When Paul says “imitate me” in Philippians today, I wonder how you hear it. I wonder how he means it. “Imitate me.” And not just imitate me, “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me.” Do you like what he did there? If you imitate me, you’ll be joining the others who already have. That’s right, there’s a line. A bandwagon, if you will. Don’t worry, there’s probably room for you. Paul, channeling his best Ron Burgundy, “I don’t know how to put this. I’m kind of a big deal.” But even before we get to Paul’s reputation in some circles as a sometimes long-winded and/or arrogant grump, it just feels like a smug thing to say. You want the answer? Look no further. Right here.
But then. This one time, years ago, I found myself in the Badlands of South Dakota and had me rethinking what I thought I knew about St. Paul. I was in the Badlands of South Dakota on a hike that had become unexpectedly treacherous. I was in way over my head. And a more experienced hiker in front of me, who was no less uneasy about our unfolding situation than I was, calmly and humbly comforted me: Jonathan, it’s gonna be okay. It’s not gonna be easy. But watch where I put my hands and look where I put my feet. Put your hands and feet in those places. I’ll do the figuring. You do the following. We’re gonna make it. Together. I promise I won’t leave without you. So, I did. And we did - we made it out of the wilds together. What I’m suggesting is that it’s at least a possibility, for Paul’s haters this morning, that maybe he isn’t only or always smug. Maybe his invitation to imitation is born of shared belonging and compassion.
Even so. Even if Paul didn’t come with some baggage (and he does). Even if he could be read more charitably by us (and he can), some people won’t imitate another person, any person, on principle. They want to be original. They want to write their own story. From scratch. But did you know - and they have studies on this - that even our ideas of independence are things we copy from other people? Because you’re trying to be independent like John Wayne, or your grandpa, or whomever. You’re working off a template. While you and I are probably working off different templates, there doesn’t seem to be any real way around the fact that you’re always copying something; that your pure originality is a myth.
In fact, it turns out, the act, the art, of imitation, of consideration and emulation, is a part of our biological hardwiring. It’s automatic. Because we’re made for connection and social belonging. Babies start imitating parents well within their first year of life. At the same time they start copying you, they start to recognize when you’re copying them, too. And they love it! Which explains the addictive properties of peek a boo.
As adults, we continue to mimic one another, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. And the not on purpose parts are important. They’re important, not so you and I will learn to stop imitating but so that we’ll become aware that we always are imitating. There’s no turning it off. Constantly, unknowingly, borrowing micro-expressions from other people. Constantly, unknowingly, carrying ideas about the world we got from other people: ideas about love and its limits, scarcity and abundance, ideas about what is and isn’t possible, about what is and is not desirable, ideas we will sometimes only later see were not the only way to see, even when we choose to keep them. The expressions are like threads that show us the ways love has shaped us. Attention and imitation are important because we human beings are shaped by our loves.
A theologian friend of mine was taking his oldest kid and a friend to the mall. As he dropped them off at the circle, he called out, “Have a good time at the temple!” The temple was an inside joke between them. It was the dad’s way of reminding his son that formation doesn’t always start with our heads. It happens in the silent spaces of life, in countless invisible decisions of attention and presence. Where you put your treasure, there will your heart be. That kind of stuff. The dad wanted to remind his son that mall shapes a life in a particular direction. Without asking your permission. Just by your being there. Hopefully, the community of faith offers an alternative formation, life that is life, in a different direction. Because, when it comes to imitation, the question is not if but who and to what end? Because the possibility that you can write or control your own story from scratch is, frankly, not on the table.
One of the gifts Lent can maybe be is space to examine the imitations at work in our lives. The patterns, both life-giving and life-diminishing, running in the background, in us. To get honest about the gazes that grab us. What do I notice? What do I fail to notice? What would I like to notice more? Where would I like my heart to be? Maybe Lent can mean an audit of our longings and our loves. Of our screen-time, so to speak. Of the voices we prioritize and direct the fact of imitation toward the One whose love first moved the sun and the stars.
Along these lines, one possible very good use of Lent is to reflect on the examples you first remember observing and admiring, as a child, especially those example of faith. Who in your life first made some part of you come alive: “That!” you felt. I want to be kind like that? Or unexpectedly gentle like that? Or put together like that? Or totally comfortable being not put together. Or not reducible to a partisan box to fit in, like that? Holy like that? Looking back, what was it about that that that captivated your imagination? How would you describe the thing you saw that compelled your heart?
A young Roger Schutz, years away from founding the ecumenical community of brothers called Taize was, he says, only imitating his grandmother when, at the outset of World War II, he moved to a small town, on the edge of the fighting, to make room for and protect Jewish refugees. She had done the same during the first World War. After the war, Roger opened his home again, this time to German prisoners of war. Looking back, he eventually recognized the force of faith in what he had done. But at the beginning, he was only doing what he knew his grandmother would have done. What she had done. Following her in the way opened up his later understanding.
The fact that you and I can live the life of faith, like Brother Roger, before we understand everything there is to know about either God or ourselves is a great relief to me. If fully understanding a thing was a prerequisite to doing a thing, who would ever, for example, get married? Right? So, good news, says St. Paul. Don’t overthink it. If you want to (eventually) understand generosity, give. If you want to become a person of justice, do just acts. If you want to be a person of prayer, pray. Fake it til you make it. Preferably with others who know you well. But, don’t be fooled, it isn’t faking at all. It’s forming it all. It’s learning with our bodies in the community of faith whose eyes, whose lives, hearts, and attention are all set on Jesus. Because we were made for imitation. Where with hearts fixed on Christ we might become like the One we behold.
Because, bad news/good news. Bad news: you and I can’t think our way to holiness. Good News. You were never meant to. “Imitate me.” Paul says. “Follow me,” Jesus says elsewhere. See, even Paul wasn’t being original. Hear in those words an invitation of belonging and love. Consider the possibility that the invitation to imitation is not the end but the beginning of your freedom and mine, true freedom for the People of God. With the Good News that faith names a journey we travel together. Where together, with Paul, with and in one another, we might also hear our Savior say to us: watch where I put my hands and look where I put my feet. Put your hands and feet in those places. I’ll do the figuring. You do the following. We’re gonna make it. Together. I promise I won’t leave you alone.
Amen.
