Recently I watched a reality TV show called “The World’s Toughest Race”. This was not so much a race about speed, but rather one of endurance. Teams of four from all over the world travelled to Fiji to participate in this extreme form of racing. They had eleven days to complete the course which involved hiking and biking through muddy trails, fighting their way through the jungle overgrowth, climbing cliffs and scaling over waterfalls, building rafts and maneuvering through rapids, swimming through frigid water and rowing over ocean waves. It was not without its injuries. The people of Fiji were very welcoming and often helped the teams as they came into their villages. I was especially interested in one of the Fijian men as he assisted a contestant who had hurt his leg. The injured man had been placed on a horse to get him to the next check point. What I noticed was how this man from Fiji, who was not a part of the team nor a contestant in the race, kindly helped the injured man dismount the horse by holding his leg carefully and gently guiding him to the ground. I thought what a wonderful person he must be to show such kindness to a stranger. When he turned his back to the camera, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, because big words written on the back of his shirt declared, “Be the sermon!” He certainly wore the shirt well as his actions spoke to me before I ever saw the words.

What does it mean to ‘be the sermon’? It emphasizes the fact that we can influence others and speak into their lives by how we act and how we live. In fact, it is extremely important that our actions match our words. Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with saying, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.”

In the Mitford series by Jan Karon, there is a character by the name of Absalom Greer. He is an older minister who also runs the family country store, and as he stands behind the counter of his store, he declares:

Many years ago I taught a lot of children in various church settings. One of my favorite object lessons was about shoes. I compared people to different kinds of shoes. We had the sneaker, the loafer, the flip-flop (now applied to politicians), the dress shoe (looks good on the outside, but not much good for anything else) and then there was the good, old reliable work shoe! The implied question was what kind of shoe are you. At the end of the lesson we sang this little chorus:

The thing about our walk and talk is we need to make sure they are saying the same thing. And the truth of the matter is that people pay more attention to our walk than our talk. It’s often put this way: Your talk talks and your walk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks. Think about it!

We are reminded in James 1:22 to “be doers of the word.” And more specifically in 1 John 3:18 we read, “Let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth”. Our lives speak volumes. The way we live declares our priorities and reveals our true values.

If “actions speak louder than words”, we need to ask ourselves this question: What kind of sermon am I?

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