BE DOERS OF THE WORD

The church building in which I was raised was built from the salvaged parts of the old Mellon Mansion and the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Pittsburgh. It is a magnificent structure: red Michigan sandstone, marble walls and floors and communion rails, silver doors – the list is long. High on the left wall is a marble edifice that looks like a pulpit. It was even used as such on one or two occasion in my youth. Above the pulpit inscribed on the wall were the words from the Epistle of James: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only”

Simple advice both to preacher and parishioner alike, but for different reasons. As one sitting in the pew and listening to the word proclaimed from on high, really on high when proclaimed from that pulpit, and especially proclaimed in a powerful and moving sermon, the response by the parishioner expected from the preacher was/is “So what are you going to do about it?”

It’s not enough for the hearer to say after church, “Great sermon, Father,” and then go blithely on one’s way with no further personal response. The words preached and heard, no matter how profound and meaningful, will have no meaning if they are not put into action by the hearer. We must be a doer of the word we have heard, otherwise the word has no real meaning.

On the other hand, as far as the preacher is concerned, my being one, my responsibility is to preach a sermon that is meaningful to the people sitting in the pew looking up to me. The fact that they are looking up is a constant reminder that they are giving me the responsibility to speak words to them that will help them go forth from the service to live out in their lives the message and lesson that I have gleaned from the readings.

But there is more to preaching than that. I have always believed that the first person my sermon should address is the one I see in the mirror every morning. I am no different, no better and hopefully no worse, than the people I preach to from that pulpit. It is not enough for me to give them good advice, if you will, or even give myself good advice. I, like they, must live out that advice, be a doer of those words, in my daily life.

Good sermons and good advice are a start. Living out the words preached and heard must follow. The failure of the church as a whole and we preachers and hearers individually to live out the words we have preached and heard is the reason why the world is in the mess that it is in today. We have failed to take the Good News, the Gospel, we hear to heart and then to practice that good news in our daily lives. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the Good News still speaks to us today. Every day we have the opportunity to be a doer of the word by living out the word so that others hear it by our loving deeds and respond by doing the same and making the world better.