Building a Self

2 Corinthians 3: 18, Ephesians 1: 3-6, Colossians 4: 14,15

 

 

          In her 1922 novel, The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams tells the story of a stuffed rabbit named Snub. Snub finds himself literally snubbed for a time by the boy he belongs to, as the boy plays with other, newer presents. Skin Horse, the oldest and wisest toy in the nursery, tells Snub a story. As the story goes, it seems that if a child really loves you, a toy, enough, you can become REAL. The rabbit is really awed by the possibility. One night after the boy has lost a toy, he is given the rabbit to sleep with. Before long, the rabbit is the boy’s favorite toy. He takes him everywhere. The boy thinks of him as real. He loves on that rabbit so much that over time, the rabbit becomes shabbier and shabbier, until he has almost no fur.

          The boy becomes sick with scarlet fever and the doctor orders that his room is to be disinfected and his toys burned. The rabbit is gathered up with the other toys and left in the garden overnight, where he sheds a real tear. From it appears a flower, and from the flower appears a fairy. The fairy takes the toy rabbit to the forest and turns him into a real live rabbit. The love of the boy has produced a REAL rabbit.

          Compare the story to that of Pinocchio, a story made famous by the cartoon magic of Disney Studios. Pinocchio’s carved wooden limbs later turn into the body of a real live boy, made possible through the love of an old woodcarver named Geppetto. One cannot help but notice the striking similarities of the story of Pinocchio with the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel.

          These stories have long been popular with children for a reason. They are stories of love, stories of hope, stories with happy endings. No wonder they are so popular. But these stories are more than just happy endings. They are also object lessons on the rewards of patience and hope, the importance of truth and the cost of love.

          Paul writes to a troubled young church in Corinth and tells them that when we turn to the Lord, we will behold the glory of the unhidden face of the Lord, and that we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  It’s pretty nice if you’re just a puppet to be treated with such respect and tenderness by your creator. That’s what Geppetto did for his little boy puppet. And yet, it was nothing to that wooden headed puppet. He had much to learn. It was only after he had been mistreated and mishandled, fooled and lied to, that he began to understand the great love his creator bore him. It was only then that he began to understand the cost of becoming real. It was only then that he could begin to take on the image of his creator.

          In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul gives thanks to God for the blessing of Jesus Christ. He says that God chose us even before the foundation of the world was laid, that long before the world was born, we were chosen by God to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ. He did it to the praise of his own glorious grace. And he has bestowed that grace upon us through Jesus.

          This passage is revealing to us, for it tells us who God intends us to be. First, Paul tells us that God chose us before the world began. The word we translate as chose comes from a compound word in Greek that literally means “spoke forth.” It reminds us of the Genesis account of creation, when God literally speaks creation into being. And here Paul tells us that even then, we were “spoken forth” by God. Theologian Robert Mulholland tells us that Paul is saying that there are no surprises in heaven when any of us are conceived. It may be a surprise to our parents, but not to God. God is the past master of family planning, for indeed he is creating his family—not just ours. He destined us for adoption, for membership in his family. Through the grace of Jesus Christ he blessed us and through the blood of Jesus we are redeemed, bought back, saved.

          The thing is, although we are spoken for, we still get it wrong. When times are happy and the going is easy, we often forget to thank God for the smoothness of our journey. We begin to pat ourselves on the back for the fine job of planning or providing we are doing. A friend of mine ministers to a large congregation of affluent, upwardly mobile folks. He told me their biggest prayer request is to keep the money coming to pay the mortgage and to keep their kids out of jail. My minister friend spends his time plotting how to raise the consciousness of those untested Christians for what real testing might look like—for how to become real Christians.

          How does God succeed in getting us wooden headed Christians to seek to conform to the image of Christ? Sometimes he has to grow our noses longer or to throw us out into the cold, even after we have been loved ‘til our fur comes off. It is in the places of our lives where we have been most alienated that we are more likely to meet God. It is there that God waits for us, offering us that unmerited grace which is so hard to see from our easy chairs. On those days when things are rolling along oh so smoothly, those days when we actually think that we are in charge, it’s just hard to clearly see the presence of God.

          But then, there are those other days, the days when our plans go astray or get taken out with the trash or just get ignored by our spouses and our children and our bosses. Perhaps that is because we need to learn to approach our days with a very keen awareness of Who is Boss! If you are really looking for God, look for him not on the days when things are good. Look instead when they start to turn sour. Chances are that he has a lesson just for you.

          Of course, you know that this message is not about stuffed animals or wooden puppets. They are just metaphors for the main event. The main event is Jesus. Jesus is the real deal. God got our attention by sending us his son. God became a real live boy, and then a real live man, and then…a real live Savior. God knows all about having the fur rubbed off him. He invented the idea.

          So if you want to be real, then you need to take on his image. You need to take up the cross. Just don’t expect it to be what you thought it was. It’s not in the difficulties and unfriendliness of life that we find the cross, although that too can be a fertile training ground. Rather, it is that point for each of us when we look the most unlike Christ. Our cross is that point where we are so diverged that we must make a choice.

          Will it be our way? Will we seek happiness in our own pursuits? Or will it be the way of the Cross? Will we die to self in order to find ourselves? Will we take on our own image or will we accept God’s grace and walk into the light to find ourselves finally REAL…real and free and living our lives in the image of Christ?

         If you want to build a Self, don’t run from the pain or the confrontation. It’s there for a reason. Each time we release ourselves to God, each time we confront ourselves at those points of unlikeness to Christ, we become a little more consecrated. Each time, we become one step closer to the real humanity that God has promised us. Paul tells the Colossian church that above all things, we are to put on love, which binds everything together to which indeed we were called. It’s what we do if we are to be real Christians made in the image of God.

          Let me close with a quote you all know from The Velveteen Rabbit, though Paul himself couldn’t have said it better:

               It takes a long time. That’s why it does not often

               happen 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.