Doing is on the way to Becoming

“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 ….’”

The Velveteen Rabbit

I once was asked why I didn’t title my sermons.  

My not serious, tongue in cheek, quip was that I was a closet Episcopalian, and while I believed in Jesus, I didn’t believe in titles.  Episcopalians do not title their sermons, Methodists normally do.  But I assure you, I am not a closet Episcopalian.  Their Sunday duds are just not me.  I might become an Episcopalian, but I doubt it. 

The real answer is titles box me in. 

Here at Hilltop, we print the bulletin on Thursday, and I am often, very often, not ready to put a title on a sermon at that time.  A title forces me into a direction I am not always ready to be go. Yes, I can be stubborn at times with the Holy Spirit and the direction of a sermon. 

When I have a good title and know with great certainty where the Holy Spirit is carrying me, it’s easy.  Look at the bulletins for Sunday worship in September; titles will be present. But that title creation prompted me to think about a lot of stuff. 

The act of creating a title for this Sunday’s sermon produced a jumble in my head.  As we look at the book of James in September, that jumble is stirred by contemplating the answer to the question:  “What does it mean to live as a Christian?”  

The theme for the month, “Doing Church” is also messing with me. Several weeks ago when it was proposed, it generated no dissonance in my head at all.  Now, for some reason, it keeps clashing in my head.  (To be clear, this a good dissonance, like in Jazz or the Blues or Stravinsky). 

I was glad to read that the theme had an impact on Mary Jean Davison as she wrote her excellent Music and Arts article in our newsletter. Mary Jean suggests that by doing church, we start to experience transformation and get to a place of becoming where we are the church.  You don’t stay at doing. At some point, you become. 

Spanish has two verbs to be.  One has an element of permanence, and the other is understood to be temporary.  If you use the wrong verb to say someone is smart or beautiful, you are actually suggesting it is not part of their normal state.  I see this doing/being in the same way.  We have to do the church enough, that at some point it stops being doing, and it becomes a vital statement about who we actually are. 

I assure you that after having prepared right at 500 sermons I am not the same person I was 500 sermons ago.  Church is a different reality for me than fifteen years ago, sometimes even fifteen minutes ago. 

Being the church is, in the sense of the two Spanish verbs to be, permanent and temporary.  Gradually as we become real in terms of being little Christs, the meaning of Christian after all, he becomes permanently part of who we are, and we leave more and more of the temporary behind. 

I suspect it is never completed, that in this life we are never fully 100% finished.  To paraphrase Paul from 1^st Corinthians 13, I suspect it is a state of constant becoming, a state of seeing in the mirror and just getting it dimly, always seeking more light, more clarity, moving from doing to a state of becoming. In the words of the Skin Horse, you become real. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis