-- But it goes even deeper than that, because if faith without works is dead, what killed it was probably the lack of works. If we don`t exercise our relationship with Jesus, if we don`t exercise our faith, it dies. When I did student ministry I used to take students on retreats a couple of times a year. I`d get these great speakers to come in, we`d have great music, and I`d feed them with lots of chocolate because nothing makes you feel spiritual like chocolate. We`d build a campfire, we`d sing, we`d share until everyone was saying things like, "I love you man, " and "this is the best retreat ever." We`d register a full 10 on the Kumbah-yah-meter. Everyone would come back all super charged-up spiritually, but as soon as we hit Bay area traffic, poof, it was gone. At the retreat we had a lot of good head knowledge, we had a lot of heart connection, we had a lot of good spiritual habits, but it all evaporated unless we did something with what we learned, felt, and experienced. That`s why following Jesus with our hands by serving is so important, because it is as we serve that Jesus becomes tangible, real, physical. In two ways:

1'' When we follow Jesus with our hands by serving, Jesus becomes more real to the people around us. 7 out of 10 Americans think that Christianity is irrelevant, and I think the reason they think that is because they`ve heard us Christians talk about it, but they haven`t really seen us do anything about it. We haven`t lived it out, we haven`t served them as Jesus would. In our post-modern culture, that isn`t going to show anybody Jesus. Words are very suspect these days. We`ve seen politicians and the media spin the truth, and pastors have turned out to be hypocrites. Only action convinces in our culture. As it says in the passage we read today, if someone is in need, and we say, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill, " but don`t supply their bodily needs, what good is that? That`s why it says: let us love not in word or in speech, but in truth, and in action. I read a study by some sociologists a couple of years ago who say that we are now living in what they call an "experience economy." As an example of this trend they used the development of what has happened to birthday parties in our culture. It used to be when you had a birthday you knew that your mom loved you if she got some flour and eggs and baked you a cake. They called that a "goods economy." In the 70s you knew your mom loved you because she went out and bought Betty Crocker and made you a cake. That was called a "convenience economy." But then in the 90s, what happened to kids` birthdays? You started to go to a place, a very special place, called Chuckie Cheese`s, and it was no longer a birthday party, it was a birthday experience. And it`s just getting worse. My five-year-old went to a birthday party a couple weeks ago. They went to this place with inflatable slides and bouncy things, and now all she can talk about is, "when it`s my birthday, I want to go to the inflatable bouncy place." We live in a culture of experiences: concerts, movies, Super Bowl, Las Vegas, you name it. In such a culture, the only way people are really going to know who Jesus is is if they have an experience of him through how we serve them - how we are Jesus with skin on for them. The author Reggie McNeal tells a story about his wife who went with a group of other Christians after 9/11 to clean out apartments that were near the World Trade Center. These apartments had their windows blown out, everything was covered with debris, and people were paying thousands of dollars to have them cleaned professionally; this group of Christians did it for free. Wherever they went they were asked three questions: "Who are you?" "What are you doing?" "Why are you doing it?" By the time they had answered the first two questions, they could have said anything in response to the "Why are you doing it" question and people would have listened, because they believed something so strongly that it caused them to inconvenience themselves to
serve others. So whenever they were asked, they were able to say, "we`re doing this in response to who Jesus is." When we follow Jesus with our hands by serving it makes him more real to those around us.

But it`s more than that.

2'' In my experience, when I follow Jesus with my hands by serving, it also makes him more real to me, and I believe it will do so for you as well. The things we do physically, in our bodies, are more real to us than the things we just think in our heads or feel in our hearts. It`s like riding a bike or driving a stick shift or golf, you can read about it all you want, but until you do those things physically, they don`t seem real to you, they`re just ideas. But once you do them physically they seem real ''except for golf, which just becomes real frustrating''. Once you do it, you never forget how, it becomes a part of you, and it becomes real. My wife has not ice skated in years. This winter she decided to slap on a pair of skates and hit the ice. She remembered how to do it because it was a part of who she is, and because she did it, it was an action. It`s the same with our faith. We can have all the head knowledge about Jesus in the world, we can have a great heart connection to Jesus, our spiritual habits can be fantastic, and those three Hs are important; but if it doesn`t get to our hands, if we don`t act on it, it will never be real to us, and it will never seem real. It would be as if we wanted to form a bike-riding club, but then all we did was say, "Well let`s see, first we need a committee to study it, maybe a few seminars to learn how people ride bikes in other churches, and maybe fly in a guest preacher who has ridden a bike before, preferably in Africa." Then, as a pastor, I would stand up and I would say something like, "Now, we`re not all called to actually ride a bike, it`s really more a metaphor for all forms of vehicular transportation." No!!! Nike got it right: Just do it. And when you do, bike-riding becomes more than a theory or an idea, it becomes real. As a matter of fact, it becomes fun. Doing makes it more real. It`s when we love others with Christ`s love that we begin to experience it as real in our hearts.

-- Because, you see, that`s who Jesus is. He`s a servant, God himself, who came in human form, who came to serve us. He taught us, he loved us, at one point he even washed his disciples feet. He died for us to show us how much he loves us, because he wants to be in a relationship with us. That`s who he is. He doesn`t stay in up there in an air-conditioned heaven; he came down here to serve us so we could know him, so we could be in relationship with him. That`s what he wants. No matter how contagious we are, and we all have the disease called sin, no matter how rich or poor, bad or good, sinful or sinless, anything that we might be, that`s who Jesus is. And when we serve we show that to ourselves and to the world around us. The foundational doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation, God himself became human. The New Testament says, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us." Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it, "The word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood." For centuries God had been talking to his people in the Old Testament, talking to them over and over again, but they just kept running away from him. you see, words, even God`s words, don`t mean much unless they become flesh. That`s what service does; it takes our words and beliefs and makes them flesh.