Can You See a Sermon: “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one.” A friend left that thought beneath one of my recent posts; and as I began thinking more about that familiar expression, I thought I might share a few thoughts of my own. They are perhaps a little different from the way the expression is usually understood.
That post was really asking whether Christianity can be identified by visible conduct – our dress, habits, entertainment, speech, or general manner of life – and whether someone ought to be able to recognize a true believer simply by watching them. That idea seems to answer yes: our lives should preach the sermon. But I am not sure they can. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether we are asking our conduct to say more than it is really capable of saying.
So what exactly do we mean when we say that we can “see” someone’s sermon? We never actually see a whole life. We see moments, circumstances, conversations, public behavior, and perhaps whatever portion of themselves a person chooses to show us. We may know someone for years, perhaps even for a lifetime, and still discover how much of their inner life, history, struggle, and sorrow remained hidden from us.
And sometimes what we do see is genuinely beautiful – so much goodness, kindness, humility, and compassion. I hope most of us have known people like that, and what a special blessing it is when they are found among our own family – parents, siblings, or others we have known and loved for a lifetime. But even then, we may know very little about what they struggle with privately, why they do so many of the things we admire, or how much goodness and difficulty may exist together in a life we only ever see in part.
Even when what we see is good and beautiful, we still may not know what that person believes, what lies behind that conduct, or what gives their actions their meaning. Outward conduct may tell us something about a person, but I am not sure it can tell us nearly as much as we sometimes suppose.
If by “seeing a sermon” we simply mean seeing qualities in another person that Scripture commends, then certainly there is something beautiful about that. I would much rather encounter kindness than cruelty, patience than impatience, generosity than selfishness. But none of those qualities belongs exclusively to Christians. We encounter wonderfully kind, faithful and generous people every day who believe very different things, or perhaps nothing at all. And that raises the question I keep coming back to: if the conduct itself can be shared by people with entirely different beliefs, how can the conduct tell me what the sermon actually is?
That becomes even more important when we begin attaching specifically Christian meaning to what we see. A Mormon can be devoted to their family. A Muslim can be generous. An atheist can be honest and kind. None of that diminishes the goodness of those things. But if I simply watched each of them from across the room, what would tell me which one believed that their righteousness was found entirely in Christ? What visible behavior would tell me which one rested in the finished work of another rather than in themselves?
Perhaps the better way to say it is that Christian conduct can certainly reflect Christian truth, but it cannot explain that truth by itself. A life of humility, mercy, generosity, and faithfulness may beautifully adorn a profession of Christ. But those same outward qualities may also be found in someone whose hope rests somewhere entirely different. What makes the life distinctly Christian is not merely the quality of the conduct, but the Christ being confessed through it. Without that confession, we are left trying to interpret the actions from the outside.
And maybe that is the distinction I am trying to get at. Christianity certainly has something to say about how we live, but Christianity is not first of all a description of how Christians live. It is good news concerning Jesus Christ: who He is, what He has accomplished, and where the sinner’s hope is found. Those things cannot be discovered merely by watching anyone live. At some point, Christ has to be named. The gospel has to be spoken.
I know that may sound somewhat complicated, but I think the point is actually very simple. A life can illustrate a message, support a message, or even contradict a message, but it cannot tell me what the message is. I may see someone live kindly and faithfully, but I still do not know what they believe until they tell me. And if that is true, then perhaps a sermon is something we ultimately do need to hear. MPJ