19th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2024b

Old Testament - Psalm 130:1-8

New Testament - Ephesians 4:25-5:2

 

The Sincerest Form of Learning 

 

INTRODUCTION: So last week, while pulling grass and other weeds from our wildflower garden, a Monarch Butterfly fluttered by me.

 

Landing on a cone flower, it sat rocking back and forth as a gentle breeze blew the flower to and fro. And then, after it bit, it launched itself up to be carried off by a current of wind to who knows where. 

 

It was one of those serene moments where the mystery and wonder of life becomes especially palpable. Yep, for just a second or two, I was overcome by the sheer grandeur and fortuitousness of life. It really is all just one big, great, and baffling gift, right? But just like that it was over, and I was soon back to cursing the grass and other weeds intent on ruining our flower garden.

 

Of course, if I am honest, I will confess that the Monarch I thought I saw, might have actually been a Viceroy Butterfly. 

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You see, in one of those evolutionary twists, the Viceroy and Monarch Butterflies have actually learned to mimic, or imitate, each other in appearance - even though they aren’t closely related as species. Look at images of both butterflies online and it’s pretty hard to tell which is which - at least for someone with an untrained eye like mine.

 

And the reason? Well, apparently both Monarch and Viceroys aren’t very tasty meals. Yep, birds and other prey quickly learn their lesson after eating one or two Monarch and Viceroys. “Good heavens,” they think to themselves, “I don’t want to eat one of those things again! That was disgusting!”  

 

And so the two butterflies, overtime, took on the appearance of each other as a way to scare off prey together. Biologists call it Müllerian Mimicry. The Monarch and Viceroy both benefit, in other words, by imitating each other, even though they are entirely different species. Whether it’s a Viceroy or a Monarch, a would-be predator quickly decides the unpleasantness of eating an insect with such a pattern on its body isn’t worth the trouble in the end.

                       

ONE: Well, the Apostle Paul, while not a biologist, also liked to talk about the concept of imitation. Yep, even though he knew nothing about Monarch and Viceroy Butterflies and the reason for their eerily similar  appearance, Paul had his own way of discussing imitation.

 

In the midst of a treatise on the meaning of baptism, Paul in our passage this morning is exhorting followers of Jesus to put away their old lives in order to put on new ones. Baptism for Paul, you see, is about learning to be new and different people in the world. It’s about shedding our old selves in order to grow into new ones.  

 

Or as Paul says toward the end of his remarks this morning, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us…”

 

Well, how’s that for a radical idea! Paul gets to talking about how we need to be imitators, and he, oddly, doesn’t claim we should use a parent, or a favorite teacher from school, or some local, beloved civic leader, or even for Pete’s sake a preacher as potential models. Instead, Paul tells us to use God as our model.  

 

“Be imitators of God,” says Paul. “Be imitators of God.”              

Well, I’ll admit it. Paul’s advice hardly seems reasonable or even achievable, right? Imitate God. (Humph!) Has Paul lost his ever lovin’ mind? How in the world, after all, are mere human beings - frail, broken, and finite as we are - supposed to imitate God? He might as well be asking us to walk to the moon. 

 

And yet there’s Paul, telling us to be imitators of God.  

 

TWO: But as odd and unbelievable as it all sounds, that’s the point of baptism. 

 

It’s to be set off on a journey of change and renewal that, as strange as it might seem to us, leads to us looking more and more like God every single day. And what does God look like? Well, if our Bibles be true, God looks like Jesus Christ, right? 

 

“[Christ] is the image of the invisible God,” we’re told in Colossians, “...for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”             

 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” is how John likes to put the matter in his Gospel. And still even later in John, Jesus even seems to have an opinion about the topic: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus declares a bit boldly. “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Do you not believe I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” 

 

We often like to ask younger folks, “What ya wanna be when you grow up?” And it’s neat, I think, to listen to young people dream and think about the future. But for baptized people the answer to that question is actually already provided. 

 

Sure, we all fly off into life to fulfill assorted jobs, tasks, and responsibilities. But behind all those differing roles in life, there is an even larger job given to us baptized folk. Yep, as fanciful as it sounds, when asked, “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” we are, apparently, supposed to also reply, “I wanna be like Jesus Christ!”                

 

“Be imitators of God,” says Paul, “Be imitators of God.”          

 

THREE: We have all heard that bit about “imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.” 

 

And while the full quote, attributed to Oscar Wilde, was initially meant to be a negative comment about imitators lacking any originality, over the years the line has been turned around to become a kind of complement. Those people that others seek to imitate or modal, well, they should take some pride in such a fact.            

 

Years later, though, George Benard Shaw adapted the line in a way that is especially germane for us, I think. “Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery,” Shaw said, “it’s the sincerest form of learning.”

 

Well, that’s about right, isn’t it? For isn’t that the whole point behind baptism? Isn’t it to begin a daily process of imitating Jesus so we might, along the way, become more and more like him. 

 

It’s to learn how to be gracious, just like Jesus. It’s to learn how to be merciful, just like Jesus. It’s to learn how to be loving, just like Jesus. It’s to learn how to be welcoming, just like Jesus. 

 

And on and on it goes. No wonder the great Saint Augustine considered the imitation of Christ by his followers to be the fundamental and primary purpose of the Christian life. “Why art thou proud, O man?” Augustine once asked, “God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God.”

 

Just before the turn of the 1900s the congregational minister Charles Sheldon released a novel called In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? The main character in the novel, a minister named Henry Maxwell, challenges his congregation to not do anything for a whole year without first asking, “What would Jesus do?”

 

And so from there, the story follows the transformation of assorted characters as they go about their lives asking again and again when facing assorted dilemmas and complex situations, “What would Jesus do?”

 

That question, of course, was revived in the 1990s with those ubiquitous WWJD wristbands. And while the hugely popular movement was frowned upon by some for various reasons, for those learning (and seeking) to be like Jesus, it’s probably not a bad question to keep in our own minds, right?         

 

FOUR: Way back in 1983, Robert Duvall won the academy award for his portrayal of a man named Mac Sledge in a movie called Tender Mercies. A washed-up, alcoholic country singer well past his prime, Mac wakes up one day hungover and broke in a hotel room in central Texas. 

 

Agreeing to work off his bill by lending a hand to Rosa Lee, a widow who owns the hotel and has a ten-year-old boy named Sonny, Mac, Rosa, and Sonny eventually become a family. 

 

And at one point, both Mac and Sonny get baptized at the local Baptist church.  Says Sonny, the young boy, on the way home in the car after the service, 

“We’ll, we’ve done it, Mac. We’re baptized.”

  “Yeah, we are,” replies Mac.

  Says Sonny, “Everybody said I was going to feel like a changed person. I guess I do feel a little different. Do you?”

“Not yet,” says Mac in reply.

Then Sonny, “You don’t look any different.” And then as he sits up to look at himself in the driving mirror of the car, Sonny asks, “Do you think I look any different?”

“Not yet,” says Mac again. “Not yet.”

 

Mac, of course, gets it. He gets that his baptism wasn’t merely the end of something, but rather the beginning of something. It wasn’t a conclusion, but a start - a start to a sacred journey of change and renewal.

 

“Not yet,” says Mac in reply to Sonny’s question about whether he feels and looks any different. Because Mac knows, he knows that by the grace of God he someday eventually will.

 

CONCLUSION: So there are all kinds of people to emulate in this world, right? 

 

There are all those social media personalities with their thousands upon thousands of followers. There are those athletes from a variety of sports getting paid millions upon millions of dollars. Business tycoons jetting around the world in private planes, as well as rock stars with rabid, adoring fans, just to name a few. 

 

But the Apostle Paul? Well, he’s got his own pretty odd idea about who we should imitate. “Be imitators of God,” says Paul, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” 

 

Because imitation is more than just the sincerest form of flattery, it’s also the sincerest form of learning. 

       

And now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.