Proper 14 | Ordinary Time 19
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
John 6:35, 41-45
ÊÊÊÊ
Roman Catholic
1 Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:30--5:2
John 6:41-51
Episcopal
Deuteronomy 8:1-10
Ephesians 4:(25-29) 30--5:2
John 6:27-51
Theme For The Day
We are called to imitate God, with all the joy and abandon of children imitating those they love.
Old Testament Lesson
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
David Grieves For Absalom
At the urging of his generals, David has declined to personally lead his armies against his rebellious son, Absalom. Instead, he has divided his forces into three different groups, under the leadership of three generals. One of them is the wily Joab. The king orders his three commanders, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom" (v. 5). Absalom's forces are defeated, with 20,000 dead -- both in the battle and in the chaotic retreat that follows, in which "the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword" (v. 8). In a freak accident, Absalom is riding his mule under a low-hanging tree limb. His head catches in the branches and he is left hanging in mid-air (Absalom was known for his luxuriant hair -- see 14:25-26). In a section the lectionary omits, a messenger brings word of this discovery to Joab. David's general chides the man who brought him the message, asking why he did not kill Absalom himself; the man explains that he was merely heeding David's command to spare Absalom. Joab himself takes three spears, and thrusts them into Absalom's heart as he is hanging there (v. 14). A mob of Joab's armor-bearers finish him off (v. 15, which is included in the lectionary selection). The lectionary now omits a lengthy section in which Joab buries Absalom, and in which a messenger brings news to David of his soldiers' victory. As the lectionary selection resumes with verse 31, a second messenger immediately follows, bringing news of Absalom's death. The lectionary passage concludes with David's impassioned, weeping lament: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (v. 33). In instructing his generals earlier, David referred to Absalom impersonally as "the young man" (v. 5); now he is "my son" -- a phrase David repeats no fewer than five times, in his anguished grief.
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
1 Kings 19:4-8
Elijah's Despair In The Wilderness
Fresh from his victory over the Baal priests atop Mount Carmel (18:20-45), Elijah's fortunes change. The enraged Queen Jezebel, patroness of the Baal priests, is now seeking his life, and the prophet must flee. So rapidly have Elijah's fortunes reversed that he now appears to have completely forgotten the mighty sign the Lord worked through him on the mountaintop. He sinks into depression. A day's journey into the wilderness, he collapses under a broom tree and asks the Lord to take his life (v. 4). Exhaustion overtakes him, and he falls into a deep sleep -- until an angel "touches him" and offers him food (v. 5). Elijah eats, then falls asleep again; the thoughtful angel touches him once again, encouraging him to eat more, for he has a long journey ahead (v. 6). Miraculously, this food sustains him over a forty-day journey to Mount Horeb (associated in Exodus 3:1-12 with the call of Moses, and in Exodus 17:6-7 with Moses' producing water from a rock). There is, of course, much more to this story; but the lectionary editors ends their selection here. This passage deals with Elijah's depression, and the rather straightforward, practical insight that a way out of depression may often be found through 1) taking care to nourish one's basic needs, and 2) discovering a purpose, a sense of personal mission.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
What The New Life In Christ Looks Like
Having just urged the people to put aside the ways of their former life (vv. 17-24), the author now provides some details of what the new life in Christ looks like. It involves truth-telling (v. 25); avoidance of excessive anger (vv. 26-27); honest work rather than thievery (v. 28); positive, upbuilding speech (v. 29); and in general, avoiding any behavior that may "grieve the Holy Spirit" (v. 30). Then comes this marvelously comprehensive verse: "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you" (v. 31).
The next exhortation, to "be imitators of God, as beloved children," appears on the face of it to be impossible -- although the latter clause, "as beloved children," perhaps explains what is meant (5:1). Children in their play imitate respected adults not with exact precision, but rather with passionate devotion. We are to "live in love," with our human love at all times finding its home in the larger, all-encompassing, sacrificial love of Christ (v. 2). The rich array of homiletical possibilities in this text include: not coddling and nurturing anger, but acknowledging it and letting it go (vv. 26-27); viewing speech as more than just ethereal words, but as a power for building up other individuals and communities (v. 29); the put away / put on dichotomy in verse 31; and the exhortation to naively but passionately imitate God (5:1).
The Gospel
6:35, 41-51
Jesus Responds To His Opponents, Who Think Him Blasphemous
Last week's Gospel Lesson concluded with the people's appeal to Jesus to "give us this bread always" (v. 34). Now he proceeds to do just that, saying, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" (v. 35).
Skipping some intervening verses about Jesus' purpose in coming to earth, the lectionary jumps to verse 41, which indicates that "the Jews" (in other words, the religious authorities) later took exception to Jesus' identification of himself as "the bread that came down from heaven." It seems blasphemous to them that this man whom they know, a man who has a father and a mother and is living this same human life they are living, can describe himself in such exalted terms. Jesus' response is twofold. First, he appeals to God's authority as the one who sent him and second, he implies that it is God who makes people understand, and that some get it and some don't: "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me ..." (v. 44). No one has seen God (except the one who has come from God) -- but even so, there are those who have "learned from" God and who are therefore drawn to Jesus (vv. 45-46). In verses 48-51, Jesus reiterates his "bread of life" teaching, making further connections between the bread image and the Lord's Supper.
Preaching Possibilities
Occasionally, there is a piece of advice in scripture that appears to be impossible, and this line from the Letter to the Ephesians is one of them: "be imitators of God, as beloved children."
Following, as this statement does, a long list of challenging ethical instructions, it has the effect of suggesting it's all impossible. Who could ever live up to the demands of Christian life? Speaking the truth, not letting the sun go down our anger, forgiving others -- these things are hard enough, but then we're supposed to imitate God? We who are created by God, seeking to imitate the Creator? It sounds absurd.
The key that unlocks this problem with Ephesians 5:1 is the second half of the verse: "Be imitators of God, as beloved children." We don't have to be around children very long before we realize how much they love to imitate the adult world. That's what play is all about. Over and over, children at play rehearse their perceptions of grown-up life.
What the text tells us is that we can learn something of how to imitate God by observing children at play. There are several things we can say about that. First, children's drive to play -- to imitate -- is very strong indeed. Psychologists tell us that if children aren't allowed to play -- if they're drilled too hard on how to read or count or play a musical instrument before they're ready -- they won't grow up well adjusted. Imitation, in other words, is inevitable.
Imitation is also a great joy. Kids play because it's fun. The games of imagination can keep them busy for hours.
Imitation is also personal. The people children imitate most often are the ones they love.
1) Imitation is inevitable. Children really have no choice about whether to play or not to play. Imitative play is part of the developmental process. It's part of who children are, of how they're made. It's part of how God has made adults, too. We can't succeed at imitating God by going out and working at it, or by practicing -- any more than a person can learn to draw by taking an art course. Who could possibly teach a child how to play? They just do it. They naturally know how, because it flows out of who they are.
Many outside the church often think of Christianity as a system of rules and regulations. They see Christian faith as compliance with a somewhat oppressive book of laws, a list of ethical dos and don'ts. "Good Christians," popular wisdom has it, are those who do good. Anyone with real understanding of Christian faith knows this is only a partial picture; yet that is the way many people understand Christianity. It's very much as Martin Luther said: "Those who merely study the commandments of God are not greatly moved. But those who listen to God commanding, how can they fail to be terrified by majesty so great?"
2) Imitation is joyful. Children take tremendous delight in their creative play.
Joy is something that bears looking at, because it's often misunderstood. It's misunderstood because we have a natural tendency to emphasize the serious, achievement-oriented aspects of life. As G. K. Chesterton writes, "Solemnity falls out of people naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity."
One of the best books ever written on the subject of joy is C. S. Lewis' autobiography, Surprised By Joy. Lewis, of course, was an Oxford professor who experienced a mid-life conversion to Christianity. He writes how, as a young man, he deeply wanted to experience Christian faith as real. The young C. S. Lewis set out to make himself a Christian. In his prayer life, he concentrated on achieving a certain feeling, a thrill he had felt on some occasions in the past:
To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to retain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature.
-- C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: Harcourt, 1976), p. 169
Finally, Lewis discovered that he was going about it all wrong. Joy, he learned, is different from pleasure. The difference, as he puts it, is that "Joy is never in our power, but pleasure often is." Pleasure we can make for ourselves. It's as easy as going out to a good restaurant, seeing a movie, seeking the company of friends. Yet joy comes only when we're not seeking it, when we so focus our attention outside ourselves that for a moment we forget who we are, lost in the wonder of what we're experiencing. It's that kind of focus children have as they experience the joy of imitative play. For a moment they cease to be themselves, and become the person they are pretending to be.
3) Imitation is personal.
Children don't just imitate anyone. They spend most of their playtime imitating people they love and respect -- in many cases, people who also love them. Social workers confirm that children have an amazing capacity to love: even children from the most unhappy, abusive homes still love their parents. Such is the power of personal relationship.
Joy in Christian living flows out of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When that relationship matures, it overflows with joy. Mature Christians come to see Christ more as friend than ruler, more as lover than lawgiver. They realize that Christ comes into the world not because he pities it, but because he loves and delights in it -- and that he delights especially in the human inhabitants of this world, despite our flaws. As Jesus says in John's Gospel, "No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends" (15:15).
This concept of God as someone who can be known and loved personally was wholly new in the Greco-Roman world. When those Ephesian Christians first heard the words, "Be imitators of God, as beloved children," they would have sounded strange. The gods the Ephesians knew were not personal. How ridiculous it would have seemed to speak of imitating Zeus as a beloved child, or of singing, "What a friend we have in Artemis."
In many ways, those words still sound strange today. The world is not comfortable with a God who knows and loves people personally. And so the world paints God as a stern lawgiver, an oppressive judge -- or as an absentminded professor who creates the world only to go off and leave it bubbling in the test tubes. In some ways children have it easier when it comes to faith: for children respond to God simply, without ever having been taught that God is absent or uncaring. They naturally seek to imitate God: and if "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," there is no greater praise they can give.
Prayer For The Day
Sometimes, O God, we see the distance between the way of life Christ wants for us and the ways we actually live as a vast and insurmountable canyon. Sometimes his ethical teachings seem so hard. Help us, we pray, to focus our thoughts not on the canyon's vast dimensions, but rather on the face of the one who is approaching us from the other side, reaching out his hand to help us over. Amen.
To Illustrate
I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy who ever played the game. If he were alive today, I would picture a 6-foot 6-inch, 260-pound defensive tackle who would always make the big plays and would be hard to keep out of the backfield for offensive linemen like myself.... The game is ninety percent desire, and his desire was perhaps his greatest attribute.
-- A professional football player, describing how he imagines Jesus Christ to be ("Who is imitating whom?" one may ask.)
***
On the subject of truly imitating God -- as over against making God into what we would like God to be -- Isaiah 44 contains a marvelous satirical section about those who make idols. The prophet describes how idolmakers work: a carpenter first goes out and selects a likely tree, watering it and letting it grow strong in the forest. At the right time he cuts it down, and uses the wood for two very different purposes: "Half of it he burns in the fire; over the burning half he eats flesh, he roasts meat and is satisfied; also he warms himself and says, 'Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!' And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol; he falls down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, 'Deliver me, for thou art my god!' " (44:16-17).
***
I recently heard the story of a hospice chaplain, who befriended an eighty-year-old woman named Mary who was a hospice patient. He visited her many times, and he was impressed by her faith. One day, he got a call that she had taken a turn for the worse. He was told, if he wanted to see her alive, he'd better go that day. Larry went to visit his friend, and found her in a very deep sleep. The nurse said she really needed to sleep, she'd been in a lot of pain, so Larry didn't wake her up. But just as he turned to go, she opened her eyes wide and stared right at him. She looked intently and then said to him, "Oh, for a minute, I thought you were Jesus."
They laughed about it for a moment. Larry said to her, "Mary, I want you to do something." What's that, she asked. He said, "When you arrive at the gates of heaven and finally do see Jesus, I want you to look at him for a moment and say, 'Oh, I thought you were Pastor Larry!' " Mary smiled and said she would. Two hours later, she died, and she had that opportunity.
I believe we all ought to be mistaken for Jesus, every once in a while.
-- Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, in a sermon, "What God Gives"
***
In one of his books, Gordon MacDonald tells about a young Florida man who became devoted to Elvis Presley.
For Dennis Wise, devotion meant spending every bit of money he had to collect Presley memorabilia (books, magazines, pillows, records, and even tree leaves from the Presley mansion in Memphis). Wise never met Presley but he saw him perform several times, and he had once seen him at a distance when he looked through the gates at Graceland (Presley's home). He had stood there for more than twelve hours to get a fleeting glimpse. Wise's devotion is so great that he underwent six hours of plastic surgery to make his face resemble that of the famous singer.
Dennis Wise needs to get a life. Still, when you worship someone, it is natural to want to be as much like that person as possible. When we say that Jesus is the reference point for our lives, it means we want to make our lives as much like his as possible.
-- Art Ferry, Jr., from a sermon posted on the Ecunet electronic bulletin board
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
John 6:35, 41-45
ÊÊÊÊ
Roman Catholic
1 Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:30--5:2
John 6:41-51
Episcopal
Deuteronomy 8:1-10
Ephesians 4:(25-29) 30--5:2
John 6:27-51
Theme For The Day
We are called to imitate God, with all the joy and abandon of children imitating those they love.
Old Testament Lesson
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
David Grieves For Absalom
At the urging of his generals, David has declined to personally lead his armies against his rebellious son, Absalom. Instead, he has divided his forces into three different groups, under the leadership of three generals. One of them is the wily Joab. The king orders his three commanders, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom" (v. 5). Absalom's forces are defeated, with 20,000 dead -- both in the battle and in the chaotic retreat that follows, in which "the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword" (v. 8). In a freak accident, Absalom is riding his mule under a low-hanging tree limb. His head catches in the branches and he is left hanging in mid-air (Absalom was known for his luxuriant hair -- see 14:25-26). In a section the lectionary omits, a messenger brings word of this discovery to Joab. David's general chides the man who brought him the message, asking why he did not kill Absalom himself; the man explains that he was merely heeding David's command to spare Absalom. Joab himself takes three spears, and thrusts them into Absalom's heart as he is hanging there (v. 14). A mob of Joab's armor-bearers finish him off (v. 15, which is included in the lectionary selection). The lectionary now omits a lengthy section in which Joab buries Absalom, and in which a messenger brings news to David of his soldiers' victory. As the lectionary selection resumes with verse 31, a second messenger immediately follows, bringing news of Absalom's death. The lectionary passage concludes with David's impassioned, weeping lament: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (v. 33). In instructing his generals earlier, David referred to Absalom impersonally as "the young man" (v. 5); now he is "my son" -- a phrase David repeats no fewer than five times, in his anguished grief.
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
1 Kings 19:4-8
Elijah's Despair In The Wilderness
Fresh from his victory over the Baal priests atop Mount Carmel (18:20-45), Elijah's fortunes change. The enraged Queen Jezebel, patroness of the Baal priests, is now seeking his life, and the prophet must flee. So rapidly have Elijah's fortunes reversed that he now appears to have completely forgotten the mighty sign the Lord worked through him on the mountaintop. He sinks into depression. A day's journey into the wilderness, he collapses under a broom tree and asks the Lord to take his life (v. 4). Exhaustion overtakes him, and he falls into a deep sleep -- until an angel "touches him" and offers him food (v. 5). Elijah eats, then falls asleep again; the thoughtful angel touches him once again, encouraging him to eat more, for he has a long journey ahead (v. 6). Miraculously, this food sustains him over a forty-day journey to Mount Horeb (associated in Exodus 3:1-12 with the call of Moses, and in Exodus 17:6-7 with Moses' producing water from a rock). There is, of course, much more to this story; but the lectionary editors ends their selection here. This passage deals with Elijah's depression, and the rather straightforward, practical insight that a way out of depression may often be found through 1) taking care to nourish one's basic needs, and 2) discovering a purpose, a sense of personal mission.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
What The New Life In Christ Looks Like
Having just urged the people to put aside the ways of their former life (vv. 17-24), the author now provides some details of what the new life in Christ looks like. It involves truth-telling (v. 25); avoidance of excessive anger (vv. 26-27); honest work rather than thievery (v. 28); positive, upbuilding speech (v. 29); and in general, avoiding any behavior that may "grieve the Holy Spirit" (v. 30). Then comes this marvelously comprehensive verse: "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you" (v. 31).
The next exhortation, to "be imitators of God, as beloved children," appears on the face of it to be impossible -- although the latter clause, "as beloved children," perhaps explains what is meant (5:1). Children in their play imitate respected adults not with exact precision, but rather with passionate devotion. We are to "live in love," with our human love at all times finding its home in the larger, all-encompassing, sacrificial love of Christ (v. 2). The rich array of homiletical possibilities in this text include: not coddling and nurturing anger, but acknowledging it and letting it go (vv. 26-27); viewing speech as more than just ethereal words, but as a power for building up other individuals and communities (v. 29); the put away / put on dichotomy in verse 31; and the exhortation to naively but passionately imitate God (5:1).
The Gospel
6:35, 41-51
Jesus Responds To His Opponents, Who Think Him Blasphemous
Last week's Gospel Lesson concluded with the people's appeal to Jesus to "give us this bread always" (v. 34). Now he proceeds to do just that, saying, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" (v. 35).
Skipping some intervening verses about Jesus' purpose in coming to earth, the lectionary jumps to verse 41, which indicates that "the Jews" (in other words, the religious authorities) later took exception to Jesus' identification of himself as "the bread that came down from heaven." It seems blasphemous to them that this man whom they know, a man who has a father and a mother and is living this same human life they are living, can describe himself in such exalted terms. Jesus' response is twofold. First, he appeals to God's authority as the one who sent him and second, he implies that it is God who makes people understand, and that some get it and some don't: "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me ..." (v. 44). No one has seen God (except the one who has come from God) -- but even so, there are those who have "learned from" God and who are therefore drawn to Jesus (vv. 45-46). In verses 48-51, Jesus reiterates his "bread of life" teaching, making further connections between the bread image and the Lord's Supper.
Preaching Possibilities
Occasionally, there is a piece of advice in scripture that appears to be impossible, and this line from the Letter to the Ephesians is one of them: "be imitators of God, as beloved children."
Following, as this statement does, a long list of challenging ethical instructions, it has the effect of suggesting it's all impossible. Who could ever live up to the demands of Christian life? Speaking the truth, not letting the sun go down our anger, forgiving others -- these things are hard enough, but then we're supposed to imitate God? We who are created by God, seeking to imitate the Creator? It sounds absurd.
The key that unlocks this problem with Ephesians 5:1 is the second half of the verse: "Be imitators of God, as beloved children." We don't have to be around children very long before we realize how much they love to imitate the adult world. That's what play is all about. Over and over, children at play rehearse their perceptions of grown-up life.
What the text tells us is that we can learn something of how to imitate God by observing children at play. There are several things we can say about that. First, children's drive to play -- to imitate -- is very strong indeed. Psychologists tell us that if children aren't allowed to play -- if they're drilled too hard on how to read or count or play a musical instrument before they're ready -- they won't grow up well adjusted. Imitation, in other words, is inevitable.
Imitation is also a great joy. Kids play because it's fun. The games of imagination can keep them busy for hours.
Imitation is also personal. The people children imitate most often are the ones they love.
1) Imitation is inevitable. Children really have no choice about whether to play or not to play. Imitative play is part of the developmental process. It's part of who children are, of how they're made. It's part of how God has made adults, too. We can't succeed at imitating God by going out and working at it, or by practicing -- any more than a person can learn to draw by taking an art course. Who could possibly teach a child how to play? They just do it. They naturally know how, because it flows out of who they are.
Many outside the church often think of Christianity as a system of rules and regulations. They see Christian faith as compliance with a somewhat oppressive book of laws, a list of ethical dos and don'ts. "Good Christians," popular wisdom has it, are those who do good. Anyone with real understanding of Christian faith knows this is only a partial picture; yet that is the way many people understand Christianity. It's very much as Martin Luther said: "Those who merely study the commandments of God are not greatly moved. But those who listen to God commanding, how can they fail to be terrified by majesty so great?"
2) Imitation is joyful. Children take tremendous delight in their creative play.
Joy is something that bears looking at, because it's often misunderstood. It's misunderstood because we have a natural tendency to emphasize the serious, achievement-oriented aspects of life. As G. K. Chesterton writes, "Solemnity falls out of people naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity."
One of the best books ever written on the subject of joy is C. S. Lewis' autobiography, Surprised By Joy. Lewis, of course, was an Oxford professor who experienced a mid-life conversion to Christianity. He writes how, as a young man, he deeply wanted to experience Christian faith as real. The young C. S. Lewis set out to make himself a Christian. In his prayer life, he concentrated on achieving a certain feeling, a thrill he had felt on some occasions in the past:
To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to retain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature.
-- C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: Harcourt, 1976), p. 169
Finally, Lewis discovered that he was going about it all wrong. Joy, he learned, is different from pleasure. The difference, as he puts it, is that "Joy is never in our power, but pleasure often is." Pleasure we can make for ourselves. It's as easy as going out to a good restaurant, seeing a movie, seeking the company of friends. Yet joy comes only when we're not seeking it, when we so focus our attention outside ourselves that for a moment we forget who we are, lost in the wonder of what we're experiencing. It's that kind of focus children have as they experience the joy of imitative play. For a moment they cease to be themselves, and become the person they are pretending to be.
3) Imitation is personal.
Children don't just imitate anyone. They spend most of their playtime imitating people they love and respect -- in many cases, people who also love them. Social workers confirm that children have an amazing capacity to love: even children from the most unhappy, abusive homes still love their parents. Such is the power of personal relationship.
Joy in Christian living flows out of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When that relationship matures, it overflows with joy. Mature Christians come to see Christ more as friend than ruler, more as lover than lawgiver. They realize that Christ comes into the world not because he pities it, but because he loves and delights in it -- and that he delights especially in the human inhabitants of this world, despite our flaws. As Jesus says in John's Gospel, "No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends" (15:15).
This concept of God as someone who can be known and loved personally was wholly new in the Greco-Roman world. When those Ephesian Christians first heard the words, "Be imitators of God, as beloved children," they would have sounded strange. The gods the Ephesians knew were not personal. How ridiculous it would have seemed to speak of imitating Zeus as a beloved child, or of singing, "What a friend we have in Artemis."
In many ways, those words still sound strange today. The world is not comfortable with a God who knows and loves people personally. And so the world paints God as a stern lawgiver, an oppressive judge -- or as an absentminded professor who creates the world only to go off and leave it bubbling in the test tubes. In some ways children have it easier when it comes to faith: for children respond to God simply, without ever having been taught that God is absent or uncaring. They naturally seek to imitate God: and if "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," there is no greater praise they can give.
Prayer For The Day
Sometimes, O God, we see the distance between the way of life Christ wants for us and the ways we actually live as a vast and insurmountable canyon. Sometimes his ethical teachings seem so hard. Help us, we pray, to focus our thoughts not on the canyon's vast dimensions, but rather on the face of the one who is approaching us from the other side, reaching out his hand to help us over. Amen.
To Illustrate
I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy who ever played the game. If he were alive today, I would picture a 6-foot 6-inch, 260-pound defensive tackle who would always make the big plays and would be hard to keep out of the backfield for offensive linemen like myself.... The game is ninety percent desire, and his desire was perhaps his greatest attribute.
-- A professional football player, describing how he imagines Jesus Christ to be ("Who is imitating whom?" one may ask.)
***
On the subject of truly imitating God -- as over against making God into what we would like God to be -- Isaiah 44 contains a marvelous satirical section about those who make idols. The prophet describes how idolmakers work: a carpenter first goes out and selects a likely tree, watering it and letting it grow strong in the forest. At the right time he cuts it down, and uses the wood for two very different purposes: "Half of it he burns in the fire; over the burning half he eats flesh, he roasts meat and is satisfied; also he warms himself and says, 'Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!' And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol; he falls down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, 'Deliver me, for thou art my god!' " (44:16-17).
***
I recently heard the story of a hospice chaplain, who befriended an eighty-year-old woman named Mary who was a hospice patient. He visited her many times, and he was impressed by her faith. One day, he got a call that she had taken a turn for the worse. He was told, if he wanted to see her alive, he'd better go that day. Larry went to visit his friend, and found her in a very deep sleep. The nurse said she really needed to sleep, she'd been in a lot of pain, so Larry didn't wake her up. But just as he turned to go, she opened her eyes wide and stared right at him. She looked intently and then said to him, "Oh, for a minute, I thought you were Jesus."
They laughed about it for a moment. Larry said to her, "Mary, I want you to do something." What's that, she asked. He said, "When you arrive at the gates of heaven and finally do see Jesus, I want you to look at him for a moment and say, 'Oh, I thought you were Pastor Larry!' " Mary smiled and said she would. Two hours later, she died, and she had that opportunity.
I believe we all ought to be mistaken for Jesus, every once in a while.
-- Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, in a sermon, "What God Gives"
***
In one of his books, Gordon MacDonald tells about a young Florida man who became devoted to Elvis Presley.
For Dennis Wise, devotion meant spending every bit of money he had to collect Presley memorabilia (books, magazines, pillows, records, and even tree leaves from the Presley mansion in Memphis). Wise never met Presley but he saw him perform several times, and he had once seen him at a distance when he looked through the gates at Graceland (Presley's home). He had stood there for more than twelve hours to get a fleeting glimpse. Wise's devotion is so great that he underwent six hours of plastic surgery to make his face resemble that of the famous singer.
Dennis Wise needs to get a life. Still, when you worship someone, it is natural to want to be as much like that person as possible. When we say that Jesus is the reference point for our lives, it means we want to make our lives as much like his as possible.
-- Art Ferry, Jr., from a sermon posted on the Ecunet electronic bulletin board
