Last Sunday, on World Communion Sunday – in his sermon – Jonathan Larson offered us a necklace of stories, a string of tales from scripture, Anabaptist history, and his own life – all examples of moments when the whisper of beloved community was heard, that as Hebrews said – “Jesus is not ashamed to call us sisters and brothers…”
One of the historical figures from the 16th century that Jonathan pointed to was the German Anabaptist Hans Denck. And one of Denck’s great quotes was that:
“No one can truly know Christ unless they follow after him in daily life, and no one can follow Christ in daily life unless they truly know him.”1
From an Anabaptist perspective – the faithfulness in discipleship is inseparable from a mystical, spiritual experience of God. Action and contemplation are interwoven – both gifts from the Spirit.
No one can truly know Christ unless they follow after him in daily life. And no one can follow Christ in daily life unless they truly know him.
So if Jesus is indeed the center of our faith: What does it mean to know Jesus? What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Notice that I didn’t ask – what does it mean to believe in Jesus? Rather, the question always before us is how do we follow and know more profoundly the God made known to us in the Lord Jesus Christ?
This isn’t a matter of believing in an intellectual way the right list of things butof journeying with the God of grace who invites us into deeper relationship and a life of joyful faithfulness.
Paul – in chapter two of his letter to the church in Phillipi, shares with us what was likely an early Christian hymn. Let the same mind be mind you that was in Christ, Jesus.
Notice that Paul doesn’t say – in your minds, believe in Christ Jesus – but Paul says – “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” The journey of discipleship is about us becoming like Christ as we walk with him.
For the rest of the passage that we heard – Paul references this early hymn telling us who Jesus is, how God exalts Jesus, and how we along with all creation can participate in the refrain worshiping Jesus as the name above all names.
When we say that we follow Jesus – it means we follow a God who descends and knows what it means to be human in the person of Jesus.
As Paul puts it, “Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
At the core of God’s character is a love that is a descending, humbling, faithful love – that knows no limit to its depth. Paul uses the intense word of slave to describe the kind of human he was – acquainted with the bottom rungs of society, the worst abuse of power and violence that humanity is capable of. Jesus knows both the heights of heavenly power and the full experience of death. Death on a cross, Paul reminds us – a crimial’s death, a shameful torture at the hands of an empire.
We follow a God who knows not just what it is to be human in the abstract.
We follow a God who experiences, along with us, the most excruciating, horrific, painful and shameful realities of life as a human.
God in Christ knows and aches with us when there is another gunshot heard outside an apartment building or another school is put on lockdown.
Christ who emptied himself – hears and feels the groans of empty stomachs, the despair of hands outstretched begging for cash.
Jesus, who knew in his body the cruelty of unjust power systems, stands with all who walk the shadow of the valley of death, all who live life in the shadows of falling bombs, and all those who are working to pick up the muddy pieces of their lives after devastating storms.
To follow Jesus – means that we humble ourselves too. And this doesn’t mean that we are passive or avoid conflict or overlook oppression or seek out suffering for its own sake – but it means that we practice what the early Anabaptists called gelassenheit – “yieldedness.”
We yield our own spirits and wills and lives to God – we regard others as better than ourselves, we look to the genuine interests of others, we look to where God is working in the world.
Yieldedness and humility isn’t about denying ourselves – but finding ourselves caught up in the joy of life in the Spirit following Christ. Discipleship is a joyful and creative life of faithfulness. I know that the Mennonite tradition has a history of discipleship meaning church discipline and control. And in some church traditions “discipling” can mean coercion and unhealthy power relationships between church members…and the language of “following Jesus” is really about falling in line with rigid norms and binary understandings of salvation.
But I hope that for us discipleship is simply experiencing life with Jesus.
None of his 1st century friends and disciples knew how that first decision to go and listen to and tag along with this teacher healer would turn out. Their journeys included tears of heartbreak and loss, tons of joy in meals, unexpected laughter at healings, perplexity at what Jesus said and did, uncertainty at where their next meal nad place to sleep would be. aThey befriend countless newcomers as folks scattered and were called to other places too. We’re invited on this ongoing journey to experience the good news of life with Jesus.
Knowing Christ and following Christ is a dynamic life-long journey out of our control. Because Jesus isn’t an idea to believe in but a person to know and walk with and befriend.
Jesus reveals a God whose faithfulness to us and to all creation looks like drawing near in humility and love. And because of Jesus’ life of down-wardly directed love, our Phillipians text exclaims that God highly exalted Jesus, giving him the name that is above every name.
The other side of humility is exaltation. This Phillipians hymn describes Jesus as taking the human form of a slave – but also every tongue in heaven and earth confessing him as Lord, as Master.
The way of our God of love, is the way of reversal. Whatever our expectations of power and authority we have will be turned on our head. To a Roman world where the kyrios – the Lord – figure was a male who ruled household or the Caesar who ruled an empire with violent authority – Jesus is a Lord, a Master who washes feet and plays with children and proclaims the freedoms of those who are enslaved.
When we proclaim that Jesus is the Christ – the Messiah – the anointed one – we are affirming that he is the one in whom the fullness of God’s promise in the Hebrew scriptures are complete – that in Christ is the goodness of prophetic justice and priestly holiness blossom yet Jesus surprises us by not carrying no sword of kingly rule and ruling over no palatial estate. Instead Jesus wears a crown of thorns and had no place to rest his head but with the lowly.
And so we proclaim that Jesus is our Lord, our Messiah, our Leader – the person at the center of our lives…we speak these words because Jesus knows what it is to be human – to struggle, to suffer, to wonder, to doubt, to hope and grow. Jesus knows all these things and lived with us as an expression of God’s great love for us and for all creatures.
And because of this, our scripture proclaims that “every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God.”
Jesus is at the center of our lives, is the one who reveals the one at the center of everything – a creating and loving God – and so with all creation, and everything that moves and breathes we join in proclaiming in word and deed that indeed Jesus Christ is Lord.
- Palmer Becker, Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith, (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2017), 23. ↩︎