Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, "Imitating God," Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Sermon 8/8/21

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Imitating God

For many years before we merged with our nearby conferences to become the Upper New York Annual Conference, I was the Conference Youth Coordinator for the North Central New York Conference Council on Youth Ministries - CCYM. One of the tasks of the CCYM every year was to interview candidates for the Mission of Peace, a trip for young people from the Northeastern US to visit young people in countries around the world, to build relationships, connections, and peace. The interview team was made up of youth leadership, past trip attendees, and a couple of adult advisors. Well, one year, there were only two candidates who applied, and we had three positions we could fill from our area. We were going to interview them anyway, but a bad winter storm meant we had to cancel our interviews, and we decided to go ahead and affirm the candidates for the trip, even without the interview. They went on the trip, had a great experience, and came back ready to be part of the interview team the next year. 

The next cycle, though, a funny thing happened. Even though these two young people never had to go through a Mission of Peace interview themselves, they were incredibly tough on the candidates they interviewed for the following year. They asked the new applicants really hard questions, had grim, unsmiling faces, and I think they left our new group of candidates feeling pretty discouraged about their prospects. I tried really hard to radiate some encouragement to the new applicants in the midst of all challenging questions. In the long run, everything worked out fine, but it struck me as so interesting that the youth who had not even had to endure an interview themselves would in turn be so hard on the youth who followed them in the process. I wondered about why that was, and I could only imagine that these youth - relatively inexperienced at that point in their lives in many ways - were drawing on some images they had in their mind of what interviews should be like. They knew that their assumptions about others’ cultures had been challenged when they went on their Mission of Peace and they wanted to prepare those who would come after them, not realizing that these new candidates would have to learn in the same way they had the year before - through experience. And so when these youth stepped into the role of interviewer, they stepped into this imagined picture of a hard-nosed questioner, even though that didn’t match their own experiences. They seemed to be imitating some vision of this interview process that they drew from other sources - maybe from TV or movies, maybe something they’d experienced at school, maybe what they’d read about or been told about how stressful an interview might be - instead of modeling their behavior on what they’d actually experienced - an application process that was flexible and encouraging. 

These youth are now thoughtful, compassionate adults, but thinking back on this story always makes me smile. And it was on my mind this week as I read our scripture lesson from Ephesians. At the conclusion of our passage, the author of the letter to the church at Ephesus - maybe Paul, maybe one of Paul’s proteges writing a bit later - says “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” We’re called to be imitators of God! That’s a pretty big ask, a pretty big task for us to attempt - to imitate the creator of the universe. And this isn’t the only place the scriptures call on us to imitate God, or to be imitators of Christ. It’s not just a passing comment. We’re meant to shape our lives in such a way that we are as Christ-like as possible, that we show in our living that indeed, we are created in God’s image and so we live lives shaped by God, shaped into mini-images-of-God in the world, being Christ’s body, Christ’s hand and feet in the world. We’re called to imitate God. 

And yet, sometimes, I think we’re a bit like the CCYM kids. We’ve got the message - imitate God - but what we end up imitating is some picture we have in our minds of God’s character, instead of what God is really like with us. We’re kids playing dress-up at God, and we’ve got some stereotypes of God in our minds, some bad images, some caricatures of God, and that’s what we try to imitate. What is God like? According to our imitation attempts, it seems that we have sometimes understood God to be harsh, judgmental, unforgiving, and unrelenting. Sometimes, in the name of imitating God, we seek out faults in our neighbors, and we hold each other to standards that have us set for failure. Sometimes, in the name of imitating God, we imply that people can be beyond redeeming, and we imply that we have it figured out, that we’re superior in judgment, in morality, in choosing what’s right. We’re trying to imitate God - but we skip over our own actual experiences of God in favor of some picture of God that isn’t quite right, and ends up doing more harm than good, as we pass off harsh treatment of others with a claim tying our actions to the divine. 

What is God like, though? What has been our experience of God? In our reading from Ephesians, the author gives us just a few statements, but a lot to go on: God’s Holy Spirit marks us for redemption. He says that we should “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another” as God in Christ has done for us. God is tender-hearted and forgiving! And if we want to imitate God, we should “live in love,” loving as Christ loved us, which was by giving himself up for us, putting aside his will for God’s will, acting for us instead of for himself - a love poured out for others. That’s what God is like, and that’s what we’re called to imitate. When we imitate God in this way, through lives of love, our text says, it’s like a sweet gift to God. 

Having started at the end of our reading today, I think we can now go back to the beginning of our passage reading with a different perspective. As our author gives a series of instructions, culminating in the call to imitate God, we can read the whole section as a pattern offered to us for how we might go about imitating God. My Bible calls this section “rules for the new life,” and what came to mind for me are the various groups I’ve been a part of where we spend the beginning of our time establishing a covenant - an agreement between two parties outlining how we’re going to behave, how we commit to treating each other, promises we make to each other for care and compassion that help us live in community. I have a professor in my PhD program who does this at the start of every class, no matter how experienced and seasoned her students are. And I have a supervisor in a nonprofit I work with who does this at every step in every process she leads. I was part of an interview team with her organization, and we had a covenant for the three people involved in that process, even though we’d all worked together in various ways before interviewing folks together. Sometimes I’ll admit I’ve thought: do we really need this? Again? But then I think about my young CCYMers, and I think about my own failed attempts at imitating God, when I’m imitating a caricature of God instead of the real thing, and I think that a covenant is a way to help us keep a clear picture in our minds and hearts of the values we hold. 

Here’s what’s in the Ephesians “rules for the new life”: Put away falsehood. Speak the truth about each other. Remember that you’re part of each other. We’ll all get angry, but don’t sin out of anger. Don’t hold onto your anger. Don’t give space to the devil, to something ruling your heart and life that is not God. Don’t steal. Work to share with those in need. Speak with an intent to build each other up, not tear each other down. Speak with the intent to give grace - because that’s certainly what God does for us! Don’t grieve God - you’re marked by God for redemption! so put away bitterness, wrath, anger, slander, malice. We don’t need it. We need kindness. We need tenderheartedness. We need forgiveness. We get all that from God. And so, to imitate God, to live in love, we commit to living in this way with one another. I don’t know about you, but I need the reminders of this rule of living, because otherwise I’ve talked myself into believing I’m imitating God when I’m really just copying a cheap imitation, a twisted image of God that’s more about my power and my will and my way than God’s way. 

Friends, we’re called to the boldest of tasks - we’re called to imitate God! But as we go about imitating God, we need to make sure that we know God’s character well, so that what we present to the world as like-God, as Christ-like, is a true representation. No, we won’t be a perfect reflection, seeing, as we do, only dimly - but we have to be faithful, to be accountable to who God really is. We have to study God’s character closely, so we can make as true a representation as we can. And to study God closely? We have to be in deep relationship. We have to journey with God everyday. We have to learn as much as we can, talk to God as often as we can, open our hearts to God as wide as we can. We can help each other do that, as we live in community, in covenant, building each other up, so that our words and actions communicate God’s grace - to ourselves and to all who hear them. Let us therefore be imitators of God, living in love, as Christ loved us, an offering to our loving, forgiving, grace-full and tender-hearted God. Amen. 

Mine

Some of you know that I just returned from spending a week in Cape Cod with my family. One of the best parts of the trip for me was spending time with my 2 year-old nephew, Sam. I have to say that being an aunt is one of the greatest joys in my life. Sam is so precious, so wonderful. One night, my mom and I took Sam out to dinner so that my brother and sister-in-law could go out for dinner on their own. My mom and I took Sam out for dinner too – but after running around and playing and go-go-going in his new vacation home, a tuckered out Sam fell asleep before we even got to the restaurant. While we waited for our table, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes before our food arrived, I held a perfect sleeping Sam on my lap, and enjoyed all the smiles from staff and patrons admiring Sam’s sweet face. As I was holding him, I was just really overwhelmed with how much I adore Sam, and I was just thinking: “Sam is mine.” Mine. Not as in ownership, obviously, but as in connection. Deep, unbreakable bond. Relationship based on unconditional love.

Sam is not the only person I feel this way about, although he’s pretty darn special. I tend to feel this way about my parishioners too – I remember sitting at an elementary school graduation for some children in my first appointment, and watching as my church girls received award after award, and I was sitting there thinking, “they’re mine.” As the Conference Youth Coordinator for the North Central New York Annual Conference, I look at the young people I work with, and watch them leading worship, and speaking about God at work in their lives, and I think: “Mine.” Just this week I visited one of our church camps, Casowasco, and saw several “former youth” of mine who are now on staff at camp, becoming objects of inspiration to a whole set of young people on their own, and I just felt so happy seeing them in action, in ministry, and I thought, “They’re still mine.” As you may also know, our annual conference will soon be merged together with three other annual conferences in New York State. This June, just before I started at First United Church, I spent a week a training camp for youth from all four conferences. And after a week together, I left feeling like the number of youth who I count as “mine” had just quadrupled. I once baptized a woman a few days before she died from ALS, a most horrific disease. I didn’t know her very well at all – she was a friend of a friend of the congregation. But as I sat with her and said those words: “I baptize you,” I was thinking, “and so now you are mine.”

Mine. As I was thinking about that amazing bond that we can feel with others, imperfect though we are, I thought I was starting to understand, or at least get a better hint at how God feels about us. I think of my love for my nephew Sam, which is certainly one of the most powerful feelings I’ve experienced, and I can only imagine a bit of how much my brother and sister-in-law feel about Sam, their child, who they created, and who is, in every way, made from them, part of them, even while he is unique and all his own. How much, then, must God love us! I think of the chorus of one of my favorite songs from The Faith We Sing, called, “You are Mine,” by David Haas. “Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me, I will bring you home; I love you and you are mine.” God must look at us, and think, “Mine!” My beloved children. Created in my image. So unique. So wonderful. So precious. Mine. God must just treasure us.

Sometimes, we lose sight of that. We can’t see ourselves as God sees us, and/or can’t see one another as God sees. But if you can remember the love that swells inside you when you look into the eyes of your child, or grandchild, or niece or nephew, or godchild, or student, or friend – I hope you can catch a glimpse, a hint, of how beloved you are, knowing that you belong to God.

Obama & The Sunny Side

Sorry for the lack of posting - I just got home from back to back retreats - a CCYM Retreat, and a Young Clergy Retreat, both of which I may write about later in the week.

In the meantime, I'm busy working on a short article for a peace council newsletter about positive steps in the Obama Administration so far. I have some things I definitely plan to include. What would you add to the list?

Review: Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight series, the movie, and The Host

I'm not ashamed to admit that I recently read (and, ok, reread right away) the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, a set of four books about Bella, a young girl who moves into a new town and falls in love with Edward, who happens to be a vampire. Some of my CCYMers had been reading the books and buzzing about them, and I was looking for something light. I picked up the first book, Twilight, and was hooked. And then I found out that a lot of people my ages (especially mothers of teenage girls) had read the books too, and loved them. And then I made my brother read them, so that I could make him go to the movie with me. And even my brother really liked them, although I think he and I appreciated the books in different ways!

The books have been criticized by some as being anti-feminist, like this article which seems most ridiculous, where the author actually calls Edward a proto-rapist. (Was she reading a different book than I was?) I can understand where the critique is coming from to an extent, but mostly I think it is off target. Have none of these critics ever been in high-school? Bella certainly has low self-esteem. Edward is constantly telling her she doesn't see herself accurately. And despite the whole vampire thing, her struggle to see herself as worth being loved seems pretty realistic to me.

The movie . . . was terrible. There was hardly anything about the movie that I didn't think was pretty bad. The movie was made, I think, for a younger, denser audience than it should have been. Everything was spelled out in an over-the-top way, as if audiences could never pick up on subtle things. Edward doesn't just glare at Bella like he does in the book, he makes a face like he's smelled something really foul, and everyone in the audience laughed hysterically. In the book, it's not a funny scene. That's how you know the movie is so bad: everyone is laughing loudly at things that weren't meant to be funny. I liked the casting, it had a lot of potential with the people involved, but I for one am glad that a new director is coming on for the second film, New Moon. Hopefully he will give the film a darker, more serious edge.

Finally, I want to mention Meyer's one non-Twlight book, The Host. This is a sci-fi-esque book (sci-fi for people who don't like sci-fi, she says) that's for older reader. I listened to it on audio book, and thought it was great - in some ways, better than the Twlight books, without all the drama and energy of being caught up in the momentum of the Twilight books. The book is narrated by Wanderer, an alien who is inside a human host named Melanie. Don't let that description turn you off - the book is really excellent, detailed, with a rich plot, and beautiful storytelling. What I like about Meyer's plots in all her books is that she doesn't always go with the typical, expected outcome. All through The Host, I thought we were being walked into a certain scenario which I was dreading as overdone, but she went an entirely different direction. I'll definitely pick up anything else she comes out with.

Annual Conference Reflections

Sorry for the blog silence. I've been quite a delinquent blogger lately. I've just returned from NCNY's Annual Conference. The internet access wasn't great (neither is my laptop battery), which makes blogging difficult. I remember after being a delegate to GC in 2000, coming to annual conference a month later and thinking that it was rather boring in comparison. I didn't have that overwhelming sense this year, although I can tell you that hardly any items had debate around them. In fact, we didn't even debate over the budget this year, which has to be a first. How did this happen? The finance team gave us ice cream and cookies right before we voted on the budget. An excellent strategy. :) Some thoughts on the high points:

CCYM -I just finished my fifth year as the conference youth coordinator, which sounds weird to me. I can hardly believe that. When I began working with CCYM in 2003, I have to confess that I wasn't really enjoying my work. It took a while, a long time of transition. But in the last couple of years, due to many factors, I've come to really love working with the youth of the conference. When I was in high school, I actually planned on studying and working in youth ministry. It was only during the transition to college that I felt a call to pastoral ministry. I became somewhat disenchanted with youth ministry. But in the last couple of years, I've really found my joy in youth work again. The young people in NCNY are fabulous. Every year, they lead a worship service for the conference, and every year, they touch hearts and souls with their gentle wisdom. Every year I think: I wasn't so brave, so bold, so articulate, so... when I was that age. Our CCYM has been through some tough times as we prepare for a probably merger with three other annual conferences. In the midst of these changes, our youth continue to do the work of Christ, setting an example for young and old to follow.

General Conference Report - Our delegation focused our report around the Three Simple Rules that were a thematic focus in Fort Worth. We each got a couple of minutes to highlight what we saw as essential action at the conference. For Church and Society 1, I spoke about the Social Creed Litany.

Bishop Fisher's Retirement - We celebrated the retirement of our Bishop, Violet Fisher. Bishop Fisher has done a great job in leading our episcopal area in a time when we really needed some strong spiritual leadership. She commissioned me and ordained me. I'm glad I got to complete my process with her - I know some of my colleagues who will be (likely) ordained in the next year or two are feeling a sense of loss of having their journey to ordination divided between two bishops. Given that we are going to head into a merger, our new bishop will likely be a seasoned bishop. Bishop Fisher came to us as a newly elected bishop, and we certainly enjoyed our time with her.

Ordination - I love attending the service of ordination. (See also Wes Sanders' comments about ordination here.) I just love watching others go through what was for me the most meaningful day of my life so far. I have now also officially handed away my title of "youngest elder" to my friend Richelle, who is eight days younger than me.

Sharon Fulmer - This year at our memorial service, we said goodbye to Sharon Fulmer, our Director of Communications, who died last month after a long illness, but who had been working with energy right up to the end. My friend Heather, who drove with me to Fort Worth, filled in for Sharon, covering the Conference for NCNY, and she and Sharon spent a lot of time chatting and joking on the phone, just a few days before Sharon died. Sharon encouraged us to have fun and enjoy ourselves (and sent us with a bottle of Advil.) We invite folks to stand to honor their loved ones when their names are read at the memorial service. Nearly every person at conference stood when Sharon's name was read. She was just that kind of person - made you feel so special. Was so loving. A great, fun spirit. She will be dearly missed.

Since NCNY and GNJ hold annual conference at the same time, and my membership is still in NCNY, I wasn't able to attend GNJ conference. Every once in a great while they fall on different weekends, so maybe next year I'll get to check out how another conference does their work together.

Question: The Best Worship Experience Ever

Really, I will soon be reflecting on the Bishop's Convocation, and a million other postponed-posts. But one more question:

What's the best worship experience you remember having? What can you tell me about it? What made the experience 'the best'? Where were you? What was the context?

For my own answer, the first things that come to mind are two worship services where the sermons moved me to tears. I don't remember anything else about the services though, other than the sermon. I think the opening worship the first time I attended General Conference was very powerful - it was just overwhelming to be with a gathered global community of United Methodists. I remember several worship experiences during a CCYM retreat in high school that collectively were extremely powerful to me, and hearing Bishop Woodie White preach during Exploration '98, although I can't tell you much detail about what he said.

What's been your best worship experience?

Another question: Youth Ministry

Another question for you all:

I’m teaching a workshop about youth ministry for the district this weekend. My personal experience with youth ministry is mostly at the conference and jurisdictional level (I'm the conference youth coordinator for NCNY) – I have, actually, comparatively less experience with the youth ministry of the local church.

If you could make sure people knew one thing about youth ministry, what would it be? What are the most important things to know about youth ministry?

I suspect many people want to know what to do with small membership youth groups. What do you do when you have two, three, four kids? My own initial youth group experiences were in a group about this size. My youth group leader, who was the pastor, let us focus mostly on fellowship and having a good time. As long as we could come and have fun, we stuck with it. Eventually, we grew into something larger, and could make bigger plans - trips, mission projects, devotional time.

What do you do with small number youth groups? Have you grown a youth ministry from small numbers?