Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. -1 Corinthians 11:1

 

Yesterday at RLC, I was chatting with one of the pollworkers during a lull in the polling. She’s a regular pollworker for this location, and as we talked she said, “This is such a nice church– and there are so many good ideas!” She gestured to the collection center, saying, “Every time I come here, I see something else I want to do at my church! Like in your kitchen, last election, I noticed the clear instructions written out for how to make coffee. I took a picture and showed it to a gal at my church and suggested we could make instructions for our coffee machine. I hope that’s okay that I am copying your ideas!”

I laughed as I replied to her, “Half of our good ideas are copied from somebody else to begin with. Besides, it’s not a competition. I’m glad if something you see here is a good thing for your church to try.”

It got me thinking about how much we can gain from copying one another. Pastors and other church workers routinely share resources or ideas on things that work for ministry in order to enable colleagues to succeed. I’ve seen school teachers and farmers do the same thing, sharing what worked for them in order to make the way a little smoother for someone else. While we might usually reserve the title “role model” for an example set for children, many of us could point to other adults who showed us the way in career, family, or faithful living.

When Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth nearly two thousand years ago, he knew how powerful imitation can be. He encouraged the Corinthians to take him as a role model– but specifically because he had taken Jesus Christ as his role model. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” he wrote. In other words, “Be like me, because I am being like Jesus.”

Who are your Jesus role models? Whose words or actions do you look at and see a Christlike heart? Are you copying them? Or, are your words and actions and thoughts being modeled after someone else besides Jesus? All of us might need to take time to reflect on who we’re taking for a role model. Are the ideas we’re getting from them ideas that build us up in faith? Or are they ideas that make us less like Jesus?

Some good news for us is that God sends us lots of people who are good imitators of Jesus Christ. There are exemplars like Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Harriet Tubman. There are people in the Bible like Noah, Esther, and Paul. There are people in our own congregation whose behavior imitates Jesus Christ. From all of them we see examples of faithful, Christ-like living. 

We also see something even more important– none of them are perfect in their imitation of Christ. Even so, they knew, like we know: it’s not how well we imitate Jesus that makes us children of God. It’s how well Jesus forgives us (completely) and how well the Holy Spirit calls us part of the family (perfectly) that makes us children of God.

Of course, children learn most of their habits from their family. In God’s family, we imitate one another, becoming all the while more like Jesus.