The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church February 5, 2023. The Bible verses used are Galatians 5:22--6:2.
There’s a word that’s come into fashion in recent
years. The word is “adulting”. It means “the
practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially
the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.” In other words, if
you speak or act or live the way a mature, reasonable, intelligent adult is
supposed to, you’re said to be “adulting”.
The thing is that adulting--learning how
to speak or act or live like a mature, reasonable, intelligent adult--is not
something that happens overnight. It does not just come to you all at
once. It’s a process. It takes time. We have to learn
it. Each of us, had to learn how to be an adult.
How did you learn it? Probably in
a lot of ways, but the chances are you learned adulting from people who were
adults. First it was your parents, then it may have been teachers or
pastors or other influential people in your life. It might even have been
people you saw on television. And the way you learned was probably not
from the things they said. That may have been part of it, but the chances
are the way you learned from them was by watching them. You watched them,
and you imitated them. You tried to do the things they did and live the
way they lived. That’s the way we learn adulting--by imitating the adults
who are important in our lives.
It seems to me that there’s a faith
lesson for us in that. Just as children learn adulting by imitating
adults, we can learn to be Christians by imitating Christ. We could refer
to this as “Christing”. The practice of behaving in a way characteristic
of Jesus Christ.
That’s what the Apostle Paul told us to
do in our reading from Ephesians. The version of the Bible we normally
use, the New International Version, says “follow God’s example”, but a lot of
versions actually come out and say, “Be imitators of Christ.” Either way,
though, the point is that, as Christians, our goal is to be as much like Christ
as possible.
And Paul tells us ways in which we can
do that. Here’s what he says: Speak the truth. Try not to get
angry, but if we do, get over it. Don’t get carried away by anger, so
that our agner makes us sin. Don’t steal. Work hard. Share
with each other. Watch the things we say. Let the things we say be
encouraging and build people up. Let our words benefit people who hear
them.
And then, to sup it all up, Paul says
this:
Get rid of
all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of
malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other,
just as in Christ God forgave you...And walk in the way of love, just as Christ
loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to
God.
Now, that’s
a pretty good checklist that Paul gave us. If each of us did all those
things, we’d probably do a pretty good job of Christing. We’d do about as
good a job as a human can do of being like Jesus Christ if we did all of those
things.
But here’s
the thing. A person really cannot live their life by following a
checklist. Every time we go to act or speak, we cannot pull out a list to
see if what we’re about to do or say is on it. We cannot even do that
mentally. Most people’s minds simply do not work that way.
If you doubt
me on that, think about this--how many times have you spoken before you
thought? How many times have you done something without really thinking
it through? For most of us, it happens quite a bit. We speak before
we think and we act before we think. We regret it, later, but we still do
it. For a lot of us, it happens pretty regularly.
Or, think of
it this way. Think of a time you were learning to do something.
Learning to swim, learning to sew, learning to work on machinery, learning to
cook, learning to play a sport or a musical instrument, whatever. What’s
the best way to learn? Is it to read a book about it? Is it to
listen to a lecture about it? Or is ti to have someone work with you and
show you how to do it? For most of us, that’s what we need. We need
someone to show us how. We need an example to follow. And that’s
the best way for us to learn how to be like Jesus Christ, too.
And that’s
why Jesus did not, for the most part, teach “Christing” with lectures.
There were times when Jesus told us things we should and should not do.
But Jesus did not stop there. He provided examples.
First, he provided the example of his own life. The
life Jesus lived--a life of love, a life of healing, a life of giving, a life
of self-sacrifice--is the ultimate example of how a Christian should
live. If we could all imitate Jesus’ life, we’d all be Christing
perfectly.
But Jesus
provided examples in other ways, too. That’s one of the reasons for
jesus’ parables. Think of how most of the parables came about. The
way it usually worked was that someone would come up to Jesus and say, “Here’s
a situation. Now what do you think about it. What should we
do.”
How did
Jesus respond. It was never by giving a direct answer, right? Jesus
never answered by saying, “You should do this.” What Jesus would say, in
effect, is “let me tell you a story. It might be a story about a man with
two sons. It might be a story about a guy who was traveling and was
attacked by thieves. It might be a story about a man who went out to
plant a field.
Story after
story after story. Jesus would tell the story, and then say, “Now, what
do you think the right thing to do is?’ And of course, the answer would
be obvious. Jesus taught t hat way because he knew that just telling
people what to do does not work. We need to be shown what to do. We
need examples to follow.
So what does that mean for our lives? Well, it means a few
things. For one thing, it shows the importance of reading the Bible,
especially the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the books that
tell us about Jesus’ life. After all, if we want to be like Christ, we
need to get to know Christ. The old phrase “What Would Jesus Do” is still
a good guide, but in order to know what Jesus would do we need to know what
Jesus actually did. So if we want to get better at Christing, we need to
know how Jesus lived his life on earth and know the examples Jesus gave us for
how we should live our lives.
But again,
it’s not enough to read about it. We need to be shown. So what do
we do?
The
letter to the Hebrews answers that. In Hebrews Thirteen, Verse Seven, we
read, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider
the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” And in Hebrews
Six, Verse Twelve, it says, “Imitate those who through faith and patience
inherit what has been promised.”
We may not
be able to see Jesus. We may not be able to see Paul. But there are
people we can see. There are people whose way of life shows their
faith. There are people who are imitators of Christ. There are
people who are Christing. And we can imitate them, and so learn Christing
ourselves.
Who are
those people for you? Who are the people you know whose way of life shows
their faith? Who do you know who you believe, through faith and patience,
will inherit what God has promised?
Those are
the people who can show us how to imitate Christ. Don’t get me
wrong--Jesus is still the ultimate standard. Jesus is the one to
follow. But to the extent we need someone we can see, these are the
people. These are the ones who can help us with “Christing”, with
imtiating Jesus Christ in our lives.
But here’s another thing to think about. Who might you be an
example to? In fact, who might be looking to you as an example right
now? Because I’m pretty sure someone is. Whether you know it or
not, whether you intend it or not, whether you like it or not, someone
is. Someone is learning Christing from you. Even if you don’t think
they should be, even if you don’t think you’re worthy fo that, it’s true.
Someone is learning Christing from you. And someone may be learning
Christing from me, too.
What are
they learning? If someone patterened their Christian faith after yourse,
what would they be like? How good at Christing would they be?
You’ll have
to answer that for yourself. If you’re happy with the answer, that’s
great. But if you’re not, then it leads to another question. What
are you going to do about it?
Little kids
learn adulting by imitating adults. You and I learn Christing by
imitating Christ and by imitating Christians we respect and admire. And
others will learn Christing by imitating us.
May we learn
well. May we follow Christ in our own lives, and may we also help others
learn to follow Christ in their lives.
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