walking or talking

Warm-up: read Mark 6:53-7:13

As for you, son of man, you've become quite the talk of the town. Your people meet on street corners and in front of their houses and say, 'Let's go hear the latest news from God.' They show up, as people tend to do, and sit in your company. They listen to you speak, but don't do a thing you say. They flatter you with compliments, but all they care about is making money and getting ahead. To them you're merely entertainment — a country singer of sad love songs, playing a guitar. They love to hear you talk, but nothing comes of it. Ezekiel 33:30-32 MSG

We have such a propensity to talk.

We can be much like the Athenians who enjoyed nothing more than to hear the latest philosophical/
theological/political trends and talk talk talk about it (or in our case, blog blog blog, post post post). And most of them missed the Lord who didn’t fit into their oh so smart intellectual boxes.

Or perhaps we can be like the Pharisees of old who enjoyed nothing more than to recount and regurgitate the ancient teachings and traditions of their faith. They ended up seeing dirty hands instead of desperate souls in need of God’s hand and healing and pointed fingers of accusation at the Healer who came to touch them.

Jesus called them posers.

Both groups remind me of Ezekiel’s crowd, this crowd of fellow exiles who came out to hear what the eccentric prophet would say this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was selling tickets. Ezekiel poured out the Message and then they would applaud and like Idol judges hold up their scorecards, perhaps wiping away tears if that last tune had been especially touching.

And nothing ever came of anything.

Walking or talking. When it comes right down to it, it really isn’t a matter of one or the other the way some are inclined to emphasize deeds rather than creeds. The fact is the creed (what we believe) produces the deeds (what we do). So they are linked. Both are crucial.

Too much talking and we generally end up in the proverbial paralysis of analysis – or worse still stuck in the dead end of pointless debates. Paul vividly describes this dead end as he repeatedly warns Timothy to avoid the “infantile indulgence” (youthful lusts) of instigating or getting sucked into religious debates that don’t move us to the goal of “love that comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith”:

Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God's people. Warn them before God against pious nitpicking, which chips away at the faith. It just wears everyone out. Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won't be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple. Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk. Words are not mere words, you know. If they're not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul. 2 Timothy 2:14-17 MSG

Having been part of a fellowship in the past that majored in religious debate in which virtually everyone was condemned (besides us) while we ourselves did very little, I can smell it a mile away. Adding insult to injury we regularly belittled other churches who were actually trying to serve the needy (Social gospelers! Show-offs! Do-gooders trying to earn their way into heaven! Ad nauseum). As Ecclesiastes says, it’s a bad business. Just another section of the Ezekiel crowd.

On the other hand if it’s all walking with little or no talking we generally forget just where it is we are going and why – not to mention who we are in the first place.

The challenge is developing a healthy rhythm and balance of each, our talking leading to much walking, our walking spurring on yet more vigrous talking. The challenge is avoiding the twin pitfalls of too little talk that leaves us clueless about just where it is we are headed and that of getting bogged down in excessive and pointless talk while He patiently waits for us to get moving again.