Pentecost IX, Proper 14, Year B

Deuteronomy, 8:1-10
Ephesians, 4:25-5:2
John, 6:37-51

"Be imitators of God."

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

According to S. Paul, Christians should be imitators of God. To which we may reasonably wonder if Paul has lost his mind. It seems an absurd, even presumptuous, command that we – mere human beings – should be like God. How can we be like God, God who is all powerful, God who is all knowing, God who creates life out of nothing, God who is mystery far, far beyond our comprehension. How can we expect to imitate God?

Although human beings can not fully know the mind and character of God, we do know something of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the supreme revelation of the mind and character of God. We can know something of God by examining his creation, by reflecting upon nature and existence, but Jesus gives us far greater insight than anything else. When we choose to follow Jesus, we make it our goal to imitate his example, to be imitators of God, God who shows us his power through meekness, his knowledge through humility, his creativity through sacrifice and love.

In last Sunday's epistle Paul emphasized our conversion from one way of life to another, the putting off of our old nature and the assuming of a new nature, just as we'd take off one coat and put on another. This new nature – Christian nature – is "created in the likeness of God." (Eph 4:24) Our lives are ought to reflect the nature of God. Our epistle today describes some Christian principles for living. When we say that Christ has changed our lives, part of what we are saying is, "These are the values by which I now live." Paul mentions many of these values in today's epistle. This morning I am going to talk about five of the primary ones: honesty, selfless anger, kindness, generosity, mercy.

First, Paul holds up honesty. Human culture is immersed in lies. We live in a city of spin. In his autobiography, Marlin Fitzwater wrote, "Spin is the weaving of basic truth into the fabric of a lie, the production of a cover garment that protects, or obscures, or deflects public examination." While we may feel inundated by spin, in the big picture political dishonesty is only a minor sideshow our culture. Billboards and advertisements and film and television constantly show us lies, of things and behaviours that promise to make our life better, but often make it worse. No one gets good advice from the advertising world; no one can be content from modeling their lives on Hollywood images. Lies surround us. The habit of lying is accepted and implicit in many professions. Lying, promoting illusions makes respectable people millions. And all of that makes it easier for us to lie, to be dishonest with other people as well as with ourselves and not even know it.

Truth requires an act of will from us, a decision, and an effort from us. It is not only difficult to be aware of the lies all around us, but to be aware of our own lies and dishonesty. The ‘79 Prayer Book has an excellent phrase in its form for our confession of sin. We confess our sins "by what we have done, and by what we have left undone." Truth works the same way. We do not only lie directly, but sometimes we lie by not saying anything at all, by creating or even by allowing for false impressions. If we are going to be imitators of God, we have to work at being honest, and not just assume that we are honest. If we just assume that we're honest and don't need to make any special effort to be honest, then we don't know our hearts very well.

Second, Paul tells us it's alright if we're angry. In fact, he says that we need some anger in our lives. But it has to be the right type of anger. If anger is habitual or uncontrolled or selfish, it's a sin, and we want to be rid of it. Yet, we ought to be angry about injustice and inhumanity. Jesus got angry at the Pharisees, when they tested Jesus about healing on the Sabbath day. Jesus was grieved by the hardness of their hearts, by their lack of compassion, and he went ahead and broke the Jewish law and healed a man's withered hand. (Mk 3:4-5) Anger can be constructive; it can motivate us to improve our world, to be more humane, to alleviate suffering. Controlled anger, anger directed to helping people, anger that is not self-indulgent, but dedicated to serving Christ and one another, this kind of anger should animate our lives. That is imitating God.

I suspect, however, that we are more familiar with the other kind of anger, selfish anger, the anger that we feel when we are slighted, or when someone does not live up to our expectations, or when someone does not comply with our wishes. Paul tells us to let go of this anger: do not let the sun go down upon it. Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount: if you have something against your brother, or your brother has something against you, be reconciled with him immediately. The longer we put off reconciling ourselves to someone, the harder it is to lay it to rest, the harder to have peace. Paul's message to us is: do not allow selfish anger and resentment to fester; attend to it immediately; control it; seek reconciliation. If, for example, you believe that you are the victim of someone's injustice, the injured party, or disappointed by someone, and if you do not inform the person who antagonized you and seek reconciliation, then the fault becomes your own. You become the offender. We are prone to nursing our anger and resentment, to making it into a friend, and stroking it lovingly, even to the point where we are defined by our dislikes, and that is not following Christ. That is a sick and sad way to live. That is not imitating God.

Third, Paul exhorts us to be kind. His exhortation is a word play on Christ - . The Greek word for kindness is . means regarding the concerns of your neighbor to be as important as your own, regarding another's welfare as your own. What characteristic more adequately describes Jesus? He gave himself for us. The Cross and Passion were because life for us was more important to him than his own life.

We have to be tenderhearted, compassionate, and that begins through prayer. It requires us to hold people in our hearts, even those who reject us, even those who ignore us, even those who offend us, even those we consider misled sinners, even our enemies. We don't pray for God to make them what we want them to be. In our prayer for them, we simply hold them in our hearts and pray for God's love to be in their lives. Through prayer, we get glimpses of the way God sees, the way other people experience life. We grow in sympathy for their concerns, for their suffering, and so we grow in respect and understanding for others and try to be of service. That's imitating God.

Fourth, Paul wants us to work honestly, not stealing or cheating to make a living. The value of earning is so that we have something to share with other people. Here is another glaring difference with our world, another way that putting on Christ should change us. People in our society work way too hard. We're frantic, compulsive about work, and much of our motivation for work is impure. We work to accumulate: work harder, buy more, it's good for the economy and so will make us happier. Nonsense. It's worse than nonsense because it harms us. Paul says we work so that we may give to him that needeth.

Jesus told a parable to remind us that our life does not consist of the abundance of possessions. A rich man's land brought forth more than he could store. So the rich man pulled down his barns and built new barns, larger ones so that he could store up all of his goods. In the parable, God calls the rich man a fool. God says that anyone who lays up treasure for himself is a fool. Most of us have mutual funds or property or savings or some kind of investment. Jesus and Paul would have us look at those things differently than we do. Wealth is a means for us to be generous; we have it to give it away. That's God's purpose with wealth. That, of course, is not wholly the way we see it. And it'll have to be another day when we consider the full implications of the Bible's, and our Lord's, injunction not to lend and receive anything in return. (Lev 25:36-37; Lk 6:35) That means not only no more mutual funds, but no more banks, no more capitalism, no more civilization as we know it. Christianity does not endorse our economic practices; it endorses generosity.

That convicts most of us. So our sin, our separation from God, the waywardness of our hearts, is reinforced by our institutions. All of us participate in it, and usually without giving it much thought or even being aware of our sin. This means, most importantly, we heed Paul's fifth characteristic of the new life: mercy. Since we have no illusions about our need for forgiveness, Christians forgive, always, without conditions, on our own initiative. That is how God forgives us, and that is the way we imitate God. When we see that forgiveness, that mercy in other people, we revere them.

Nelson Mandela is among the greatest men of our day. He spent decades in jail and was subjected to brutal treatment. Upon his release, he did not respond in selfish anger and bitterness. When he finally came to power, revenge would have been politically expedient, but under Mandela there was no "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." (Ex 21:23-25) That's the Old Testament, not Jesus Christ. That Balkanizes society, creating an endless cycle of bloodletting. Instead, Mandela sought reconciliation, forgiveness, healing. Mandela's anger was controlled, selfless, godly. His anger wanted justice, not revenge, and justice is best served by reconciliation and mercy.

When we put on Christ, when we allow Christ to change us, these five characteristics – honesty, selfless anger, kindness, generosity, mercy – these become more important in our lives, and they mark our lives. They become our standards for living. They are high, lofty standards which we don't keep perfectly, but they give us joy in our lives. When I read about Paul and read his epistles, when I consider what it'd be like to be around him, I tend to think of how exhausting it'd be to hang out with him, all of his intense striving for perfection. What I forget is that Paul's striving didn't exhaust him. He was imitating God, and so it energized him. It gave him purpose and joy. It does that for us too.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.