Learning by Imitation

Based on Gen. 15:1-11, 17-18 and Phil. 3:17-4:1
First delivered Mar. 17, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            My mom taught me and my sister some basic life skills. She taught us how to fry bacon and eggs. She taught us how to make cinnamon toast. She taught us how to darn socks. Having come of age during the Great Depression, thriftiness was something my mom and dad valued. So those socks didn’t get thrown away if they had holes in them. And, no, I don’t darn my socks. My sister and I learned these things from mom by watching how she did it and then imitating her.

            Learning by imitation is a primary way we learn how to do things. You can read up on how to do things and probably figure it out. But it seems to me it’s more effective to watch someone who knows what they are doing, whether it’s watching instructional videos on YouTube or watching your mom flip the egg over without breaking the yolk, and then imitating what you see.

            Learning by imitation also affects who we are as people, our behaviors and the way we see the world. For example, not once in my life did I hear my parents curse. And the one time I let a curse word slip out in front of my dad it raised his ire. Maybe they cursed out of earshot of me but I’ll never know. I have almost never cursed around my boys and when it slipped out I regretted it. My parents set the example that I imitate. My dad was an avid reader. In our living room we had floor to ceiling bookshelves all along the south wall and they were filled with books. My dad was a member of the book of the month club. Every evening dad would be sitting in his Lazy Boy reading. I’ve picked up that habit. Every summer our family went on a two to three week vacation. We hooked up a pop up trailer and took off, staying at KOA camps and visiting state and national parks, mainly out west. These trips expanded my view of America beyond my home town, that we live in a country filled with natural treasures. The examples of our parents affect our behaviors and the way we see the world. And we tend to imitate them.

            Learning by imitation is also what discipleship is. Disciples learn from and follow the practices of the master. By observation and by teaching, disciples take on the habits and behaviors of the master, slowly being transformed into a sort of image of their master. As disciples of Jesus, who is our master, our discipleship consists of learning from and following the example of our master, to become more like Jesus by imitation.

            When Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi, he encourages them to imitate him, to imitate his practice as a disciple of Jesus, to imitate the way he lived his life. Paul urged them to imitate him not because he had a big ego. He wasn’t telling them to imitate him because he is the master and they are disciples of Paul. They are all disciples of Jesus. Paul was striving to live his life in imitation of Jesus. He was striving to be transformed into the image of Jesus. So what Paul was saying to the Philippians was for them to look to him and others as living, breathing examples of how a disciple of Jesus makes their way in the world. They could hear the stories of Jesus and what Jesus’ teachings were about how to live. But it is also helpful to have people in your life who demonstrate what living in the way of Jesus looks like. Paul was one of those living examples for them to follow as they strove to be imitators of the way of Jesus.

            We have a lot of good examples that we can imitate as examples of Christian disciples, not just Paul. Our examples don’t even have to be Christians. We have the example of Abraham, who we heard about this morning. We heard this morning about how Abraham trusted in God’s promises. Not that Abraham didn’t have questions. God had promised Abraham descendants and land. Great promises; but Abraham is old and so is his wife. No heir. And where is this land that Abraham is supposed to give his non-existent heir? So Abraham asks God, “how is this going to happen?” God doesn’t answer Abraham’s question directly. Instead, God tells Abraham to go look up at the night sky and try to count all the stars. That’s how many descendants he would have. God told Abraham to sacrifice some animals and lay them out on the ground. Then, in a vision, God passed between the sacrificed animals in the form of a smoking pot and a blazing torch, symbolically making a covenant promise that God will provide land for Abraham’s descendants. And, indeed, God did follow through with that promise…400 years after Abraham was dead. Without telling Abraham how these promises would be fulfilled, Abraham still trusted that God would fulfill those promises. And that trust in God was credited to Abraham as righteousness. Abraham’s trust in God sets an example for us. We can follow Abraham’s example by trusting that God fulfills the promises God has made to us, the promise of eternal life, the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, the promise of God’s reign on earth.

            We also have the example of the gospels. They are always available to us to read and reflect on. We can read again and again the teachings of Jesus and consider how our lives reflect his teachings. Lent is a time intended for us to do just that.

            We have the examples of all the saints, those whose lives have been recorded for us to be inspired from and to learn from. For example, we have the life story of St. Patrick who we celebrate today. Yes, St. Patrick’s Day has more to it than a reason to party. We can learn from St. Patrick. At the age of sixteen, he was seized by Irish marauders where he was forced to tend sheep. After six years of slavery, Patrick managed to escape to Gaul where he entered a monastery. Eventually, Patrick became a bishop. In 432, he was sent to Ireland, where he once was a slave, to attempt to convert the island to Christianity. Until his death thirty years later, in 461, he had managed to plant churches all through Ireland, presenting the Christian faith in ways that made sense to the Irish. He didn’t do it by himself, but with his leadership Patrick converted all of Ireland to Christianity, a Christian faith that was contextual, that made sense to the Irish. So we can learn about how Patrick managed to do that, the establishment of Celtic Christianity.

            Of course, we don’t just get our examples of Christian discipleship from the Bible or the stories of the saints who have gone before us. There are living, breathing examples who have come in and out of our lives. I have been blessed to be in the presence of many living saints throughout my life. I am thinking of Dr. David Thomas, who was the pastor of St. Luke’s UMC, my home church, when I became serious about the faith. He encouraged and mentored me into ministry. And I think of Don and Ruby Gruver from Edgerton, Ohio, a delightful couple who never had a bad word for anyone, never complained about anything, and graciously gave of themselves day after day to support the ministries of the church I was pastoring and maintaining the community food pantry. They provided the juice we used for communion from the grape vine that grew in their backyard. They were such an inspiration to me. Who are those living, breathing examples of Christian discipleship that you have encountered?

            As we seek out and follow those who are examples of what a Jesus follower looks like, it is good to keep in mind that each of us sets an example, for good or ill. What kind of example are you setting? I hope that question disturbs you a little. It’s a serious responsibility. If we dare to proclaim ourselves to be Christians, then we are putting ourselves out there. We represent Christ if we are going to claim to be his disciples. What people think of Christians is going to be based partly on how you and I behave. Don’t know about you, but I haven’t always been my best self.

            And this is the thing about looking to others as examples of Christian discipleship as well as acknowledging that we are examples as well: and that is being an example is tricky. People are people. And that means they are imperfect. People let you down. Everyone has a bad day now and then. We get tired and crabby, we unintentionally hurt people with our words, we miss opportunities to respond to the needs of others, and sometime we just plain screw things up. And it can be disappointing when the person you look up to as an example of what a Christian ought to be lets you down. I have known more than one person who had an amazing ministry, blessed a lot of people, helped so many grow in their faith, and then turned around and had an affair or some other moral failing that wrecked their ministry. It didn’t take away from the great ministry they did, but it was disappointing to see their fall. But that’s what happens. We are fallible. And we are responsible for the actions we take.

            The good news is that we don’t have to be perfect, nor do our heroes in the faith. There is forgiveness with God. There is grace. When our mentors in the faith mess up, we offer grace. When we screw up in our discipleship, we extend to ourselves grace. In fact, this is part of what being a disciple of Jesus is about. Jesus was always forgiving, always extending grace, never turning his back on others, even those Pharisees that he was always arguing with and calling out as snakes and hypocrites. Jesus didn’t give up on anyone. He never walked away from a conversation. He always stayed at the table. The grace that Jesus extended to every person is an example that we need to embrace and live in to even as we are grateful that our failures will never cause Jesus to give up on us. In the words of the great Christian artist Keith Green, who had a big influence on my discipleship when I was a kid, we just keep doing our best and pray that it’s blessed. Jesus takes care of the rest. Our task is to imitate those Christians we admire, try to set the best example we can, and trust that somehow God can use our lives to set an example for others to follow, so that more and more people can come to know the way of Jesus.

            We are all disciples and Jesus is our master. We are all learning, trying to find our way through life by following the example of others. People go in and out of our lives. As we develop in our faith other people come into our lives that challenge us to go further and deeper. It’s an ongoing process through our lives. We are all on our way to Christian perfection as John Wesley would say. My encouragement to you is to keep at it. Keep working on your discipleship, looking to exemplars of Christian discipleship, those we find in the scriptures, in the pages of history, and in our own lives, learning from all of them and following the examples they set. Keep working at imitating the sacrificial love of Jesus. And may God take our humble offerings of following Jesus and bless them so that the world might be transformed into what God has always desired.

Let us pray:

            Lord, we thank You for those saints You have placed among us, who show us what it takes to be a follower of Jesus. Give us the wisdom to follow good examples, to learn from the greats, so that each of us might be better imitators of You. In the name of our Master, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Know it by Heart

Based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Romans 10:8b-13
First delivered Mar. 10, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            “I know it by heart.” That’s what you want a musician to say about their music that they are preparing for performance. Before they go public with their music, they need to know it by heart. To learn a piece of music, you start with the score sheet, the notes and words. As you rehearse, you become more and more familiar with the song. At some point you no longer have to look at the score sheet because you have sung the song so much you are starting to get it memorized. You keep on practicing until you get to the place where you don’t need the score sheet any more. That’s when the fun really begins. You know the song so well now that you can start playing with it, becoming more expressive, coloring outside the lines if you will. When you know the song by heart, that’s when you can perform that song with conviction, with your whole being.

            To know something by heart, whether it be a song, a poem, or a story, is to have it so internalized that it becomes a part of who you are. When you sing a song that you know by heart, recite a poem that you know by heart, retell a story that you know by heart, you express something of yourself. You come across as authentic and sincere. You reveal a part of yourself when you perform something that you know by heart.

            The Israelites knew the story by heart of how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt and brought them to the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey. It was the land that they currently occupied. And every year, at the time of the first grain harvest, each family would take the first fruits of their harvest to the Temple, offering their gift to God, and saying by heart, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” They would retell the story of God’s deliverance of their people from bondage. It was a story told countless of times, a story that was known by heart, a story that shaped who they were as a people. Israel is a people with a story, a story that is known and told by heart.

            What about you and I? Not being part of the Israelite people we don’t have the same story. Our people were not once slaves in Egypt. God has not led us through the wilderness and given us a land flowing with milk and honey. Our stories are different. But do you have a story of how God delivered you or your family? What is your salvation story?

            Each of our salvation stories is different. And maybe when it comes to telling the story of God’s deliverance the story is open-ended. The final chapter has not yet been written. God doesn’t just deliver us once. God delivers us over and over through our whole lives. What can you tell of your deliverance story so far? I know part of my deliverance story by heart. It was October of 1983. I was at a church camp. The pastor gave a devotion that stressed the point that when Jesus died on the cross, that he died for my sins because God loved me that much. For the first time a light clicked on and I realized that Jesus died for me, that God loves me, and that God has a purpose for my life. The Spirit moved in my heart. For an awkward kid who didn’t feel like he fit in, this revelation of God’s love and a divine purpose was life changing. It was at that devotional at church camp where for the first time I felt forgiven and loved by God. I was a different person. In a way I was born again that night. That’s part of my salvation story. I’m sure yours is different. And if you don’t yet have a salvation story, be patient. One day your story will come to you. Salvation stories aren’t something you sit down and write or just dream up. These stories find you and claim you.

            Paul tells us that any person who knows in their heart that Jesus is Lord and confesses with their mouth that God raised Jesus from the dead will be saved. This is not just mental assent. It is not just parroting words or repeating back the words given to you like some kind of salvation script. It is not a magic formula. Paul said this salvation is effective for those who know in their heart. It is a deep knowing, a knowing that you can’t be argued out of or will simply forget. You don’t have to study up on it to refresh your memory. You know it by heart. Paul is saying to us, “If you know that you know that you know that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead then you will be saved.” That’s a promise of deliverance that Paul is implying. If you know Jesus by heart you will be saved, delivered, healed. If you know Jesus by heart you will make it through the time of testing and struggle. God will see to it that you will make it through the storm. Our deliverance story can be boiled down to this simple saying: I believe with all my heart that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. Holding on to this belief is enough for God to deliver us from whatever we may be going through today. With this faith in God there is deliverance from what seeks to sap the spirit of life right out of us.

            It is good to know these things by heart as we wander into the wilderness of Lent, to know by heart that God is our deliverer from oppression, pain and heart ache. This is a season when we are encouraged to pay attention to our spiritual life, to do some self-examination, to reflect on our relationship with God. When we do this work, of looking into our hearts and our souls, what we find may be messy. We live complicated lives. Inside our hearts is a mixture of emotions, of hurts, doubts, resentments and frustrations. We try to avoid this kind of self-reflection because it can be painful and confusing to look inside ourselves. We may not like what we see. We may find our spirits to be worn out and parched. The state of our souls may not be a rich paradise and more like a barren wilderness. And when we confront our messiness and hurts, our wounds and the cold and dry places of our soul, it is good to hold some things in our heart…our salvation story, our trust in Jesus, our hope in God to deliver.

            We enter into the season of Lent wounded and in need of healing. Of course, the acuteness of our hurt is different. Some of us are just dealing with the minor irritants of life, but for the most part life is pretty good. Others of us are carrying some deep hurts and are struggling. And I suspect that if each of us really dug down deep, we could unearth some pain and hurt that we buried a long time ago. We may be more wounded than we realize. We are all carrying some pain. Life has a way of wearing us down. Disagreements and misunderstandings, loss, failures, illness, unintended consequences, there is so much we experience in life that cuts at our heart and can beat us up. We can’t escape it. Even if we know by heart that Jesus loves us and has the lordship of our hearts, we still get hurt. We are all wounded. We are all in need of healing.

            Healing is a journey. We can’t just take a pill or have a good night’s sleep and be all better. Healing is a process. In fact, the healing process stretches out for our entire life. Deep healing of those things that have hurt our heart takes time. It takes a lot of prayer and reflection. It takes talking things out with a trusted friend, or maybe a therapist. It takes putting good medicine in your heart: beauty, love, laughter, good friends, good music, good food, serenity, peace. To heal we sometimes have to unplug and just breathe.

            This is what Lent can be for us, an intentional time to do what we need to do to experience healing. I know often Lent is portrayed as a heavy time, a drudgery, where we have to give up stuff and be serious. But Lent doesn’t have to be a burdensome duty. Lent can be a season where we intentionally create space in our lives where we can heal. Fasting is a traditional discipline during Lent. Another word for fasting is unplugging. We can unplug from the negative stuff that is constantly coming at us through social media or cable news. We can prioritize spending time in nature, especially now that the cold and dormancy of winter is finally giving way to the warmth and vibrancy of spring. Now is the time where we can make time to talk things out with a friend, to go get a cup of coffee and have a heart to heart conversation, to share the burdens we are carrying and to know that we don’t carry our burdens alone. Let Lent be a season where you take the time to go visit an art gallery or attend a concert, to maybe go to the Franklin Park Conservatory, or take a walk in one of our many metro parks. Find ways to place yourself in the midst of beauty.

            Our healing journey extends beyond the season of Lent, but we can make it to the end of our healing journey because of what we know by heart. We know in our hearts that God loves us. We know in our hearts that Jesus died so that we might live. We know in our hearts that God has seen us through trials before and will do so again. So let us enter into this season of Lent with hopeful expectation that God will walk with us through it all and bring us out of it into the joy of the resurrection, the life-giving season of Easter.

Transfiguration Experiences

Based on Luke 9:28-43
First delivered on Transfiguration, Mar. 3, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            I have in my hand a small river rock that I picked up along the shores of the Illinois River that flows through the hills of eastern Oklahoma. There is a United Methodist church camp there called Camp Egan. The church I grew up in went there often for retreats. There is a place at Camp Egan where you hike up to the top of a ridge that overlooks a beautiful valley below. There is a clearing with some benches and a large wooden cross. It is an outdoor worship space. Hundreds of thousands of people over the years have gathered at that spot for worship, to experience the presence of God in the beauty of nature. People have had literal “mountain top experience” at that sacred site called Camp Egan. I am one of those people. And it’s hard for me to put in words the experiences of God’s presence I have had at Camp Egan. That’s how it is when we experience the presence of the divine. Words to describe the experience fail us.

            Today we hear the story of when Peter, James and John had their mountain top experience, when they saw Jesus transfigured before them, having a conversation with Moses and Elijah. And then a cloud enveloped them. They heard the voice of God declaring Jesus as the chosen one that they need to listen to. These disciples had a mountain top experience like no other. It was so powerful that they couldn’t tell anyone about it, at least not yet. They couldn’t put the experience into words. But I can imagine that from then on out Peter, James and John had a completely new perspective about Jesus. They had seen a glimpse of who Jesus is in his fullness. No filters. It was a vision they could not articulate. Words to describe the experience failed them.

            This rock I have from Camp Egan I picked up when I was not yet a teenager. On one side of it I have a drawing of a mountain. On top of the mountain is a cross. A huge sun is rising behind the mountain. And in the corner are three birds flying in the sky, representing the Trinity. This picture was an attempt to describe a mountain top experience I had at Camp Egan. As I came back down the mountain and returned home, I took this rock with me. It has sat on a home altar I have maintained for years, along with other objects I have collected that mark “mountain top experiences.” These objects remind me of how God has revealed Godself to me in a number of different ways, in different contexts, for over four decades of my life. When we have these mountain top experiences we carry them with us for the rest of our lives. They shape our faith. They help form who we are as persons.



    

       

            Can you imagine how Peter, James and John were impacted by their mountain top experience? Like I said, surely they looked at Jesus differently from then on out. When they saw Jesus in his resurrected body, the Transfiguration experience surely flooded their memories and reaffirmed for them that their mountain top experience was real. Seeing the transfigured Jesus shaped the faith of Peter, James and John. They came down the mountain carrying that experience. They were different than the way they were before they went up the mountain with Jesus to pray.

            What made my mountain top experiences possible as a kid was the result of the United Methodist Church. It was the church I belonged to that got me to that United Methodist owned camp. Not all my mountain top experiences have been at United Methodist church camps. But some have. Perhaps for many of us, and I would hope all of us, it has been through the church, particularly the United Methodist church, that the context for a mountain top experience was provided. Our church is a gathering of disciples around Jesus Christ, who from time to time gather on mountain tops, literally or figuratively, and experience the divine in powerful ways. We have these experiences as a church. And they are transformational experiences that shape our faith. That’s part of the church experience.

            That’s what we heard about this morning. Peter, James and John, a tiny church gathered around Jesus, having their mountain top experience. The United Methodist Church has been that gathered community around Jesus for many of us where we have experienced the presence of God.

            When Jesus, Peter, James and John came down the mountain, they walked into chaos and pain. While they had been up there on the mountain top, down below there was a father crying out for his son who was possessed of a demon. He had pleaded for the rest of Jesus’ disciples to cast the demon out. They had the power to do so. We hear about it in Luke 9:1 where Jesus specifically gives his disciples the authority to cast out demons. They had the power but they could not do it. For whatever reason, we do not know, this father’s son was still demon possessed and the disciples had failed. And this failure frustrated Jesus to no end. The disciples did not do what they had the power to do, to cast out the demon and heal this father’s son.

            I submit to you that in St. Louis earlier this week there were many loud cries for demons to be cast out: the demon of exclusion, the demon of legalism, the demon of deceit, the demon of hypocrisy. And the church failed to cast out the demons in our midst. The General Conference of the United Methodist Church had the power and authority to cast out those demons, to provide space for healing, to move toward a path of reconciliation. We are now more divided than ever. The pain is deep. The demons are still present and active. And surely Jesus is frustrated to say the least.

            “You faithless and perverse generation! How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” Jesus was angry. Jesus was hurt. Jesus was frustrated. And he did not keep it bottled up inside but expressed his outrage. He didn’t just say, “I’m angry!” No, he named what he saw, a faithless and perverse generation. Those words are cutting. They hurt. They are offensive. And if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Jesus saying them, surely the crowd would have told Jesus what they thought of that statement and walked away. Maybe some did.

            But even more, Jesus didn’t stomp off angry. Jesus’ anger and frustration didn’t close him off from the pressing need for that boy to have a demon cast out of him. There was healing and restoration that needed to be accomplished. There was work to do. Jesus wasn’t going to walk away from where the pain and brokenness was. He didn’t turn himself around and walk back up the mountain. And if the disciples couldn’t get the job done then Jesus was not going to let it go. He would cast the demon out and restore the son to his father. And that’s what he did. Nothing would stop Jesus from healing the suffering child.

            Jesus didn’t walk away from General Conference either. In the midst of the chaos and pain Jesus was doing healing work. Jesus was in the hands of Bishop Malone, the bishop of the East Ohio Conference, who gently held J. J. Warren, a young, gay pastor who spoke passionately on the floor of the conference of the deep pain that the church he serves was inflicting on gay people and his call to be in ministry with people pushed to the margins by the church.

Jesus was present outside the conference, in the lobby of the arena. Gay and straight United Methodists were gathered there having worship, singing songs of liberation and receiving Holy Communion, the real presence of Jesus in the bread and the cup, while delegates walked by at the close of conference. That was the last thing those delegates saw as they left the arena to go home…an inclusive church gathered at the Lord’s table.  Jesus was there, in that communion service, casting out the demons, working a work of healing and restoration, and glorifying God.

            That communion service was a glimpse of the church as it truly is, undistorted by exclusion and legalism and hypocrisy. It was the church of inclusion, of grace, and integrity. The church gathered for communion outside of the conference was a moment of transfiguration, a revealing of the church as it truly is, where all are welcomed at the Lord’s table, where all are received as the beloved children of God, where the boundary markers are pushed back to make room for all who would come to the gospel feast.

            Transfiguration moments can happen in places other than on mountain tops on retreat. Jesus can reveal himself in all kinds of places and spaces and among all kinds of communities. Suddenly, we find ourselves in the presence of the holy. Transfiguration moments can occur in spaces where people are grieving and hurting, but also loving, grace filled, and hopeful. I believe we can facilitate those transfiguration moments by continuing to gather together with friends, creating spaces of vulnerability and truth telling, humility and laughter, and with the wisdom to wait for the Spirit to stir and to reveal the presence of the holy in our midst. This is what we can do. We can cast out demons and reveal the glory of God through the power of love. May God help us to continue to create these kinds of inclusive spaces.