Play Doh Formation

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was

Today we begin a new worship series that will take us to Lent looking at what toys can teach us about leadership and life. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be doing for the beginning of the year, and so was talking with Phillip if there was something that would be helpful for our faith development activities, and he said that we might look at our goals. One of our goals is to build up our leadership, and I had in my list of potential worship series ideas a note about a book I read a long time ago called Toy Box Leadership, and to let you know how long ago, they use Blockbuster Video as an example of a company facing a leadership challenges, and they say that the decisions they make will decide if they survive or not, and we now all know how that ended. And so, I am indebted to that book and its authors Ron Hunter and Michael Waddell for providing the inspiration. And with that, today we begin with one of the staples of childhood, Play-Doh®, which was inducted in the inaugural class into the National Play Hall of Fame, whose museum in Rochester, NY, is absolutely fabulous if you ever get up that way to visit.

Now I have to say that of all the toys we will look at, Play-Doh®, is my least favorite, at least as an adult. When our children get Play-Doh®, which they invariably do, I sort of bow my head and think, oh great, thanks. Not because Play-Doh® isn’t great, because it is and I enjoyed it as a child, but it’s the fact that we end of with little pieces of dried Play-Doh® that end up all over the house, which then have to be cleaned up and invariably I’m still finding it in strange places days later. And so, I guess, it’s sort of ironic then that that is exactly the thing with which we are starting because of what Play-Doh® and baptism and leadership all sort of have in common with each other, and I bet you never thought of that combination before.

Play-Doh came about for Christmas 1954 when Kay Zufall, who ran a nursery school discovered that it you shaped the claylike substance that was used to clean wallpaper into ornaments, and then let it dry, you could then have the children decorate them to present to their parents. Her families loved it. And so, she told her brother-in-law who owned a wallpaper cleaning company that the compound made great toys, and after a new recipe was created to remove the detergents, Play-Doh was born. And I will note that the substance as a cleaner had been around for more than 20 years before that. Today, more than 100 million cans of it sold every year in 60 different colors. And the distinctive smell is so popular that in was bottled as a perfume for it’s 50th anniversary. But there are several key pieces for us to know about Play-Doh® that are examples for us to learn from.

The first is that Play-Doh® depends upon its malleability, or moldability, to be useful. If it’s left out of the can, then it becomes dried and usually gets thrown away, even if it’s been molded or shaped into something else, eventually it’s going in the trash. And the same metaphor can be used with us. We too have to remain open to change and being shaped, if nothing else, to being shaped by the movement of the Spirit. When we get locked into shape and dry there so that we can no longer be affected or changed or modified or shaped into something else, when we are no longer open to new ideas or new ways of doing things, then we are invariably going to run into trouble, and probably also make trouble for others because of rigidness will become a liability rather than an asset or benefit. And again, at the very least, that hardness of heart or mind or soul, whatever it might be, will keep us from being able to experience the movement of the Spirit and to be able to answer new calls that God might have on our lives. We have to be remain pliable for new movement. And I did learn this week of ways to get dried Play-Doh to be malleable again, just as a reminder the same is true for us; old dogs can learn new tricks. And yet, the same pliability and ability to be shaped are also where we need to be careful, and where the idea of baptism comes into play as we celebrate today the baptism of the Lord and we will remember our own baptismal vows in a few moments.

So, for us, baptism is foundational and formational. No one is born a Christian, and becoming a Christian is not about believing the right thing, or saying the right prayer, the tradition of the church is that we become Christians in the waters of baptism. This is our initiation right. And it is this that forms us as Christians as well, for it is what makes us a new creation in Christ, it pushes off the old form, and gives us the new form. But, it doesn’t mean we are going to stay that way, because if we seek something else, then we will take on that shape. So, for example, if we put our Play-Doh® into a dinosaur mold, what form will it take? A dinosaur, but if we want to be shaped as a dog can we do it in this mold? No. Similarly if you take the Play-Doh® shaped as a dinosaur and then put it into a dog shape, what’s going to happen? It will become a dog, right? Just like the old saying that you are what you eat, so to do you become what you associate with.

Most of you know that my wife Linda is an addict, who will have 30 years clean this year, and one of the things that people who are seeking to get clean get told is that they have to stop associating with the people with whom you used to use. If you surround yourself with people who are using drugs and alcohol, the greater tendency is for you to use as well. It’s the culture that forms us. The people and things and thoughts that surround us, are what mold us. If you are surrounding yourself with people who acting unethically, guess what you are more likely to do yourself? As we think about New Year’s resolutions, if you want to start working out, or losing weight, or reading more, or not smoking, then you need to be hanging around people and being friends with those who are doing those things. And if you friends do the opposite of those things, then you have a much greater rate of doing them as well. We take the shape and form of the things we are around, they become the mold to our Play-Doh®. And so similarly, if you surround yourself with hate, with violence, with demeaning language, with racism or xenophobia or misogyny, with retaliation, with bullying, with fear, with harassment, with alarm, with anxiety, and especially if you are following leaders who are doing and promoting those things, then you will become these things, and you will say them and act on them.

We take the shape and form of those people, ideas and thoughts with which we surround ourselves. So, if instead, you want to an agent of love, then you have to be around people who love. If you want to live in forgiveness, you have to be amongst people who forgive. If you want to live in peace, you have to be with peacemakers. If you want to be humble, you have to be with those who know humility. If you want baptism to mold you, then you have to be with people for whom baptism is the foundational and formational event in their lives, and who live as forgiven and reconciled people being that new creation of Christ in the world.  For us as Christians, we need to make sure that our baptisms are the mold, the form, the shape we use to help us to be whom God has called us to be.

And let me close with this one last thought. As I said, Play-Doh® comes in 60 different colors. But, is there any difference between green or red or blue or purple Play-Doh®? Other than the color, they are exactly the same. And you can create something only using green Play-Doh®, but is that really all that exciting? If you want to create a rainbow all in one color, not all that great. You need to have more colors present. But here’s the thing about Play-Doh®. Once you mix them it’s really hard to get them separated again, and sometimes it’s impossible. Now there are people who want to complain about his, who will say that this mixing poisons the colors, that it just dilutes it all, but maybe that’s exactly the point. When Lizzie asked to play with her Play-Doh® on Friday, I pulled it out of the jar for her, and it was that mixed together color and I mentioned this, and she said, “that’s the way I like it.” Out of the mouths of babes. So what Paul tells us is that in Christ there is no longer slave or free, Greek or Jew, male and female, for we are all baptized into the one body, for we are all one in Christ, who is all and is in all.

Baptism is the foundational act of becoming a Christian, and it is the formational act of being a Christian. It is in the water of baptism that we die to our old selves and are reborn, that we are forgiven of our sin and reconciled with God, that we are adopted by God and made heirs of the promise, that we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, that we become one in the body of Christ, the church, and made one with each other for there is only one Spirit, one body, one Lord, one faith and one baptism, and so in our baptism may we be like Play-Doh® and be formed, shaped and molded into the people that God has called us to be. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen. And now I invite you to stand as you are comfortable as we reaffirm our baptismal vows.