Richard Rohr said (in a beautiful video about Jesus), “He says follow me. But instead of following Jesus, we spent most of our energy worshipping Jesus, but then arguing about the form of worship, when He never said “worship me” to begin with. He said “follow me”. That is an entirely different agenda. Rohr also said, “Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk free; actually following Jesus changes everything”. Since hearing this last Easter, I’ve been stunned. I can’t get this out of my mind. It hammers the nail on the head! You see, when I was wrapped up in charismania and religion, and I thought I was acting “set apart”, I truly did a terrible job of following Jesus. But, oh, did I worship Him! I watched people spend their whole lives on their faces before God, worshipping Him. The promise was “The presence” would change their whole lives, but the majority of these people went on to become entrenched in devastating behaviors or rather, they already were entrenched and they hid it because the church they were in did not accept real honest lives lived. They were not changed from “the presence”. They only became more disillusioned with God. The presence of God is so good. But it’s not magic.
I’m not saying worshipping God doesn’t do any good. I love worshipping God and spent a great deal of time doing so both alone and in corporate services. I believe our hearts are changed when we surrender our hearts in worship to Him. I adore singing in worship to the Lord and when I do my heart becomes more aligned with His.
But worshipping Jesus must be married to following Jesus. We must get up off the floor and go out into the world! Just worship alone becomes an addiction. Once it’s an addiction, Jesus is just a drug dealer and nothing else.
What does it mean to follow Jesus? Many Christians have narrowed this down to getting people saved. Read in the gospels about the life of Jesus. You won’t find tracts there! He hung out with the people Christians would feel contaminated by. People that cuss (except most Christians cuss in the privacy of their own home). People that drink alcohol (but oh wait, many Christians drink and hide it). Tax collectors (some network marketers could fall in here). Harlots. I love how Jesus loved on these women, understanding that their present behavior was the result of severe abuse by the men in their lives. Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s not hard to hang out with the “least of these” because if we were honest with ourselves, they aren’t much different than we are. They just don’t hide anything. They don’t have a spirit of religion riding them.
In order to truly follow Jesus as a church, we acknowledge that it’s going to be messy. We have chosen the mess to reach more with the love of God. Some people are going to drink too much. Some people are going to cuss a little more than you do. Some people will confess they had a one night stand last weekend. And some are going to judge those who did the above. And we are going to love them all, just as God loves and forgives us when we make our mistakes. We are going to help each other do better and keep running back to Jesus. And in all of this, we will learn how to manage our freedom in Christ and we will become mature and healthy believers.
Following Jesus is the narrow road. It’s not easy. It’s easy to put on your “Sunday best” and act perfect and holy, while hiding your “bad” side. The opposite is living your life vulnerable and real, risking being rejected. Jesus was and is rejected by many.
That’s good, Holly. It’s interesting, though, how our religious mind set keeps pulling us back to “that’s not what a good Christian girl does”, a statement that was pounded into my head growing up and I vividly remember my mother saying. By dwelling on what a “a good Christian girl does or doesn’t do” implies we are always dwelling on ourselves instead of what God does, dwelling on others. A “good Christian girl” loves, is filled with love, loves herself, loves those around her that aren’t loveable, loves unconditionally, forgives, does no harm to others, weighs what comes out of her mouth so as to not do harm unnecessarily. When a “good Christian girl” is in Union with a God, and that means “I in Him and He in I” we allow our creator to do in us and through us what He wills without thought to if I’m being a “good Christian girl”. To imply that “I’m being a good Christian girl” implies at times I’m not being a good Christian girl and the “I am” and “I’m not” implies that the Holy one that lives in us is being a “good Christian girl” and then sometimes not, kind of a dichotomy.