Practice What You Preach: A Parable

“Practice what you preach” is an oft-used epithet or assertion used either to challenge or to encourage a believer to live in accord with the Gospel he or she professes. It is a recognition of the need to make it a living reality in our daily lives, not just for our good, but more importantly, for the good of others. A little parable from the Desert Fathers might help illustrate this assertion.

This little parable comes from a collection of sayings from the early Church, the Desert Fathers. It goes like this: “Another brother came to Abbot Theodore and began to question him and to inquire about things which he had never yet put into practice himself. The elder said to him: As yet you have not found a ship, and you have not put your baggage aboard, and you have not started to cross the sea: can you talk as if you had already arrived at that city to which you planned to go? When you have put into practice the thing you are talking about, then speak from knowledge of the thing itself.”

As is true with all good parables, this one is built upon well-crafted metaphors. In this case, the image, or metaphor of a “ship,” refers to the ship of faith, a living, sturdy ship, something you can put your full, abiding trust in. It is a ship that you can willingly, even joyfully, board and “start sailing across the sea”. Such a ship you can put all of the “baggage” of your life into, and it will bear you across even the stormiest of seas. What does it matter if you can talk about the Christian faith with passion and eloquence, but do not put it into practice in all that you do? What good is such a ‘faith’, to you, or to the world? In other words, if you do not live your Gospel faith openly, in all things, even in the face of hatred, rejection, or abuse, “you have not yet found the ship” of faith you seek. You may have fancy words; you may be able to preach powerfully, but if you do not practice what you preach in all things, those words are at best merely sounds carried on a passing wind, having no real effect on your own life or the world. At worst, such empty words may be cause for scandal.

Jesus tells us much the same thing when he says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 7:21). The Word of God is truth itself, in its fullest sense. To preach the word of God, though, without desiring or attempting to live it out in our daily lives with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, does harm to the Word of God, to ourselves, and others. It opens one to the accusation of hypocrisy. Those who use the word of God to manipulate others are nothing more than charlatans, or worse. Jesus wants us to live in a manner that is fitting for persons made in the image and likeness of God. His words are meant to be lived openly, joyfully, courageously in the worlds of our daily lives. Those who practice the Word of God with both word and deed make the grace of God present in the world.

We find in the Letter of James these words from the Holy Spirit: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2: 14-17). He expands on this idea up through verse 26.

Faith that is lived openly, concretely, in the world of our daily lives is like a sturdy ship built for heavy seas. It is a living faith, a constructive, healing, life-giving faith, that leads us to “the city to which we planned to go”. When the ship of our faith is strong enough to be lived openly and joyfully even in stormy seas, we can trust that it will be supported, energized, and made sturdy by the living grace of God working within us. It is also true that if we do not live out what we believe as Christians, we are in danger of believing in nothing more than the battered, broken, always-on-the-verge-of-sinking-ship that is the world, or worse, only the tiny skiff of the ego. Jesus calls us to be his living words in the world in which we live out our daily lives. It is in this way that we “gain knowledge” of our faith in itself. This is how God’s grace remains active in the world. This is what the world needs now and always.