MARCH 12th, 2025 PASTOR DON PIEPER
“The Life You've Always Wanted!” Eph 2:1-10/Mark 1:6-15
“MORPHING TIME!”
Thanks to the marvels of media, or the media of Marvel, children grow up with all kinds of heros. As it so happens, one of the most profound stateements I've ever heard about the human condi-tion was one that was spoken by one of my childhood heros, Popeye the Sailor Man. Anyone remember him? When he was frustrated or feeling inadequate, Popeye would mutter, “I yam what I yam”.
Popeye was not a particularly sophisticated guy. He didn't seem to have a degree of any kind. He'd never been in therapy, though that might've helped. He was woefully out of touch with his inner child and had delusions about the medicinal properties of green vegetables – particularly of canned spinach – Yuck! But he knew who he was: a simple, sea-faring pipe-smoking, Olive Oyl-loving sailor man, and didn't pretend to be anything else. He owned his story, as they say.
“I yam what I yam!” I always thought there was a note of sadness in Popeye's expression. It was generally offered as an explanation of his shortcomings. It certainly doesn't anticipate much growth or positive change. It doesn't leave much of a shot at getting to be what he yam not. Don't get your hopes up. Don't expect too much. I yam what I yam, and as often noted, that's all that I yam!
One summer during my seminary years, I enrolled in C.P.E., Clinical Pastoral Education, or eradiction, as we called it. I and five other 'student chaplains' sat in a room five days a week with a supervisor who'd conduct sessions that felt like group therapy. I was frequently praised by my peers for being “the wise man of the group”, which always made me feel uncomfortable. I'd often dismiss their praise with some self-depriciating humor until one day our supervisor interupted. “Oh, there goes Pieper again, hobbling around with his wooden leg!” Huh?
I let the comment go without reacting. When he repeated it a couple of days later, I asked him if he was quoting Mary Poppins. In it Uncle Albert tells a joke in which he says, “I have a friend with a wooden leg named Smith.” “Oh really?” inquires Bert. “And what's the name of his other leg?”
My supervisor informed me that he'd never seen the movie. Instead, he noted that whenever someone offered me a word of praise I offered my proverbial wooden leg so they wouldn't expect me to fun so far or so fast. That is, he said, I discounted the potential others saw in me so they wouldn't expect so much from me. I yam what I yam.
Such is the sad cry of the human race. This is the struggle between disappointment and hope. I yam what I yam. But the truth of it is, that's not all that I am. I'm called to become the person God had in mind when he originally designed me for his glory. No wonder so many people who have NDE's report that in their encounter with the God of Light they are told that they are being sent back because God isn't finished with them yet. They have yet to discover all that they could be, as led by His Spirit.
One of the great works of art in the Western world is Michelangelo's Pieta, a marble statue of an anguished Mary holding the crucified Christ. I remember standing in front of it in Rome, shoulder to shoulder with a throng of other tourists. Some years earlier a fanatic nationalist rushed upon the masterpiece and began smashing it with a sledgehammer. It seemed hopelessly ruined but Vatican artists were able to restore the statue to near-perfect condition. A masterpiece it remains!
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You were created to be a restored masterpiece as well. Paul writes, 'For we are God's poiema' (Ephesians 2:10) – a word that means work of art, or masterpiece. God made you to be one with Him and with other human beings. It's the goodness of God's work in creating us that makes our current brokenness so tragic, but God is determined to overcome the defacing of his image in us. His plan is not simply to reepair most of our brokenness. He wants to make us into new creatures, works of art!
Frederick Buechner once wrote that every age has produced fairy tales. Something inside us believes, or wants to believe, that the world as we know it is not the whole story. We long for the reenchantment of reality. We hope that death is not the end, that the universe is something more than an enclosed terrarium. So we keep spinning and repeating stories that hold the promise of another world. Such stories demand that another world exists. But more significantly, a common feature of fairy tales is that the enchanted world is not far away. It can yet be discovered!
You step through a mirror and you're in Wonderland. You step out of a tornado blown house and you're in Munchinkinland, on the road to Oz. Or my favorite: You step into a wardrobe and you're in Narnia, or through a stable door and behold the new Narnia, like the old, only much, much better!
The other world turns out to be far closer than you thought. In fact, the stories that endure are the ones that most deeply touch this longing inside of us. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien: “It is the mark of the good fairy story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, how-ever fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to the child...or adult, that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Furthermore, fairy tales are not just stories abou the transformation of the world around us. They are usually about the transformation of the central characters: frogs become princes, ugly ducklings becoming swans, wooden marionettes become real boys, cynical, arrogant boys become dragons only to become noble, faithful young lads, isolated little Hobbits become larger than life heroees of nations and peoples. These are all features, Buechner says, that the gospel has in common with fairy tales, with this one great difference – The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and real!
Jesus' announcement of the gospel is simply the announcement of the existence of another dimension of existence, of another world. “The time promised by God has come at last! The Kingdom of God has come near! Repent, and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15) The Good News, the word that is translated as 'gospel', is that this fallen world as we know it is not the whole story. There is another realm. It's as real as the chair you are sitting on and the building in which we are worshipping in! NDE's report that their experience of heaven felt far more real than anything in this world or life.
These words of Jesus announce the great 'turn' in the history of the world. The lid is off the terrarium! Anytime someone heard Jesus say this, really heard him, these words would bring a catch of the breath, a beating, uplifting and a burning of the heart, and some times tears. We hear it as Jesus makes clear the mystery of the two leaving the location of his resurrection as they marvel to each other: “Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained it all to us?”
(Luke 24:32)
The good news is that Jesus realm – the kingdom of heaven – is far closer than you think. It is available to ordinary men and women and children. It is available to people who have never thought of themselves as religious or spiritual. It is available to you! You can live in it even now!
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This story, then, your story is the story of transformation. You will not always be as you are now! The day is coming when you will be something incomparably better – if you're so willing. This is why Jesus came. This is what pursuing him, following his lead, is all about!
God holds out the possibility of transformation. When God spoke to Moses from a burning bush, He said that he wanted to begin a new community of human existence, and he wanted to Moses to lead it. Moses answer? “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah? Nobody knows me. I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. I'm a huge disappointment. I yam what I yam.”
Then God said to Moses what he has said to you and me and millions of other Moses: “I know. That doesn't matter for I will be with you. Your guilt and inadequacies are no longer the whole truth about you. You are what you are, but that's not all that you are. You are what you are, but you are not yet what you will be. I will be with you. Embrace and pursue this hope I bring!”
Some years ago yet another hero lit up people's TV screens – The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The show was an unlikely hit, produced on a low budget in Japan and then badly, painfully dubbed into English. Their rallying cry in moments of crisis was “It's Morphing Time!” With that, they would be transformed with the ability to do extraordinary things.
Of course it's not just kids who want to morph. The desire for transformation lies deep in every human heart. This is why people enter therapy, join health clubs, get into recovery groups, read self-help books and make new year's resolutions. The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope. In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul urges them: “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:3) The word he uses is that of metamorphoo, from which we get the word, mmetamorphosis.
When morphing happens, I don't just do the things Jesus would've done, I find myself wanting to do them. They appeal to me. They make sense. I don't just go around trying to do the right things; I become the right sort of person. In other words, ordinary people can receive power for extraordinary change. In essence, Paul declares: “It's morphing time!”
I'll never forget the incredible transformation I and others here witnessed years ago in Barbara Runge when she came back from a trip abroad. While there, she was attacked in broad daylight, hospitalized, and began intense counseling as the violence she endured brought to the surface the violence she'd endured as a child. In recent years her marriage had suffered as her inner rage and deep sensee of disappointment in herseelf was expressed in bitterness and distrust. In the aftermath, she opened herself to God, and to others, as she'd never done before. She began a process by which she allowed the Spirit of God to renew her heart and mind. She began to morph before our eyes.
The lid is off the terrarium. The turn has come, with a catch of breath and a beating of the heart - and with tears. Metamorphosis is a process. It is the process to which Jesus invites us to embrace, as he proclaimed, “The time has come at last! The Kingdom of God has come near! Repent, and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15) The good news is that now it's possible for ordinary men and women to live in the presence and under the power of God. It's about the exciting transformation of human life – of your life! The Kingdom of God has come near!
Seek first the Kingdom of God...and He will give you your hearts desire – to finally and fully reach your potential as you morph into the very image of God's Son, Jesus, as He draws near to you!