As you know, I think often of what it means to follow Christ. And I think of people I have known whose faithful following of Christ has touched my soul. And I know too that history has continually graced us all with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest for the common good of the world, people who clearly operated by a Loving Presence much larger than their own. I will always remember and give thanks for Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, César Chávez, and many other unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world and defines our reason for life. Like me, most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many quiet, unknown persons who exhibit the same presence. I think it is grace and love and prayer and insertion into the Word of God how one becomes such a person. All of these paths, if you will, are the result of the grace of God. And all I can presume is that these folks were all called or graced by God. They all had their defining and personal moments in the presence of Almighty God, in His Spirit, in which they ceased following their own shadows, ceased projecting those shadows elsewhere, and agreed to own their deepest identity in solidarity with the world — and to cast it away forever in favor of Christ!
But following Jesus is a vocation, a life-long commitment, to share the fate of Jesus Christ for the life of the world. To follow Christ means we must allow what God desires and for some reason allows — and uses. And to follow Christ inevitably means we must suffer, sometimes a lot and other times ever so slightly, to suffer what God suffers eternally. In my experience this has little to do with believing the right things about God or with following all of the rules and traditions of your church — beyond the fact that we become people who are deeply grateful to God for His love and that we live each moment of every day face to face with this central truth: God is love itself.
Those who respond to this call and agree to carry and love what God carries and loves— which is both the good and the bad, the flawed and faithful — and to pay the price for our reconciliation within ourselves. Yes, these are the followers of Jesus Christ! They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world in which they live. The Cross, then, is the most dramatic image of what it takes to be usable for God. It does not mean they are going to heaven and others are not; rather, it means they have entered into heaven today, by the way they live today, and thus can see things in a transcendent, whole, and healing way now.
In many ways those who follow Christ understand and live the fact that the most important journey in life is the shortest journey — the journey from our head to our hearts. The followers of Christ know that filling their brains with data and knowledge is grand, but it is what fills our hearts that matters, for what is in our hearts more than anything else is what moves us and outlines our choices every moment.
The very public followers of Christ didn’t ever feel superior to anyone else; they just knew they had been let in on a big Divine secret, and they wanted to do their part in revealing it to all. I have always loved John the Baptist who spoke a humble, truthful, and simple word outlining who he was in the presence of Jesus Christ: “I am not worthy to untie the strap of His sandals” Luke 3:16. That’s the humility of such a one as John the Baptizer who spent his life revealing to others who Jesus Christ was: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’” John 1:29! The question for all of us is the same — to figure out how we can point out Jesus Christ to others by our words and actions! How can we exhibit ourselves as followers of Christ by showing others that, even though we are unworthy souls, never-the-less, here is Jesus Christ, the sacrificial Lamb of God!
I love what Francis of Assisi prayed each morning, a prayer lifted to God as one of the great followers of Christ: Oh God, today let me preach You to others, and if necessary to use words!
God is calling every one of us, not just a few chosen ones, to Himself, to His heart. To help get every one and every thing to embrace the heart of Christ, God first needs models and servants who are willing to be “conformed to the body of His death” and transformed into the body of His resurrection (Philippians 3:10). Such people are the “new creation” (Galatians 6:15), and their transformed state is still seeping into history and ever so slowly transforming it into “life and life more abundantly” John 10:10.
My prayer is that this will be your prayer today.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
And Lord, today let me preach You to others, and if necessary to use words!
From the Bible:
“Then God said to Noah, ‘Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth’” Genesis 8:15-17.
“Jesus Christ has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth” Ephesians 1:9-10.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 16 for in Him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He Himself is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through Him God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” Colossians 1:15-20.
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