Sermon 3.16.25 Imitation Game

Sermon Begins @ 26:29

“Brothers and Sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example that you have in us.”

The Apostle Paul told the people of Philippi that they should be imitators of him, and through him, they would become imitators of Christ.

In the 19th century, the wisdom of the age told us that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

In our day, imitation is the sincerest way to try to make money as an influencer on the internet.

If you have ever got caught in the modern phenomenon of “doom scrolling,” which is what happens when computer algorithms feed your dopamine receptors with endless loops of cat videos and fitness gurus,

Then you have seen and felt the power of what I like to call the Influencah epidemic;

Hundreds of thousands of people vying for your attention, whether or not their information is true, helpful, or necessary.

Influencer culture spans every type of political and cultural persuasion.

One of the things that you notice, if you’ve ever gotten hooked into a short session of “doom scrolling” - which you were just going to do for a minute, but then an hour later you’re still trying to find the right video to end on – is how much imitation there is.

It gets so repetitive that you can almost know exactly what a video will say just by how the camera is set up in the first shot.

“oh my God, you guys, I wasn’t convinced about this dress, but it was only $15, so I bought it  and ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad I did….”

Or, “Dudes, these are the only 5 ab routines you ever have to do, forget the diets, forget the fasting, these will literally change your life.”

Imitation of influencers, like advertising, makes a tacit promise that if you do what I do, or believe what I believe, or do this night time moisturizing routine, you will be like me.

This is not a new thing, of course.

Humans have always imitated one another, learned from one another, wanted to be like one another.

But it’s so important, especially as we bring our children up in a world where there are no online safety rails.

Just this week, USA Today reported on a 13 year old girl in Florence Kentucky, who took her own life, because of the influence of a group obsessed with the Columbine High School shootings from 1999.

Researchers have shown that TikTok accounts that purport to be teens often have 50% of their content related to depression, sadness, and suicide within 20 minutes of scrolling;

With some of them encouraging self-harm.

Influence and imitation are hard-wired into our psyches.

The question that the Apostle Paul puts to us today, which has been relevant to human beings throughout time is: Who is worthy of our imitation?

In a landscape like the one I’ve described - not to make you too anxious, but to be real about the stakes involved – We see how this question continues to need our attention.

Who do we see in our culture that reminds us of Jesus’ Way?

What stories do we have that prepare us for difficult days like the Psalmist who remains steadfast in patience and trust, though “encircled by enemies” in a “day full of trouble?”

Who encircles people with protection like a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings?

With these questions in mind, I’d like to spend the rest of our time this morning considering one of the greatest influencers in American History.

This past Monday, March 10th was the anniversary of the passing of Harriet Tubman,

The American Moses.

I would venture to say that most of us are familiar with the major events of her life as have been passed down to us by generations of history keepers.

I’m not going to tell her story.

What I want to do briefly today is talk to you about the statue of her called “Beacon of Hope,” which sat for a few months outside of the National Underground Railroad Center downtown and about her iconicity.

It can be very difficult to decide who is worth imitating.

I would like to suggest that one way to identify people who are worth imitating is by considering their iconicity;

That is to say the symbolic things that accompany them, or would accompany them.

The statue, “Beacon of Hope,” by William Wofford that depicts Harriet Tubman is 13 ft tall.

The most striking aspect of the statue, the first thing that you see is her powerful right hand.

The statue itself is made of bronze, which, when weathered, is a deep black color with a green hew.

If you’ve ever seen a bronze statue however, like the statue of Abraham Lincoln that sits at the National Cathedral, you’ll notice that in places where thousands of people have touched them, they actually take on the radiant and bright bronze hew of the original alloy.

In the Beacon of Hope statue, Wofford imitated that bright mark for the bronze of Harriet’s right hand, which has the Great North Star behind it.

This is iconic.

Harriet is known for having followed the North Star, and for being a beacon of light for people seeking freedom.

In this image, she is both.

The star and the light are part of her iconography. This image, like the ancient and medieval icons of saints bears the shining light of freedom.

The next thing you notice about the statue is Harriet’s other hand.

Though she is looking mostly forward, her gaze is also slightly behind her as her other hand stretches out with a key to a little girl.

This little girl is actually her own self as a child.

But not only that, in her own depiction as a child, she is the hope for what all children can become, if someone is willing to reach out a hand, to take them under their wing.

The final piece of the icon that I want to pull out for you is the sea of shackles that lay beneath her feet.

Just as Jesus cast out demons and performed cures on the first and second day, pursued by Herod,

Harriet freed her people from the greed and malice that were the backbone of their enslavers.

She gave people the courage to seek freedom, and to break every bond.

When you think about Harriet Tubman, our Great Moses of America, and you think about her iconicity,

You see how she resembles things that are worthy of imitation; shining light, reaching out for others, casting off shackles.

I would venture to guess that if you were to think of all of the influencers that cross past your screen and thought about their iconicity, you would find a very stark difference indeed.

I imagine that if you held up the three most important iconic things about other people who hold power in our society, you would find a very stark difference.

I wonder whose iconicity resembles and imitates that of our Lord and Savior, and which of our influential icons don’t stack up.

When you think, St. Andrew’s, about who is worthy of your imitation, look at what you’re being asked to imitate,

If you imitate hate, if you imitate derision, if you imitate impatience, are you imitating Christ?

“Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

Jesus is our mother hen, if you imitate her, if you imitate Harriet, if you let yourself be influenced by icons rather than egos, then that will be a truly great day.

Amen.