"Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (All Saints Day)

Do you remember WWJD bracelets?  I do.  At the same time that I was a teenager becoming serious about my faith, these bracelets started appearing on wrists and at Christian bookstores.  WWJD was the acronym for “what would Jesus do?” The idea was that, as you went through your day, as you encountered various situations and decisions, seeing the bracelet would cause you to consider what Jesus would do if he was in your shoes.  If we want to follow Jesus then this is a good question.  What would Jesus do? 

All that said, I don’t wear my WWJD bracelet anymore (it got kind of gross), nor does anyone else.  Despite the best of intentions, they didn’t obviously succeed in inspiring greater faithfulness. In part, this tells us something about human nature, that what is initially a powerful reminder pretty soon becomes a forgotten accessory.  My thoughts were not drawn to Jesus every time I saw the bracelet; in fact, I no longer even saw it.   The task of bearing Jesus in mind requires more than just a bracelet.  

Part of the the problem, though, is that it was often far from obvious how to answer the question.  If you were reaching out to take some drugs or preparing to punch someone in the face and you caught a glimpse of your bracelet, it was pretty obvious that Jesus wouldn’t do that.  But a lot of the time - especially as a teenager, but still as an adult - it’s actually quite difficult to answer the question “What would Jesus do?” because it’s difficult to imagine how Jesus would end up in your situation.  

I remember one conversation in the dinging hall at university with some like-minded friends about what kind of student Jesus would be if he were, like us, enrolled at an expensive, elite (but not elite as it wanted to be), private university.  There were those who argued that Jesus did everything excellently, so if he were enrolled in university he would be an excellent student, devoted to his studies.  The sort of people who advocated that position were probably those who likewise took their studies seriously, such that it’s hard to tell if their lives were the answer to the WWJD question or if their answer to the question is just a justification of their own prior choices: Jesus would be like me.  

I recall that I, as someone who was, at that point, not devoted to his studies, argued that Jesus, if he was at university, would probably choose to spend all his time hanging out with people, building relationships, loving and serving those whom he encountered.   And if, in his own early life Jesus didn’t pursue a formal education, why would he get one if he was around here and now?  Would he even bother with university?  And if Jesus wound’t be here, then why am I?  What would Jesus do?  Probably not this.  

At the heart of the Christian faith is the call to be like Jesus, to imitate Jesus.  Occasionally this is a straightforward, uncomplicated task - it’s easy to see the path before you - but often it’s actually quite difficult to bridge the two millennial between then and now and to imagine how this first-century Judaean would live in Luxembourg (or wherever) in the 21st century.   

Paul told the Corinthians, almost in passing: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” It’s interesting that though Paul is a contemporary of Jesus, he doesn’t simply tell them, “imitate Jesus”.  Presumably it would be much easier for them to imagine than it is for us. Instead he acts as a kind of bridge between them and Christ; the way to imitate Chris, he says, is to imitate me. Many of these people had never seen or heard Jesus, but they have seen or heard Paul.  It’s easier, more immediate, to imagine imitating him than imitating Jesus.  Paul, in his time with them, has already contextualized the faith for them; they have seen in flesh and blood what faithfulness looks like.  

This is why the saints, both the living and the dead, are indispensable to the Christian life.  Their lives give an answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” which enables us to more faithfully answer that question for ourselves.  

Sometimes we act as if there is the Bible and there is right now and it’s on each of us to figure out to make sense of Jesus’ teaching and how we should live in light of it.  And while we definitely should indeed always return to the words of Jesus, we neglect a great gift if we do not attend to the lives of the faithful throughout history and throughout the world.  The proper interpretation of Scripture is not to be found in the words of a sermon or a theology textbook, but in the flesh and blood reality of faithful lives.  The way we imagine what it means to follow Jesus owes primarily to the way the previous generation showed us what it means to follow Jesus.  We are imitating them, as they imitated those who came before.  

I arrived at Divinity school with only the vaguest sense of historical Christianity, of how we got from there to here.  We easily take for granted both that the way we think is the way people have always thought, and that the way we live is the only option available to us.  It was eye-opening to me to learn about the early church and the questions and concerns that animated them, and the way that they responded to the particular challenges that faced them.  Learning about how they tried live faithfully there and then informs and inspires the way we can live here and now.  The stories of those who were willing to die for their faith feature prominently, those who, in the language from Revelation, have passed through “the great ordeal”, the martyrs whose blood-soaked robes have, in a paradoxical metaphor, been washed white in the blood of the Lamb.  

This is not to say the people in the past necessarily were more (or less) faithful than we are.  We have learned from their mistakes, and we’ve also forgotten the wisdom they gained.  But we have a rich inheritance we would be foolish to ignore.  

But perhaps even more important is to be able to identify the saints who are still with us, whom we can imitate as they imitate Christ.  As it was for Paul and the Corinthians, even more it is for us: what it means to follow Jesus, to put his words into practice, can seem difficult to imagine, a distant abstraction.  A flesh and blood encounter with a faithful person can bring the faith, our faith, to life.  In order to follow Jesus faithfully, we need people whom we can follow.  

I hope that you know someone whose life is for you an incarnation of what it means to follow Jesus, whose way of living, moving, and having their being in this world reveals to you possibilities that you never otherwise could’ve imagined.  We can read all those blessing statements in the Beattitudes and easily wonder just how and when that will be - but then everything changes if we encounter the blessed person who lives as if it’s true.  

It can easily feel like such people are in short supply.  Perhaps they are.  For me it’s a sobering, humbling, thought that I really ought to be one of those people for you.  I hope I have been, at times at least, and that I will be even more.  The saints, though, are not just  - not even primarily - the pastor, the famous speaker, or (God help us) the influencer - they are the ordinary people who manage faithfulness to Christ in ways perhaps mundane but profound, people who show us the path, who stir our imagination, whose lives are worth imitating.  

I hope that there are people in this community who inspire you, whose lives display what it means to follow Jesus here and now.  Church really ought to be a place where we come together not just to hear the Scriptures, but where we observe the Scripture embodied in the lives of individuals, where we see it incarnate in the Body of Christ.  

So consider the possibility that you just might be a saint to someone - or that, if you’re not yet, you might one day be.  There are many children in this little community whose impressions of what it means to follow Jesus are going to be formed, for better and worse, by observing us.  They are going to imitate us, so we should live worthy of imitation.   This is not a call to project perfection or to hide your faults - there’s nothing more worthy of imitation than confessing your faults and receiving forgiveness - but simply to take seriously the vocation placed upon all the children of God:  You are a saint.  In life, in death, and in the life to come, you are a saint.