“Love is Action, Jack”

“Go and tell John what you hear and see.” (Matthew 11.4)

Years back, wanting to draw the distinction between words and actions, a writer offered this example. He explained how a person could tell his friend all day long about how his grandma’s recipe for cookies was so great. But, as the writer said, until that person actually baked the cookies and placed one of those delicious cookies in his friend’s mouth, his claims were only that—claims about delicious cookies and nothing more.

Another person saw the difference between words and actions in the same way. His name was Rabbi Yeshua bar Yosef. One day he was met on the road by disciples of John the Baptist, that fearless and tireless prophet of the Jordan who now found himself locked behind bars because his preaching had upset the powerful Herod, King of Judea.

Sent by the imprisoned John, who certainly was counting the days until Herod would chop off his head, surely wondering if his own preaching had been worth the wearisome work, these disciples were instructed to ask the Rabbi one simple question that John needed an answer to, an answer that might give significance to his own life’s work. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

If we detect some anguish, even angst, in the question addressed to the Rabbi by the prophet, we would be right, given John’s promising the people a Messiah, himself now locked away to rot in his cell until his execution. He begged for an answer and he didn’t have time on his side. Was the Rabbi, a carpenter from Galilee now turned a teacher, the one he was hoping for, the promised one all the prophets had prayed for, the Messiah who would put the world back on the right course? That was the searing question addressed to the Rabbi.

Simple and straightforward, yet bold and breathtaking, the answer the Rabbi gave the disciples  to pass on to their spiritual leader John was not the expected one word reply, “yes” or “no,” but instead was an answer directing John to look at what the Rabbi was doing. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”

With that invitation to look at what he was doing, the Rabbi referred the disciples to experience with their own eyes the good works of his hands, passing on what they saw to their leader, John. Borrowing from the earlier example, we could say that the Galilean Teacher didn’t tell the disciples how delicious his homemade cookies were, but offered them one to eat. Taste it for yourself, he might have said, and then tell John what you think of them.

Having watched the Rabbi at work and having seen him in action, we know he didn’t just talk the talk, but rather walked the walk. His teaching was not done in long lectures, but was done in lived lessons. When he saw a hungry man on the road, he gave him food, not simply saying it wasn’t right that people should be hungry. When he met a blind man, he restored his sight, not sadly saying there was nothing he could do about it. When he saw a woman crying, he wiped her tears, not just saying to her some half-baked words. He always did the heavy lifting himself.

Anyone who walked the roads of Galilee with the Rabbi, seeing him respond to each and every person in need, understood that this man was not afraid of getting his hands dirty. He touched people with open sores. He made a muddy salve to put on a blind man’s eyes. He broke bread to give to the hungry. His harshest criticism, in fact, was directed to do-gooders who did no good. Seeing how the Pharisees were skilled at scolding people for their failures, while turning a blind eye to their own faults, he roasted them for their hypocrisy, calling them empty tombs and blow bags, big talkers but not big doers.

Losing patience with such high-minded people that never lifted a finger to help, disdaining their neatly pressed clothes that showed not a smidgen of sweat or soil, shaking his head at their clean and callous-free hands, the Rabbi insisted that any who followed his way in this world were to walk in his footsteps, doing as he did, giving as he gave, loving as he loved. If they failed to do these good works, he told them, then they would fail to be his followers.

Years ago, the ABC broadcaster Peter Jennings was interviewing a man who had started his own church. As Jennings pressed the man for his reason for beginning his ministry, the man explained that the first time that he found himself in a church he thought he would see big things happening, but nothing happened. He said he went to church services for three Sundays in a row, but only became more frustrated each time.

Finally, the man, wanting answers, approached another man in the church who looked like he might be somebody important in the church, asking him a simple question, “When do you do it?” The second man, looking dumbfounded or sideswiped by the question, said, “When do we do what?” The newcomer answered back, “You know, the stuff.” The other man said, “And what stuff might that be?”

The first man, still not getting answers, said, “You know, the stuff in the Bible.” The second man still didn’t seem to understand what he was asking. “I still don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Well, I’m talking about multiplying loaves and fish, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving sight to blind people. That stuff!” The second man answered, “Oh, we don’t do that. We believe in it, and we pray about it, but we don’t actually do it. Nobody does, except for those crazy fundamentalists.”

With that answer, the newcomer decided not to return to that church, instead choosing to start his own church, a place where people actually did the stuff they were supposed to be doing, not a place where they talked the talk and prayed the prayers, but never lifted a finger to feed the hungry or to heal the sick. His own church, the man told Jennings, actually did all that stuff. Without a doubt, the Rabbi of Galilee would feel at home in that church, unlike a church where people like to warm the cushioned pews, but don’t like to get off their rear ends do anything.

Maybe the southern writer, Pat Conroy, summed it up best when he has one of his characters in a novel say, “Love is action, Jack. It isn’t talk, and it never has been.” For a southern good ole boy, he sounds a lot like a carpenter-turned-healer in Galilee, a holy man who first learned how to use his hands in his dad’s carpenter shop and then went out into the world to use his hands to build up people’s broken lives, hands that always showed love in action.

If we want to ask ourselves why this episode in the life of the Galilean Teacher should find itself in our pre-Christmas preparations, the answer is not all that difficult, seeing as how Christmas is the entrance of the long-expected Messiah into this world, the Messiah whom John preached about and prayed for and asked if this finally was the real deal.

For us who would welcome the same Messiah into the world and into our lives again this Christmas, it is not enough that we sing “O Holy Night” or “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” beautiful as the words to those songs may be, but we truly welcome him by living as he lived, eschewing words, instead choosing actions that make him alive again, actions that would make us really his followers. To be called Christ-like, we must be like Christ.

The gifted writer Max Lucado tells a story in one of his books that reminds us of the importance of our actions. It is a story of a Jewish couple who were arguing over the name to give to their firstborn son. They finally asked the rabbi to come and intercede. The rabbi asks, “What is the problem?” The wife says to the rabbi, “He wants to name the boy after his father, and I want to name the boy after my father.”

The rabbi asks the man, “What is your father’s name?” The man answers, “Joseph.” The rabbi turns to the woman and says, “And what is your father’s name?” The woman answers, “Joseph.” Puzzled, the rabbi asks the couple, “So, what is the problem?” The wife speaks. “His father was a horse thief and mine was a righteous man. How can I know that my son is named after my father and not his?” The rabbi thinks for a moment and then answers the couple, “Call the boy Joseph. Then see if he is a horse thief or a righteous man. You will know which father’s name he wears.”

That rabbi, like the Galilean Rabbi, understood the importance of actions in defining who a person is. Today, the world asks us who we are, just as John asked the Galilean Teacher who he was. We can answer that we are Christians, but the word without good works means nothing. It is our actions alone that will determine if we live up to the name, making it clear if we are a righteous person or a horse thief.

—Jeremy Myers