You may have read or heard about the book ‘The Shack’. It has been a bestseller in America, and it has even been described by one reviewer, as having ‘the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his’.
I read the book a couple of weeks back. It is a fictional tale about a man called Mack. Mack has suffered a terrible tragedy in his family, that leaves him overcome by what he calls ‘the Great Sadness.’ And this sadness remains with him until one day he receives a note, inviting him to ‘The Shack’ and to an encounter with God that transforms his life.
The book addresses the question: ‘where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?’ And although the response will not satisfy everyone, it does remind us that the God of the Bible, the God revealed in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is a God we can know and trust, a God who is with us and for us always.
But the book also challenges some of our ideas about the Christian faith. God the Father, for example, is portrayed as a big black woman, and the Holy Spirit as a wiry-looking Asian woman called Sarayu, the name of an ancient river which flows through India. It is only Jesus who is faintly familiar, with a Middle Eastern look, but then even he says some things that will disturb the way many people see the Christian life.
There is an interesting scene in the story, which I want to focus on today. Jesus is having a conversation with Mack, beside a lake, and he says: ‘seriously, my life was not meant to be an example to copy. Being my follower is not trying “to be like Jesus”…’
Now, these words may come as a shock to us. They may not sound like what we were taught in Sunday school or what we hear when we come to church. Isn’t the goal of the Christian life ‘to be like Jesus’? Doesn’t Jesus, in the gospels, invite us to follow and to learn from him? And doesn’t it urge us elsewhere in the New Testament to follow in his steps? This was certainly the opinion of author, Charles Sheldon, when he wrote his bestseller, ‘In His Steps’, in 1896. In it, Sheldon tells of a community transformed when a group of people committed themselves to living the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’
And what of the prayer we prayed earlier, the collect for the Feast of Transfiguration. Didn’t we just ask, ‘grant that we… may be strengthened to follow him and be changed into his likeness? You would think this is no different to us trying ‘to be like Jesus’.
So has the Jesus of ‘The Shack’ got it wrong? Well, I don’t think so. I think there is a subtle but significance difference he is trying to make. Copying Jesus is not the goal.
Now, of course, there is much we can learn from Jesus. You just have to consider the way his life has inspired so many over the centuries, and how it continues to challenge and shape people of all creeds and cultures today. I think of the way Jesus responded to human need. I think of the way he challenged the wrongful use of power. And I think of the way he lived his life, conscious of a love stronger than death.
So, in this sense, Jesus’ life is an example to us; he shows us what it is to be human. But we also know seeking to be like him all the time is not only impossible, it is exhausting; and many good people have burnt themselves out asking ‘What would Jesus do?’
Instead the point Jesus wants to make here is different. What he is saying is to follow him is not about trying to emulate his appearance, nor is it about trying to replicate or anticipate his every move; rather it is about allowing God to fill us completely. God’s life is like an ocean of love pressing in against us continuously and to follow Jesus is to open ourselves to that love, so our every thought, our every word, our every act, is filled with the life giving essence of God; so that we may reflect who we truly are.
As Jesus says to Mack, ‘I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But, we will never force that union on you.’
Over the last weeks, we have learnt a lot about Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels, I mean. We have learnt he is a preacher. We have learnt he is a teacher. We have learnt he is a healer. We have learnt he is a reconciler. But there is much more to him than this.
We know this, because on this day, Transfiguration Sunday, our gospel gives us a snapshot of who Jesus truly is. Jesus goes up a mountain with Peter, James and John, and is transfigured before them. His true nature is disclosed to them. And just as God spoke to Moses from out of a cloud, so God speaks to Jesus, reaffirming what was said at his baptism, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved’. Only now God adds, ‘listen to him.’
So, Jesus does have something to teach us. He is worth listening to, for he shows us what God is like. God’s being is a relationship of love. The Father gives himself to the Son. The Son gives himself to the Father. And the Holy Spirit is the love which binds them together. It is this continuous act of self-giving love that defines the Trinity.
And it was Mack’s experience of a self-giving God, in a shack, a place of tragedy and pain, which enabled his inner healing to begin. God met Mack at his point of deepest sorrow, and what Mack discovered was the God of love had always been there.
Well, Jesus comes down the mountain with his disciples, and tells them to not say a word about what they have seen or heard; to keep quiet, at least, until he has risen from the dead. And there is good reason for him to do this. For he knows it is so easy for us to misunderstand who he is; to take in what we want to know and to ignore the rest.
Peter, for example, only a few verses earlier, confesses Jesus as the Messiah, but then rebukes him for speaking of his suffering and rejection and death. He misses the point. He doesn’t fully grasp what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah, what it means for him to be God’s Son. In fact, in Mark’s Gospel, the first person to affirm Jesus as the Son of God is not a disciple, but a Roman Centurion, and it doesn’t take place on a mountain top, but at the foot of the cross. It is there that God’s life is exposed for all to see.
So what does it mean to be changed into the likeness of Christ? It is not to try and ‘be like Jesus’; for such an attempt is certain to lead to failure and exhaustion. Instead, it is to be fully who we are, just as Jesus was fully who he was, conscious of God’s presence every moment of his day, and guided by God’s love every step of his way. 
God of life and glory… grant that we, beholding his majesty, may be strengthened to follow Jesus and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory, for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on Sunday 15 February 2009 by the Venerable Damon Plimmer.