To Be or To Do?

To Be or to Do? That is the question.
To-Do lists, calendars, daily planners, schedulers – ad infinitum. Sometimes it seems that these control our lives. We are not our own. More importantly, we are not God’s. We spend our lives doing. Have we forgotten that rather than “to do,” God calls us “to be?”

Maybe that’s not your experience, I’m going to pray today that it is not. But I must confess that it is my experience. Even in my retirement, I have allowed myself to be ruled by things causing me to forget how to simply be.

May I remind you – an especially myself – we as Christians, are first “be-ers” of the Word? Since my time as a boy in Vacation Bible School, I have made James 1:22 my life’s verse. Paraphrased and truncated as it was for me, it read, “Be ye doers of the word.” Somehow, I left off the remainder of the verse and took it out of context. In context it says:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror, and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it-not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. James 1:22-25 NIV.

Even back to the beginning, God created the first people first to “be” before they were to “do.” Notice closely that while they were immediately given tasks “To Do,” they were first given “To Be.”

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So, God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Remember in Luke 10:38-41 Jesus visited the house of Martha in Bethany?

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10”38-41 NIV.

Which one did Jesus approve? Mary, of course, the one who merely sat at his feet listening.

Among Jesus’ last words to His disciples, one finds this passage in John 14.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” . . . “If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:6,7,15 NIV.

Love is an act of doing, but first, may I submit that it is a state of being. “We love [Jesus] because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19. Paul reflects this notion in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says that if we do all sorts of wonderful things but don’t have love, we are just making a loud noise that attracts the attention of the world but not of God. Note that “have” is a passive verb.

Here is the summation. N.T. Wright says that God created people in Genesis to reflect Who God is back to Himself and to people. We can only reflect God out of who we are (Be.) This “Be-ing” is first received from God. If we do out of this who we are or who we “be,” only then can our actions reflect God to the world.

On the contrary, if we “be” out of what we reflect or do, then we reflect only ourselves and place ourselves firmly in the stream of the world rather than in the Will of God.

“To be” is what God first called us to do, and that “be-ing” is the thing He first approves. See the example of Mary, supra.

A cartoon saying from the 1960s has always stuck with me. “Tooter” was the brash and headstrong old turtle from the show “King Leonardo and His Short Subjects.” He always got himself into trouble by trying to be someone like else.

In every adventure, Mr. Wizard, the Wise old lizard had to rescue Tooter by saying, in a middle European accent, “Tootor, Tooter, alvays I tell you, ‘be chest vat yooss iss und not vat yooss iss not, causs dose vat tus iss ze happiest lot.”

Please know that I have prayed that each of you will “be” before you “do,” and I have prayed individually as God led me for each of you and your church or mission. May God bless you today as all days.

In Jesus’ Name, I pray, AMEN.