A Life of Imitation
A life of imitation. We are exhorted to be imitators of God, as beloved children. We are called to live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. Our lives are supposed to be founded on the kind of sacrificial love that these very Scriptures defined. There should be a change in the manner and shape of our lives. The first four verses of Romans 6 captures this:
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. [1]
We are to put off the old and put on the new. As Christians our baptismal vows are a symbol of the transition from the old to the new. We die unto the water and rise anew. We are a resurrected people. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. This passage talks exhaustively about the “truth.” We are exhorted not to wear falsehoods, to not let evil talk come out of our mouths, to put away slander and malice, and to forget all wrath or bitterness. We are told right here in Scripture to be kind to one another, to be tenderhearted, to forgive one another. To be imitators of God we are to be truth tellers, to be kind, to let go of our anger, and to be a people marked by the seal of redemption. We are told all these things, but where are the imitators?
A couple weeks ago Emma and I signed up for a gym membership at the canyons. We have been faithful attendees as part of our nightly routine. On one occasion, as we were heading home, I saw a bumper sticker in the parking lot that said, “Jesus would…” As a pastor and theologian, my ears perked up. Of course, everyone knows that bumper stickers are always correct- they would never lead anyone astray. So, I walked closer to this car to check out what it said. Low and behold this bumper sticker exclaimed, “Jesus would slap the SHIT out of you.” I was shocked. I looked at Emma in the car and told her what I saw. I remember saying, “I’m not so sure that Jesus would do that…”
I continued down that rabbit hole of Christian bumper stickers this week. I went to Amazon determined to find better Christian bumper stickers - there had to be better ones out there. I was firm in the fact that there had to be something out there that better represented our faith. For every Scripture verse quoted there was a, “Real men love Jesus.” For every fish with Jesus’ name in it, there was the statement, “Gods. Guns. Guts. Oil.” For every bumper sticker that said, “faith,” or “blessed,” there was the scary bumper stickers alluding to hell. We might be quick to write off these as anomalies, or “not that bad,” or “not that big of a deal,” but what we profess with our lips- and certainly what we put on our cars- reveals something about our hearts.
Many of these so-called Christian bumper stickers are Christian in name only. Jesus was not a bully. He may have been strong as a carpenter, turned over the tables in the temple, and condemned the Pharisees, but there is no evidence of Jesus slapping someone. There is not evidence of Jesus saying, “Real men love me,” but he did say to the disciples that “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,”[2] I’m not aware of Jesus owning guns nor is there mention of his macho bravado. Jesus would have been quite familiar with olive oil and its uses for anointing, but I don’t think he would have come across crude oil that we use in our cars. My point is that Jesus was a historical Jew who lived in the first century, and it is a mistake to directly dress his life with modern concerns and fashionings. We deceive ourselves when we say things authoritatively like, “Jesus is a capitalist,” or “Jesus is a socialist,” or “Jesus is a macho-man,” or “Jesus is a radical feminist.” We deceive ourselves and tell falsehoods if we make God this small. The truth is that we can justify just about every political stance or economic system with Scripture references. Methodist Christians did that with slavery. We did that with colonization. We must be careful that our God is Jesus and not something made in our own image.
God is bigger than we can imagine, so let’s dream bigger! God is more loving than we can imagine, so let’s love wider! God is beyond our comprehension but makes God’s self-known through Scripture mediated through the church. So be careful! What we say about God might turn out to be a falsehood. What we do in the name of Christianity could turn out to be done in the image of someone other than God.
Quoting Isaiah, Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 15, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”[3] A life of imitation, the Christian life, is one that is near to Jesus. It honors God with our hearts, our lips, and yes, even our bumper stickers. A life of imitation means that our actions are aligned with what we profess. When we say, “The Bible says,” or “God says,” or any of the like we must ensure that these are in fact true. This is taking the Lord’s name in vein and it is a more serious offense than saying G-O-D when we stub our toes. We may think that our words are honoring to God, but we must be very careful to ascertain whether they are God’s or ours. When we are not in the truth, when we speak lies, and when we use take the Lord’s name in vein Our worship not only gratifies our hearts but catalyzes us to be a blessing in the community. Imitators of Jesus are built up in their faith through the word of God and are bridge builders in the community. We must be humble, measuring all things in prayer and in community with one another. We must be wise, weighing consequences and using the means we must research better possibilities. We must be patient, acknowledging when we do not know and quick to think the best of one another. We must be in the truth, and to be in the truth we must be in the One who says, “I am the truth and the life.”
If we are to take seriously the imperative to be in the truth, then we must be critical thinkers. We need to ask ourselves whether we might just be wrong. We need to question the things we are told. We need to question those aspects of our reality which we have long assumed. We need to hunger and thirst for truth even as we hunger for righteousness. We need to search for the heart of Jesus in all things. And to do so, we need each other. We need one another to tell us when we are wrong, when we have missed the mark. We need one another to be like Nathan to David and pull us out of our self-deception. We need the loving disagreements, we need the differences in experience, we need our different outlooks, because it is only together as the church that we can live a life of imitation. It is only as the church seeking after God’s heart that we can be a people whose hearts are set on God. It is together, as Corvallis United Methodist Church that we profess the love of God- not in the same sentence as Oil or Guns or Real Men or a political issue- but as a people that loves one another. As the first letter of John states, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”
We don’t need bumper stickers to tell the world we’re Christians. We don’t need Facebook profile overlays that say blessed to tell our feed that we’ve experienced the love of God. As the Church, we need to be imitators and a people after God’s own heart. We need to recall our baptismal vows. They will know we are Christians by our love. They will know we are Christians when we pursue the truth in all fields of knowledge. They will know we are Christians when we don’t have to blankly quote Scripture passages but can actualize love. They will know we are Christians when we have mercy for the thief, for the liar, and for the deceived. They will know we are Christians when we lead a life of imitation.
[1] Romans 6:1–4.
[2] Mark 9:37.
[3] Matthew 15:8–9.
