Monkey see, monkey do. Animals are great imitators. I was watching the Discovery channel the other day and saw a breed of African chimps in the equatorial forest of Kenya. They were picking figs off a tree and sampling them for ripeness the way we finger peaches at the Farmers’ Market that will drip on your chin and down your shirt when you bite into them. Yum. The young chimps were watching and imitating the mothers, touching the fruit and learning how to judge it ready to eat. Cute.

Even if you don’t think that your babies resemble primates, you have to agree that humans also learn by imitation. Parents know this well. Cameron used to walk around as a toddler with the phone to her ear, talking to no one in particular, while her mother was dressing. Where’d she pick that up? Rhett loved to push his bubble-maker toy lawnmower alongside me in the yard, working up a sweat as we worked. Now that he’s an expert mower with the heavy equipment, he’s decided that college is a good idea. Smart boy. Jillian always wanted to wear her big sister’s clothes, and when she was about 10, she was so excited one day when Cameron came home from school. She announced proudly that she had borrowed something from Cameron’s closet. What was that? Cameron wanted to know. Socks, she said, with glee. I can now wear your socks! Of course, it goes the other way over time, too. Rhett has pretty good style, and sometimes if I like a golf shirt or something, I will buy two, one for me and one for him. He really loves the idea of being his father’s twin, don’t you know?!

The golfer Phil Mickleson learned to play golf by imitating his father. Phil plays left-handed, even though he is right-handed, because when his father would be hitting golf balls on the driving range, Phil would stand across from him and try to be his mirror image. It worked.

Sometimes imitation works to no good end, though. There isn’t much grieving going on in Iraq for the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein. The boys were chips off the old block — just like their father. Scary. They learned about power and brutality, about governing through intimidation. It was not inevitable that they would turn out that way. Their genes did not make them wicked, even if they didn’t help. They learned by imitation. And the same is true of parents who were abused as children and end up abusing their children. Imitation can be used for good or evil.

Which is why the Apostle Paul says, Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love. We need the right model to imitate.

But even though imitation is clearly something natural to us, there’s something in us that resists it all the same. Take the very word imitation, for instance. It can mean to copy or mimic or emulate in a good way, or it can mean the very same thing in a way that cheapens. The copy is never as good as the original. Which is something advertising has picked up on. Is it Ella or is it Memorex? The idea is that the tape is so good, you can’t tell it from the original. Or what about those goofy Diet Dr. Pepper commercials on now? Some things are never as good as the original, unless of course you mean Diet Dr. Pepper. Well, the point is that we all want to be originals, not copies. We consider copies to be inauthentic, not genuine, second grade. So we counsel people to do their own thing, find their own voice, become the unique self they were made to be.

This is in our American DNA. Let’s have a country unlike any other. We’ll make it up as we go. The great American experiment, we call it. Democracy, religious freedom, free speech, individual rights, all of that. But what we don’t want to acknowledge is that all of these things have had precedents. King Cyrus of Persia issued a remarkable declaration of human rights some 500 years before Christ. You don’t hear about that, because we prefer the fiction that we are originals. Since the first day of creation, there has been nothing truly original. We have all been imitating the Creator in our every creation. All human creation is really innovation. Whether we will be imitators is not up for question. Whom will we imitate is the issue.

Paul says that we should imitate God. But noble as that sounds, we have to see God in order to do so. And so Paul says that we should do as Christ has done. He makes this move as seamlessly and easily as a Republican argues for open markets or a Democrat for affirmative action. There’s no need to justify it; it seems self-evident to them. Paul believes without question that Christ is the very imitation of God among us. So if we imitate Christ, we are imitating God.

But before we run down a list of all the things we are supposed to do or not do in imitating Christ, let’s be clear on who we are as we do. Notice Paul says that we are beloved children. We are not hoping to do all the right things and avoid all the wrong things in order to become enough like God to qualify as children of God. We already are. This has been a constant theme in Ephesians and in this sermon series on the church as a chosen community. We are children of God — each of us and all of us — because of God’s grace rather than our works. The issue is whether we learn to act like children of God, chips off the divine block, like our older brother, Jesus, who is himself the Son of God.

The Christian faith is not a moral improvement program first of all. It is not like a finishing school that you hope to graduate from, knowing which fork to use with which course in your meal, what dance step to use with what music, how to bow or curtsy before your betters, all of which is designed to advance your social station. We do not work over this list of dos and don’ts in hopes of being approved. Because we are already approved, we are called to live according our true station in life as sons and daughters of God. We are not nobodies hoping to become somebodies by our good behavior; we are somebodies trying to avoid behaving like nobodies and thus betraying our true identity.

This is also why we do not rant and rave and holler you into submission round here. It’s remarkable to any preacher how when we let loose a bit and get really straight with you about your responsibilities, how much you like that. Like last week when I was bearing down on you about how we care for our little ones, and how we need you to step up and volunteer if you really mean it that you love them. Some of you said to me, You know, you even leaned forward on the pulpit! We could tell you really meant it. Well, yes. But most of the time I think we learn best the way one of America’s greatest theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr, put it: by a pull more than a push. Through example. By imitation. It’s the language of aspiration rather than criticism and command. People are called to be their best when they are charmed into righteousness. I love that phrase.

It’s like parenting. You can either tell your child, Go out and make something of yourself, which implies that the kid isn’t much of anything right now. Or you can make it clear that you love and believe in your child, you have high hopes for your kid, and that you want him or her to know what it’s like to become the best he or she can be. Which is better parenting? Which works best?

This matches Paul’s way in our text. Imitate Christ, who gave himself as a fragrant offering of love, a sacrifice to God on our behalf. He didn’t give himself up in order to become the Son of God in doing so. Because he was secure enough as the Son of God, he could, therefore, love the world … to death.

So when Paul gives us a list of what we should do and not do in this passage, the point is not the list itself but the way doing the right things is, in fact, living in love; is, in fact, imitating God; is, in fact, being who we most deeply already are as sons and daughters of God. The litmus test of almost any relationship can be summed in this way: Are both parties more instead of less because of the relationship? If you are living in love, you should like what is becoming of you and of those you love.

So, going down Paul’s list: we must speak the truth to our neighbors, since we are members of one another. We do not speak falsely to them as if our own interests are what matter over theirs. We will be angry from time to time; that isn’t the issue. The question is whether we will act out of it, nurse it over time and give room for the devil to work in our relationships rather than God. We must not steal but work, because giving is loving and grabbing is not. We hold our tongue when it wants to speak evil of someone and we twist it until it spits out something that builds up rather than tearing down. We let go of bitterness and old grievances that only serve to destroy others and us. Instead, we forgive one another and move on. We replace malice with kindness, and hardheartedness with tenderheartedness.

If we look to nature for models to imitate, one to avoid is the lammergeyer. Thanks to Kim for watching the Discovery channel for one. Lammergeyers are rare bearded vultures that live mainly in the highest mountains of central Asia. They are enormous creatures, with wingspans reaching about four feet across. Their feeding habits are peculiar, to say the least. Cowardly by nature, they are easily spooked. So they do their hunting indirectly. They wait until a lamb, say, which is their favorite, has been savagely hunted by another creature and devoured. With only the skeleton left, they swoop down and grab the remaining bones in their powerful talons. They soar up to great heights and drop the bones almost like a guided missile on a proven rock slab far below. The bones break into bits on the rocks, and the lammergeyer rushes down to suck the sweet marrow out of the exposed bones. Nice, huh? Well, it takes up to seven years of practice for lammergeyers to learn how to do this. They imitate their elders and work at it until they get it just right.

Too many of us imitate others who are skilled at scavenging and savaging. We work hard to master the art of destruction. We know how to suck the life out of other people, instead of putting it into them. We eagerly wait for them to be vulnerable, and then we swoop in when it costs us nothing and, like vultures, savor the carcass. We love to point out where others have failed. We enjoy following the Kobe Bryant trial, and we see no good reason why we shouldn’t be able to hear every last detail of the night in question or even other secrets of his life or that of the alleged victim. We are fascinated by it all, and some — like Mark Cuban — are even calculating the benefits of the whole sordid affair. I don’t know which is the more shameful.

Look, we have to choose whom we will imitate and whether our pattern of life gives love or steals it. God is love. Imitate God. Live in love.