Recently I returned to my former high school for a reunion tour of the building. A new addition had been added and the library moved to the ground level, and we students also agreed that something seemed different on the third floor. Yet the change that was more noticeable to me than the building was the physical changes in my former classmates. I looked in my old yearbook to confirm things and... wow, did those guys ever get older and in one or two cases, flabby looking. Then a sobering reality passed over me–if they changed than much, then what do I look like these days! (The gray hair..... the glasses....the developing lines.... and especially the bulging mid-section. My physical changes just sort of took over in a conspiratorial way while I wasn’t looking). It’s as if I was once again standing in front of those distorting mirrors at the fun house at amusement park in my early teens, and laughing at how short and pudgy I looked. Except this time it is for real!! How our lives have a way of getting away from us, if you know what I mean.
I want to talk with you this morning about a couple of mirrors that are very important for us to look into from time to time. The reason we look into these mirrors is so that we can keep track of where our lives are going. Our bible text from the book of James speaks of those who look into a mirror–something we do every day–and walking away and forgetting what they looked like. And since we do that too often--look at our lives and walk away forgetting-- I think we need to first of all look into a mirror that I am calling the mirror of self-reflection.
Our modern world is not reflection-friendly. Even in my short life there has been the creation of several anti-reflection devices: personal computers, televisions with hundreds of stations to choose from, I-pods, and cell phones. These anti-reflective devices put a noisy shield around our souls so that we don’t have the time or the interest to shut everything off and ask, “What is my life about?” We’re strangers to ourselves, in a way.
Besides these noisy distractions, the demands of life can keep us from reflecting on our lives. Life has a way of pushing us forward by all its demands, like being in a line in the supermarket. Do you realize that even church can keep us from honest self-reflection? Yes, church! Routinely going back week after week because we’ve been doing it all our lives. Keeping busy with churchly activities. And in the midst of it all, somehow forgetting what church is really all about. And so we do the good works without asking crucial questions like, “Why do I want God?” or “Why did God create me?”
I have a favorite author who tells of how his father, a successful businessman and active in the church, went out to his orange grove when he was about 60 years old, knelt down, and really gave his life to the Lord. He had a critical moment of reflection and realized that he had missed the relational part of religion. His life ambitions radically changed from that time forward until the end of his life.
So it’s important for us to look into that mirror of self-reflection and instead of rushing away, pausing and asking ourselves whether our lives are authentic. May Sarton wrote a poem titled, “Now I become myself.”
Now I become myself.
It’s taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces...
God wants us to be real, and wants us to look closely into that mirror of self-reflection from time to time, not forgetting what we looked like. No matter what stage of life we are in, whether age 16 or age 80, it is good for us to regularly take inventory of our goals and purpose, and make adjustments to our character and lifestyle if need be. That kind of reflection can set us free.
And yet even more important than self-reflection is a second mirror. Verse 25 of our text reads, “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act–they will be blessed in their doing.” You might be thinking, “”How can that verse refer to both law and liberty in the same breath? Isn’t keeping God’s law a burden and a bother? What kind of freedom is it to be bound by laws?”
There is indeed an irony here. The more we pattern our lives according to God’s law and the more we submit ourselves to what God has commanded, the freer we will be! There is a life-transforming process that takes place when we expose ourselves to what this passage calls God’s law of liberty. We look into the bible and instead of quickly looking away, we ask, “Is this real to me? Am I living this truth in my life?”
Hardly anything is more beautiful than seeing a life transformed when a person looks into the mirror of God, into the face of Jesus. Recently at Frontier Field in Rochester I listened to a former gang leader-turned Christian share some of his story. For decades he has traveled the world telling what God did in transforming his life in New York City so long ago. The life he lived before he met Christ was lawless and reckless, desperate, and lonely. The life he has lived since giving his life to Christ, since looking into the law of liberty is free and fulfilling. You can read his story in a book titled, Run, Baby, Run.
Talking about books, recently I read an unusual book titled, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. (Incidentally I returned that book to the Buffalo Library on Friday, then went to make a hospital visit. Guess what book one of the family members had brought to the hospital: Blue Like Jazz). Donald Miller closes his book with a chapter titled, Jesus: The Lines on His Face. He tells about a man named Alan who went around the county asking ministry leaders questions. Alan interviewed big church pastors and some of those interviews probably seemed a bit boring to him. But Alan was especially impressed with a man he visited named Bill Bright, the president of a big ministry. The interview went along fine and then Alan asked Dr. Bright a final question about what Jesus meant to him. “Alan said Dr. Bright could not answer the question. He said Dr. Bright just started to cry. He sat there in his big chair behind his desk and wept.” Author Donald Miller writes, “When Alan told that story I wondered what it was like to love Jesus that way...I knew then that I would like to know Jesus like that, with my heart, not just my head. I felt that would be the key to something.”
The perfect law of liberty. Moses looked into that law and he glowed when he came down the mountain. As did Jesus when he was transfigured in the presence of some of his disciples. 2 Corinthians 3.18 says, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” You may not be a mystic or even very religious. But this kind of reflection is not for mystics and monks alone. This is practical stuff. Looking into the perfect law of liberty means to be honest before your God. It means to pay attention to the Sunday School lessons on Tuesday and Friday and not just on Sunday. It means beginning the school year determining to say nicer things to others than you did last year. It means to be as dependant on your bible as you are on your cell phone. This kind of reflection brings about wonderful changes in people’s lives. What seems like a burden and an impossible project is really within our reach.
Our challenge this morning is to be a doer of the word, and to spend some moments in reflection about our lives and about our faith. There is a promise in verse 25 that if we do these things we will be blessed. May we all know that blessing. Amen.
