The Path We Choose? - A reflection on "becoming Real"
Today we placed into the hands of second and third graders
their very own bible…one they can highlight, dog ear, annotate. One that they will outgrow, and already my
prayer is that as they outgrow it, it is well-worn, marked up, uniquely
identifiable as theirs when it is left in a Sunday School room…
Of course my prayer is that it is used. Cared for.
Wrestled with. My prayer is that
we replace it for them when they are confirmed…and maybe again when they
graduate from high school…because it is well-loved…with a cracked binding.
My on ramp into ministry was focused on children…I quickly
came to love the places that we could honor children by connecting them to
God…and the places where they were so very good at connecting the adults around
them to God. That work starts at home
and it is supported and expanded in churches like ours. There is a fair amount of evidence now that
children who are given solid teaching about faith, while they will wrestle with
it at times through their development, are best able to hang onto faith and
make it their own. They have to be
surrounded by order in able to poke holes in that order, question that order,
and rebuild that order to make it their own.
Father Richard Rohr talks about this as the never ending process of
order, disorder and reorder…a spiral of work we do throughout our lives to
understand our relationship with God.
With children we start with simple things –
God loves you.
Jesus is your friend.
God wants to hear from you.
God loves you even when you make a mistake.
God loves you just the way you are. No matter what.
Today I read both of our scriptures through the lens of discipleship…both
allude to a choice we make to fall in love and then stay in love with God. The latin roots of the word disciple point to
meaning “one who follows someone for the purpose of learning.” In our Christian faith, we are called to be
disciples of Jesus the Christ and to help others make the choice to be
disciples of Jesus Christ.
Both of today’s scriptures cast a vision of what happens to
us when we commit ourselves to that disciple’s path – the one that according to
Luke means at some point we’ll hate our families, our first source of order --
order from which we have to create disorder before we can create reorder. Which can sometimes lead to fissures and
cracks in our family relationships in seasons or lifetimes.
The text from Deuteronomy frames a theme of the two ways, one
of blessing and one of curses that surround the Hebrews as they receive the
commandments and God’s promise to deliver them into freedom and a land of their
own.
Blessings and curses…when you do the right thing – when you
go the right way, you encounter blessing.
When your choices are wrong – when you choose the wrong path, you are
cursed. There is nothing simple about
this…some want to interpret this as God’s punishment for making choices against
God…and there is evidence in Hebrew scripture that this is how God’s action was
understood. But I want to be clear that
such an interpretation is an oversimplification -- because sometimes bad things
happen to us in the course of life and it has nothing to do with being
cursed. Bad things happen.
God doesn’t make bad things happen to us. Period. Full stop. But that is a sermon for another time. For now we need to get back to discipleship.
God is setting before God’s people a choice. A choice to follow God or a choice to do
something else.
This text is rooted in an earlier text, from Deuteronomy 6 –
a key foundation for the sh’ema…which is an historic center point of morning
and evening prayer in the Jewish tradition.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when
you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your
hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts
of your house and on your gates.
The shema establishes the oneness, the singularity of God.
It is a bedrock of Judaism, and ultimately Christianity. Today, handing our
children a bible, we have formalized the ongoing work of “reciting them to our
children and talking about them when we are at home and when we are away, when
we lie down and when we rise…” We have
begun the work of binding them as a sign on our hands, fixing them as an emblem
on our very foreheads, writing them on the doorposts of our home.
The Luke text casts a heavy burden on the decision to lean
into the arms of the one God, God who is the father of Jesus himself…and in
this teaching, Jesus points to the work and the intention of following in his
footsteps. It suggests that making a
decision will result in hardship and loss.
And it also suggests that there is work. You don’t build a tower without
thinking through how and with what. You
don’t make this choice to follow Jesus without thinking it through.
It is a choice placed before us again and again.
It is a choice that I believe most of us think we take quite
seriously, but I’m not quite sure that we do. How often does our desire to fit
in, our desire to keep friendly relationships, our desire to have the next
shiny thing keep us from tending to the fullness of loving God?
Please don’t hear me suggesting that all of discipleship is
self sacrificing, hard, painful. But it
is hard enough that it changes us…it is hard enough that at times it breaks
us…and then God is right there with us rebuilding us. Making us whole. Transforming us. Making us real.
…making us real.
How many of you are familiar with the childhood classic The
Velveteen Rabbit? It is the story about a toy rabbit gifted to a boy… a story
where the toys interact with one another and have a life of their own, but they
depend on interactions with the boy to make them whole…to make them “real.”
Let me read the vital part:
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of
the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed
the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to
string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical
toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and
pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into
anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those
playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand
all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when
they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy
the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out
handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin
Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a
long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become
Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was
always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,"
he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin
Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen
often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be
carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been
loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you
can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And
then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be
sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said.
"That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become
unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before
this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what
it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and
whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these
uncomfortable things happening to him.
When we choose discipleship, uncomfortable things happen to
us.
A disciple gives attention to God’s presence by participating
in worship, serves others inside and outside the church walls, grows through
prayer, invests their time, talent and financial gifts, demonstrates a faithful
witness to others of what it means to follow Jesus.
Today, as we hand our children Bibles, my prayer is that we
are also mindful of our own commitment to discipleship.
Discipleship is a long journey. It is a journey of choosing God again and
again and again. Of weathering seasons
that are hard. Of testing relationships. Of poking holes in what we thought we knew to
make room for what God shows us next.
Discipleship is a choice. Each moment of each day. A choice to love God
and love one another.
Again, from Deuteronomy: “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD
your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and
length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to
your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
What choice will you make in this season to deepen your
relationship with the God who loves you?
Will you choose to learn something new about a stranger each
day?
Will you choose to read and reflect on scripture each day?
Will you choose to give generously of your gifts to honor
all God has done in your life?
Will you imagine how your hands are building the Kingdom of
God?
May you be real.
May you know others who are becoming real.
May you encourage others as they are becoming real.
May we walk beside friends and children and neighbors as
they find their way to real by way of a loving God.
May it be so.
Amen.
Sources:
The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams (my beloved copy
is still in a dust box, inscribed by my mother in 1976)
WorkingPreacher.org Sermon Brainwave #679 – Thirteenth Sunday
after Pentecost (Ord.23) podcast, available anywhere you access podcasts
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