Becoming Real

Becoming Real--February 24, 2017

“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. Pulling us out of the dead shells of our own ego, sometimes kicking and screaming, and leading us out by the hand as new creations.  It’s the ongoing (and quite often, slow-going) process of God getting us to leave behind our old self, our old "me-centeredness", our old wills  and wish-lists, 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.

Paul has the same kind of hopeful realism about our life in Christ, too. It is like shedding the old, hardened skin of a cocoon. That's me, all bent-in-on-myself, to use Luther's familiar image.  And that's all of us--curved in on ourselves, and putting up any defense we can to keep ourselves insulated that way. We build walls like that when we are afraid--not when we are faithful and free.  We turn away from others like that when we are centered on self--not when we are caught up in the selfless love of God.  We settle for such a small view of a small world, of which we think we are the center--that's what it's like to live inside a cocoon.  Of course you think you are the center of the universe and thus the most important thing in it, if you live inside a cocoon--you cannot see that there is a much wider, bigger world beyond you, unless you get outside of yourself. 

But that, of course, is exactly what the Spirit of God is up to among us....

That act of being pulled out of the old chrysalis, the old cocoon, isn’t easy, because it means leaving something behind—something that was once so close to you, you sore part of you, something that once gave you the comfortable shelter of the familiar. 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 (please, please hear me correctly on that point!), but rather to say that God has this clever way of using suffering 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.

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 learn how much bigger God's vision really are until you have been pulled out from the comfortable darkness of the cocoon in which you were the center of your own tiny little universe.  You don't get the feel for how deeply good and wide God's Reign of justice and mercy really is until you have been dethroned from your own heart, so that a crucified king and all those he loves (everybody) can be welcomed in.

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 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. 

Is there struggle to become a new self that reflects the way and will of God rather than the will of self-centered me? 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.