Becoming Real--September 9, 2020

Becoming Real—September 9, 2020

“For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” [Ephesians 4:21-24]

It’s all about Jesus. It really is. 

That’s the long and the short of it—the whole Christian life is about God making us over into the likeness of God-with-a-human-face, who is Christ Jesus. It's about becoming more fully alive by becoming more like the One who is "the Life." It’s that simple. 

Note, however, that I said “simple” and not “easy.” It’s not just a snap of the fingers or folded arms and a nod of the head, a la I Dream of Jeannie. It’s the ongoing (and quite often, slow-going) process of God getting us to leave behind our old self and to be re-created as something new, something like Christ. 

Makes me think of butterflies. Not just the fact that they start out as caterpillars, but that even as they emerge from the chrysalis, they intentionally struggle to get out before they unfold their wings and fly off as new creatures. I remember hearing a story somewhere about a guy who saw a new butterfly pushing its way out of its chrysalis, and how he felt pity for the way the poor creature was struggling. So he reached out and pulled the chrysalis open to make it easier for the butterfly to get out—but in a matter of hours of being freed from the confines of the chrysalis, the butterfly’s wings were still misshapen and stunted. They hadn’t gotten the strength they needed to become properly solid and flight-worthy, because they hadn’t had to struggle against the rigid chrysalis walls. And so this amazing new creation—a butterfly from a caterpillar!—was forced to walk on its six legs rather than fly, because it had never been allowed to have the growth that only comes from struggle. Imagine that—all the beauty of a butterfly’s gorgeous wings, but never being able to fly with them, because they had never gotten the strength they needed at the right time of development… because they had never struggled like they needed to. 

All of a sudden, the struggle to leave behind the old shell doesn’t seem so bad. It turns out to be vital, life-giving, even. Not easy, maybe. Never easy. But vital. 

These verses from Ephesians have the same kind of hopeful realism about our life in Christ, too. It is like shedding the old, hardened skin of a cocoon. That isn’t easy, and it means leaving something behind—something that was once part of you, something that once gave you the comfortable shelter of the familiar. That is part of the cost of discipleship--we get used to those old self-centered ways, those Me-and-My-Group-First impulses, and we don't want to be confronted about them or give them up, because it feels like losing a part of our selves.

And it also means struggle. But the struggle itself is part of how God makes us over into the likeness of Christ. I don’t mean to glorify suffering, but rather to say that God has this clever way of using it as the tool through which God makes us into what we are meant to become. Even the struggle is redeemed. Even the suffering gets used. Even the pain can become something beautiful. Like James Baldwin says, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

You don’t become able to love like Christ when everybody has said only nice things to you today—you learn to love like Christ when you have been mistreated, when you have had your name dragged in the mud or falsely accused, when you have been ignored or rejected. You learn to love like Jesus, in other words, when it’s hard and feels like a struggle you’d rather give up on. 

You don’t become courageous like Christ when you are spared all the tense moments of potential conflict. You learn courage when you are frightened of the outcome, when you are anxious about what you are supposed to say but say it anyway, when you are afraid of what you will have to endure if you stick around rather than run away—but you do these things anyway. 

You don't learn to care about justice being done like Christ when you are insulated from injustice and never have to think about others being stepped on.  Honestly, maybe it's our fear of having that insulation stripped away that makes us so often uncomfortable when someone starts pulling at the threads of injustice around us.

You don’t learn forgiveness when no one has wronged you—you learn what it is to show mercy when you are the one who has been slighted, wronged, or upset, and you do the hard work of letting go rather than getting a charley-horse in your soul. 

It is hard to let these things happen. It can hurt. You know how the story goes with the Velveteen Rabbit: 

"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." 

Such is the way God works on us to make us into the image of Christ—it is a beautiful thing to become “Real” the way Christ is Real, but it is a beauty that looks like shabbiness to the untrained eye. It means the old self gets worn off, along with sharp edges, fragile egos, and the jagged places in our hearts where the passive-aggressiveness and pettiness resides. Something old goes away, yes.  Something that was a part of our old self dies.  And yet somehow we are brought more fully to life as that happens.  The more like Jesus we are made, the more alive we truly are.

Is there struggle to become a new self that reflects the likeness of God? Yep. 

Is there suffering and risk and fear sometimes? Sure. 

Is it worth it to become like Christ, and for once to become really Real? Absolutely. 

Lord God, have at us. Make us into your own living sculptures of Christ. Make us into butterflies with real working wings after all that cocooned in the darkness. Make us really Real in you.