"GENUINE IMITATION"
Psalm 119:1-24; Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Francis of Assisi
was a wealthy twelfth-century Italian
who gave everything up to serve God.
One day, the story goes,
he went to one of the novice monks
and said, "Let's go down into the town and preach!"
The novice jumped at the chance
to go and watch Francis in action.
So they left the monastery
and walked down the hill towards town.
They got to the village,
passed through the main streets,
turned down a few alleys,
went out towards the suburbs,
and then headed out on a different road
that would wind around and take them back to the monastery.

When they got near the gate,
the novice turned to Francis and said,
"You have forgotten, Father, 
that we went into the town to preach!"
Francis said to him,
"My son, we have preached.
We were preaching while we were walking.
We have been seen by many.
Our behavior has been closely watched.
It was thus that we have preached our morning sermon.
It is no use to walk anywhere to preach,"
he said,
"unless we preach everywhere as we walk."
One of the things for which Saint Francis of Assisi is remembered today
is for being the one who said,
"Preach the Gospel always,
and if necessary, use words."

I am not the only preacher in this room.
You and I, and all of us,
are preachers.
We preach with our lives, whether we realize it or not;
sometimes, we use words.
Hopefully, our lives are preaching about the One
whom we have chosen in our baptisms to follow.
And hopefully, as we do,
you and I are learning to imitate God.
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The very first "imitation"
that you and I did in following Christ
was our baptism.
Even if we were baptized as adults
and knew everything that was going to happen,
I think it's safe to say
that most of us really didn't understand what was going on
or how God was at work in our lives in that moment.
It's something that we grow into
as we learn how to follow every day.
Most of us were baptized
because either we or our parents loved God,
and we knew that baptism was one of the things
that Jesus told his followers to do.
But we knew that it was about more than just water.
So in that moment,
we began to imitate the Teacher
and we hoped that the rest would follow.

Of course, we continue that imitation
every time we gather around this table,
which we know is about a whole lot more
than just bread and wine.
Another way we try to learn how to imitate God
is through Christian education.
None of us ever gets old enough
to have it all down perfectly.
There is always something new to learn.
And so we spend time with our church family
and with teachers who,
even though they are leading the class,
are trying just as hard as we are
to learn how to imitate God.
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Imitation is not something that's exactly encouraged
in our society.
We're encouraged to be originals,
not imitators.
Unique is good;
copycats and wannabes are not.
Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery.
But whether it's imitation butter or imitation leather,
we tend to think less of something or someone
if it's not "the real thing."

We're not encouraged to imitate,
and we're certainly not encouraged
to imitate the ways that Paul tells us
to "be imitators of God."
People who are kind and forgiving
are not always the ones who make it to "the top."
Telling the truth
doesn't always work in our favor.
As for not letting the sun go down on our anger,
well, there's a reason that they call it
"nursing a grudge."
Sometimes we allow righteous anger to define us,
and if we were to give it up,
we would lose our sense of who we are.
And for some, well,
if they followed my grandmother's advice
"If you can't say anything nice,
don't say anything at all" -
we'd never hear anything from them.

Our society may not encourage us to be carbon copies,
or to imitate what they would call
the path of "downward mobility"
that we find in the gospel.
But I do believe that our society wants us to imitate
what IT wants for us to imitate.
There are lots of influences
which vie for our attention every moment.
If there's anything worse than being reduced to a statistic,
perhaps it's when we feel that our value to some
is only in what and how much we can consume.
When we set our sights on keeping up with the neighbors
or on having the same cool tennis shoes as our classmates,
we are declaring loud and clear
what it is that we choose to imitate.
Whether we realize it or not,
we are preaching with our lives.
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Friends, our job
is to make sure we are imitating
the One who created us,
and called us,
and draws us together into community.
One way we can tell whether we are doing that
is that it will not always feel easy
or come naturally to us,
but it will always bring us joy.

Precisely because it does not come naturally
to imitate God,
we have to practice.
There's a reason why prayer,
and meditation,
and worship, and even service,
are called Christian practices.
It's because we don't get it perfectly
the first time we try it.
Actually, we never get it perfect.
None of us was born reading.
We have to learn how to read,
and to practice and practice
until we get to the point where we don't even think about it anymore.
Like it is for reading, or math,
or driving, or riding a bike,
or any of the basic things
that we intend to keep doing for the rest of our lives,
we have to practice the habits of our faith
so that they don't get rusty,
and so that we can get better and better at doing them -
until we get to the point where we do them
without even thinking about it anymore.

And, you know,
if we did nothing else for the rest of our lives
but practice the ways that Ephesians encourages us to imitate God,
we would have more than enough to do.
The list of things that Paul mentions
is not just a list of things to keep us busy, though.
Nor are they practices
which will teach us to be holy
all by ourselves.
These things that we are to practice
are things that we know about God
and how God operates.
All of them //
are intended to help us build a life together.
God within God's self is a community
which we call the Trinity.
And if we are to imitate God,
then we too are called to live with and among others,
to interact with them
and to demonstrate the fullness of God
in the way that we act and speak and talk with each other.
Speaking the truth to our neighbors,
or as it says literally in the Greek version,
"put away the lie."
Do not let the sun go down on our anger.
This assumes that there will be times we are angry;
but the reason for our anger ought to be settled
by the time we go to bed.
so that it doesn't have time to settle in within us.
Keep busy -
not just to have something to do,
but so that we have something to share with others who might need it.
Let our words give grace -
not anger or sorrow, but grace to those who hear them.
Forgive each other as God has forgiven us.
When we are truthful,
honest,
productive,
and forgiving,
then we are imitating our Creator
who does those very things just by being God.
It won't be easy.
It will take practice.
But we won't be doing it by ourselves.
We will have the help of the One we imitate -
and we will have each other to support us
as we all practice genuine imitation together.
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In August of 1998,
Sam Bowers was finally convicted
of a crime he had committed three decades earlier.
Bowers was an Imperial Wizard of the White Knights
of the Ku Klux Klan.
It was forty years ago this summer
that he and some other Klansmen torched the home of Vernon Dahmer.
The fire killed Dahmer and one of his three children.
This all happened
because he had allowed black people to pay their poll taxes
in his grocery store.
Some of you may remember Will Campbell,
a Southern Baptist preacher who was a bit of a firebrand
and an activist for civil rights.
In the thirty years between Dahmer's death and Bowers' trial,
Will Campbell had befriended Mrs. Dahmer
and walked with her along the way to justice.
On the morning of the retrial in 1998,
a newspaper reporter looked up to the front
and noticed that Will Campbell was sitting with Mrs. Dahmer.
After a while, the reporter looked up again
and noticed
that Will Campbell had moved across the courtroom
and was now sitting with Sam Bowers and his family.
Apparently he had befriended them too.
At the end of court that day,
the reporter asked Campbell how it was
that he could befriend both a murderer
and the widow of the man that he had killed.
Campbell's reply was this:
"Because I'm a Christian."

Preach the gospel always,
and if necessary, use words.
"Therefore, be imitators of God,
as beloved children,
and live in love,
as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,
a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Amen.

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The story about Saint Francis was recounted by the Rev. John M. Allen in his sermon, "Preach the Gospel, if Necessary Use Words."  It can be accessed at:  http://www.asaints.org/parishlife/sermons/jma20041003.html

The story about Will Campbell can be found in Tom Long's latest book Testimony:  Talking Ourselves into Being Christian.