The image on the cover of the bulletin is a painting called “Norman Catwell” by Lucia Heffernan. I did a little research on Lucia, and I wanted to read what she says about herself and her work on her website. She writes, “I love to play – with animals, narratives, imagery, humor. I especially enjoy playing with reality by bending the rules and creating work that however implausible – at least for a moment – seems ALMOST possible. Work that not only delights viewers, but asks them to consider their own personal reality. Through my oil paintings, I morph everyday human experiences into an alternate universe where an animal is just as likely as a person to sit down to some light reading, brush their teeth before bed, or profess their undying love for another through some grand gesture. My body of work aims to simultaneously make light of, and marvel at, our uniquely human existence.” This particular work of hers is a twist of a famous painting by Norman Rockwell titled “Self Portrait.” But Heffernan plays with it and shows the cat drawing a tiger, which exemplifies what the cat thinks he looks like.

This image reminded me of a series of TikTok videos that I love to watch. These videos begin showing a fierce, predatory cat like a tiger or a lion or a panther. This big cat is usually doing something like climbing a tree or gnawing on its prey or growling fiercely. The text on the video reads, “This is what my cat thinks he looks like.” Then the image changes and the text changes to read, “This is what my cat really looks like.” You see then a house cat doing something similar to what the big cat had been doing but much less menacing. Instead of climbing a tree, it is attempting to scale a playpen fence. Instead of gnawing on its prey, it is gnawing on a stuffed animal. Instead of growling fiercely, it is meowing. I love these videos. They are not only adorable, but I think they really do represent how cats view themselves, just like in the Norman Catwell picture on the bulletin cover. They “look in the mirror” at themselves so to speak, and they see a tiger.

In our reading from James, he talks about being doers of the word and not just hearers. And he uses what I find to be an interesting image of how this works. He writes, “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.”

They are like those who look at themselves in a mirror. How often do you look at yourself in the mirror? Daily? Every couple of days? Less than that? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see what you really look like? Or do you see an image distorted by who you think you are or who you think you should be? When you walk away from the mirror, what do you remember about the image you saw? Maybe you only remember the good things. Or maybe you only remember what you didn’t like. When you’re no longer looking at the mirror, how much of yourself do you think you could describe? Or draw? I suspect that most of us would remember very little.

James says that many of us are like that with the Word of God. We listen and take it in, but then we forget about it. Maybe we come to church on Sunday and we hear things in the Scripture reading or in the sermon that really felt important to you. But when you left church, you got back into life and forgot all about it.

Back when I was in high school, we talked a lot about spiritual highs. We would attend exciting and spiritually uplifting conferences or have really meaningful camp experiences. We’d leave so energized and convinced that we had had a life-changing experience. We’d be experiencing a spiritual high. But when we got back home and back into our regular, daily routine, the high would wear off and we’d return to our old patterns. Have you had that experience? I often look back on those experiences and think, “I wish I could have that kind of excitement for God all the time.” But the truth is that life is not like that. There is nothing in this life that we can stay excited about constantly.

When James says that we are to be doers of the word and not just hearers, I don’t think he means that we should get a spiritual high every time we hear the Word of God that energizes us to go make a difference in the world. In fact, I’m not 100% sure that what James is advocating for here is even about what we do.

To explain what I mean, we have to look closely at some important words in the original Greek. The first two words I want to look at we will take together because they are linked up in the passage. These words come from the verse that says, “they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror.” I want to specifically look at the two Greek words that the NRSV simply translates as “themselves.” Themselves is not a very descriptive word. It tells us something about who is being talked about but nothing more. In the Greek, we have two words. The first is prosopon, meaning “face or countenance.” A person’s face often tells a lot about them. We can communicate with our face without any words. James adds to that the word geneseos or genesis. Does that word sound familiar to any of you? It is the word that was used as a title for the first book of the Bible. Genesis means “origin or birth.” Genesis in the origin of the world and of the people of God. In this case, it is talking about us as individuals. It is talking about what we see when we look in the mirror.

When we put the two Greek words together, we get something much more descriptive than “themselves.” Prosopon tes geneseos autou means “our original face” or “the countenance we were born to have.” I believe that what James is talking about here is those who see themselves as they truly are, those who see through the masks they wear to make themselves look like someone else and the veils they use to hide themselves. Those who truly see themselves and then walk away and forget who they are, they have lost themselves. They have cheated themselves out of something great. Maybe that cat on the bulletin cover has it right. Maybe what he sees in that mirror is the fierceness that lives inside him, and the painting is a reflection of that.

It is important for us to know though, that a mirror for James would not have been like a mirror for us. The mirrors were basically shiny pieces of metal. The image would have been more indistinct, so to get a true picture of yourself, you would have to look from several different angles. Isn’t that true for us in attempting to see ourselves for who we truly are, who we were born to be? We can’t just see ourselves from one direction or we will miss important pieces of who we are. This makes me think that what James is trying to convey is that when we see who we truly are, but then we walk away and forget, we must have deceived ourselves. Perhaps what we saw we didn’t fully like so, rather than doing the hard work of trying to change, we just ignore it. We walk away and forget about it. Ever done that?

But James is calling us to something more. James is not calling us to be those who hear who we are, or even who see who we are, and then live in ways that contradict that. Instead, James is calling us to be the people that God made us to be. James is calling us to be poietai, “doers” of the word. This word, poietai or poietes, means something more than just “doers.” Poietes is the word from which we get our word poet. James is calling us to be poets of the word. He is calling us to live in the poem of our lives, into the work of art that God has created us to be.

So, who is it that God has created you to be? What is in the way of you living that out to its fullest? Are others holding you back? Is fear holding you back? Is it laziness and not wanting to put in the necessary work that is holding you back? Are your sinful desires holding you back? Maybe you’re afraid to even look in the mirror in the first place. But we are beloved of God and like the man depicted in Song of Solomon, God calls to us, saying, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” We are beloved of God, and God calls us to come away from the doubt and the fear and the sin that holds us back from being who God created us to be, God’s beautiful poetry. I want to close with the words of a song by Michael Card called “Poem of Your Life.” May these words serve as a prayer and as a reminder that you are loved by God for exactly who you are, the poem God created you to be.

So look in the mirror and pray for the grace 

To tear off the mask, see the art of your face 

Open your ear lids to hear the sweet song 

Of each moment that passes and pray to prolong 

Your time in the ball of the dance of your days 

Your canvas of colors of moments ablaze 

With all that is holy

With the joy and the strife 

With the rhythm and rhyme of the poem of your life 

With the rhythm and rhyme of the poem of your life