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  SPEAKER_00: sayings.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because actions cost more.
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  They land differently in our bodies and in our memories when we
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  experience them.
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  Wright is making a historical argument,
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  but it carries theological weight.
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  The deeds that Jesus was doing was something that his words
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  alone could not do.
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  SPEAKER_00: Miroslav Wolf,
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  SPEAKER_00: a theologian at Yale,
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  who has spent decades thinking about how faith looks in real
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  life and public
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  SPEAKER_00: practice,
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  SPEAKER_00: builds his life's work on a similar conviction.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: Wolf insists,
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  is not simply a moral teacher whose legacy is a collection of
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  wise and demanding
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  SPEAKER_00: sayings.
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  He is a living presence who calls his followers to active
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  participation in the
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  SPEAKER_00: healing and the flourishing of the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: The message and the messenger are inseparable.
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  SPEAKER_00: The way Jesus moved through the world was itself the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: The gospel.
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  Now this does run against the grain of much of how the church
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  has operated for centuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have built institutions around the teachings of Jesus.
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  We have organized denominations around doctoral statements
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  derived from his words.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of that definitely has its place, don't get me wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: But somewhere in the institutionalization of Christianity,
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  we have may wrongly flipped the emphasis John was working so
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  hard to establish
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  SPEAKER_00: here.
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  SPEAKER_00: John was not writing a theology textbook.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was bearing witness to a life lived.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come back to our text in John 20.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is the evening of the first day of the week.
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  SPEAKER_00: The disciples are locked in a room.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are afraid.
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  SPEAKER_00: They have heard the report from Mary Magdalene,
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  SPEAKER_00: but fear is more powerful than that,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it does not yield easily to her testimony.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus comes.
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  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't knock.
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  SPEAKER_00: He simply just appears and stands among them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what does he do first?
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  SPEAKER_00: He shows them his hands and his side.
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  Before any instruction,
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  before any commission,
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  he shows them the evidence of what he did.
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  SPEAKER_00: The wounds,
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  SPEAKER_00: the cost,
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  SPEAKER_00: the proof that this is not a ghost or a vision,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the same body that went into the tomb.
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  SPEAKER_00: and then he breathes.
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  SPEAKER_00: He breathes on them.
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  SPEAKER_00: That detail is not accidental.
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  SPEAKER_00: John is reaching all the way back to Genesis chapter two,
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  to the moment that God breathes into the nostrils of the first
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  human being and the
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  SPEAKER_00: person became a living soul.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does not explain this new creation.
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  SPEAKER_00: He enacts it.
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  SPEAKER_00: He breathes into them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is not a doctrine delivered into that room.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a breath, a transfer, a physical act of impartation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as part of the breath, there is a commission.
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  SPEAKER_00: As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.
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  SPEAKER_00: But even that commission rests entirely on what he has already done.
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  SPEAKER_00: Died, risen, appeared, showed his wound, breathed his spirit.
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  SPEAKER_00: The words only make sense because of the actions that proceeded them.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is the pattern John has been building towards all along.
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  The Church of the Brethren has carried a simple identity for
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  three centuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: We subscribe to no formal creed or set of rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: We simply try to do what Jesus did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not say what Jesus said, do what Jesus did.
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  That is an extraordinary thing to put at the center of a
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  denominations self-understanding.
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  The Brethren tradition has always held that Jesus understood
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  people's spiritual
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  SPEAKER_00: needs to include their day-to-day human ones,
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  SPEAKER_00: food,
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  SPEAKER_00: health,
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  SPEAKER_00: rest,
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  SPEAKER_00: comfort,
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  SPEAKER_00: friendship,
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  SPEAKER_00: unconditional acceptance.
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  He showed his followers how to trust,
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  how to care,
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  and how to help steadily.
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  Lovingly,
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  even radically,
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  Jesus went out saving the world by serving its people.
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  And the denominational tagline is not proclaiming the words of
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  Jesus or teaching
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  SPEAKER_00: the doctrine of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is continuing the work of Jesus peacefully, simply, together.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those three words are not decorative.
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  They describe how the work gets done peacefully because Jesus
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  never coerced anyone
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  simply because he operated without institutional machinery or
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  political leverage
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  SPEAKER_00: and together because he never sent anyone out alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: And notice it is the work
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  The same limitless work John pointed to when he said the world
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  could not hold the books.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some describe the brethren as more focused on orthopraxy than orthodoxy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right practice rather than right belief.
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  You know,
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  you can believe the correct things about Jesus and never do
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  what Jesus did.
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  You can recite every creed flawlessly and still walk past the
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  person on the side of the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can have impeccable theology and a closed hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus stood in that locked room and breathed on his disciples,
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  SPEAKER_00: he was not handing them a curriculum.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was
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  SPEAKER_00: commissioning a continuation.
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  John knew that what he was writing could not hold all of that,
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  all that Jesus had done.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that admission is an invitation.
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  It is an invitation to understand that the story of Jesus is
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  not a closed archive.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is an ongoing account that we are living in today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every act of mercy,
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  SPEAKER_00: every table opened to someone excluded,
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  SPEAKER_00: every wound tended,
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  SPEAKER_00: every person seen and known and loved,
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  SPEAKER_00: every wall crossed through,
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  SPEAKER_00: every human hunger fed,
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  SPEAKER_00: These are the chapters in a book the world has yet to contain.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are not here to be a community that talks about Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: The world has plenty of that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are here to be a community that does what Jesus did.
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  SPEAKER_00: to breathe peace into frightened rooms,
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  SPEAKER_00: to show up at tables where we are not expected,
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  SPEAKER_00: to touch the things that other people avoid,
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  SPEAKER_00: to serve our way into the lives of our neighbors,
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  SPEAKER_00: to keep the account going.
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  SPEAKER_00: The words of Jesus were powerful, no doubt.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the works of Jesus, they changed the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And those works, John tells us, are not finished.
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  They are continuing in every congregation that takes seriously
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  what it means to carry His name.
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  SPEAKER_00: They continue whenever we stop talking about love and start practicing.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is our calling, not to say the things that Jesus said,
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  SPEAKER_00: To do the things that Jesus did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Peacefully, simply, and together.
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  SPEAKER_00: And now I too will stop them.