A Performer for the Music--October 12, 2022

A Performer for the Music--October 12, 2022

"Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." [1 Corinthians 11:1]

All right, no disrespect intended, but... why, Paul?

I mean, why do we need Paul as someone to imitate, if he himself is just doing his best to imitate the way of Jesus?  Why the middle-man?  Why the need for another step between Jesus and us?  And why does it need to be Paul?

I hope my questions make sense here. I'm all for following Jesus, and I'm completely on board for the idea that we are called to be more and more like Christ--in fact, that God's own Spirit is forming us to be more fully like Christ as we mature in faith.  That part I can wholeheartedly support.  But in all sincerity and with all due respect, why would Paul offer himself as a worthy example for the folks in Corinth to pattern their lives on?  What makes Paul a close enough replica for those ancient Christians to use him as their template for being "like" Christ?  And isn't there the danger of losing the precision of the original every time you add another successive imitation, like making a copy of a copy of a copy on an old-fashioned mimeograph machine, each time losing a bit more of the original's clarity?

I think those are all valid concerns, actually.  And honestly, I think no less than Paul himself would agree that when we take our eyes off of Jesus for too long we are likely to get sidetracked or led astray.  And Paul himself has already happily reminded us, way back in the first chapter of this letter, that he ain't Christ, and that only Jesus gets to be the Savior who dies for our sins.  Paul wasn't crucified for our sake, and he knows it.  Paul knows he's a sinner who's been forgiven and given a new start.  He knows that he was an enemy of Christ and was claimed by God's grace, not that he's the model disciple without flaws or failings.  Paul will be the first to admit he's not just a screw-up, but he calls himself elsewhere "the chief of sinners." So it sounds like the apostle himself knows that he's not a very accurate copy of Jesus, even for all his best attempts and efforts.  Paul's got feet of clay, and he knows it.

But oddly enough, maybe that's exactly why we need someone like Paul to be another model of what it could look like to live the way of Jesus.  And I mean that at two different levels.  For one, we need other people to embody the way of Jesus, not only as examples to copy but as partners on the journey walking beside us.  We need other people to show us Christ-likeness, because Jesus can't be reduced to a mere set of principles, a list of rules, or an abstract concept.  We need people who show us in their lived choices, the way they share tables and break bread with strangers, the way they sacrifice for others, the way they listen and ask good questions, the way they get tired and go to bed and start all over again in the morning.  We need people to embody the way of Jesus because that's what the way of Jesus is for--it's a way of life that is lived, not a book to be read and memorized. 

It's almost like looking at a piece of sheet music but knowing that you won't really know what it sounds like unless you get a person with a piano or trumpet or cello or flute to play it for you.  Having the printed musical score is a helpful tool for making music, but you aren't actually making music if you just have the black and white notes on a page.  You need someone to perform it.  Even with mistakes or missed notes here and there, even with a slightly irregular tempo or a missed rest, you get a better sense of how the music goes when it is played by a musician than when you just look at notes printed on paper.   And the Christian life is like that--we don't just need a printed book to tell us "in theory" what it looks like to follow Jesus or what things Jesus did in a different time and place.  We need people interpreting the music and playing the melody on their instruments, even if we will play it yet differently with our different instruments, because music has to be performed to be truly experienced.  It's not just a printed score.  We need a performer for the music.

So yeah, we need people like Paul was for the folks in Corinth--a living, breathing, human being who is striving to walk in Jesus' footsteps--who can show us his own interpretation of playing the Jesus melody, so to speak.  It doesn't mean we'll duplicate everything Paul ever did, but it does mean that where we need someone to show us in actual lived actions and choices what Jesus' kind of love can look like, he's a place to start.  And like listening to different performers play the same song, noticing how each gives slightly different inflections, slightly different pauses, and slightly different nuances that make the piece their own, we'll be able to learn from watching the likes of Paul... and Mary Magdalene... and Francis of Assisi... and Dorothy Day... and Dietrich Bonhoeffer... and the people in your own church, living out their faith day by day.  We need the lived examples, even if our lives our in different eras and circumstances, so that we can figure out how we will play the Jesus melody in our time and in our place.

And the other thing that is helpful about having someone like Paul to look up to is exactly the fact that he admits he'll get it wrong sometimes.  See, sometimes the hang-up we have with Jesus is that... well, he's Jesus.  He's the perfect Son of God.  Like the writer to the Hebrews puts it, he's like us in every way and has been tested in every way like us... but without sin.  And honestly, that can make Jesus seem out of reach.  [He's not, of course; Jesus is always as close as our own breath, but we have a way of imagining him at arm's length or further because he is without sin, and we are, well, pathological stinkers.]  But to know that Paul is someone who struggled, and sometimes messed up, and then started over again and tried to follow Jesus all over again--that gives us a role model we can relate to, in those times when Jesus seems impossible to follow.  Because we know that Paul started from a place of being absolutely turned away from Jesus to being brought close in, we can relate to Paul and his own failings and rejections in a way that maybe seems harder with Jesus, because he never wavers and always does God's will. Maybe part of what we need to have an example for is how to fail well... in other words, how to own our mess-ups, start over, and keep striving to walk the Jesus way.  If all we had was the record of Jesus' actions, we might think it was impossible to follow him perfectly and therefore that we shouldn't even try.  But with Paul as a role model, we know that there are going to be times where he struggled and blew it, and that we can learn from him how to start over again when we blow it, too.  It turns out to be a beautiful thing that all of our role models in Christ are sinners, stinkers, and mess-ups like us--they teach us how to start over.

So yeah, maybe after all Paul knows what he is doing by offering his own life as an entry point to imitating Jesus.  It's not because Paul pretends he is always going to get it right, or that there is only one right way to be Christ-like.  But rather we need something--or rather somebody--to show us what the notes on the page could sound like.  We need someone to play us the tune, however imperfectly, so that we can add our instruments into the music.

Now--think about the people in your life who have been that for you.  Think about the people who have lived the way of Jesus for you, from whom you have learned and seen glimpse of Christlikeness.  And then dare to imagine that there are people who are looking to you right now to see what it could look like to love like Jesus does.  Where will you point them?  How will your example direct them in the way of Jesus?

Lord Jesus, help us to see the people you place in our lives who point us to you.