The Power of Example

The most important words Jesus said to his disciples were “Follow me.” To Levi Jesus said, “Follow me” (Mark 2:14). To a less-than-certain-about-following-Jesus-person Jesus said, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22), and to the crowd and his disciples, Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

To follow means to follow, to get behind and walk in the steps of the one being followed. To follow means to improvise following Jesus into paths Jesus never took. To follow is to make Jesus an example. The apostle Paul wrote this to the Corinthians: “Become copies of me just as I am of Christos” (1 Cor 11:1; Second Testament).

A longish term for this is exemplification. Another is imitation, as in imitatio Christi, the famous book by Thomas à Kempis, which I read for the first time as a college student. I did not have enough game to comprehend what à Kempis wrote at the time.

What the church needs now is examples of a new way of life. A way of life for today.

In early August of 1944 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend and future biographer, Eberhard Bethge, and sketched an outline for a book. About his proposed chapter three, Bonhoeffer wrote, “The church is church only when it is there for others. … The church must participate in the worldly tasks of life in the community – not dominating but helping and serving…. In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism as the roots of all evil. … It will have to see that it does not underestimate the significance of the human ‘example’ (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul's writings!); the church’s word gains weight and power not through concepts but by example.” Bonhoeffer promised he would write more about this in the future, which he did not survive to accomplish. Charles Marsh, who put me on to this piece by Bonhoeffer, made reference to it in his foreword to Peter Slade, Shea Tuttle, and Jacqueline A. Bussie, eds., People Get Ready: Twelve Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents, and Dreamers in Pursuit of Justice (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2023). I loved this book. Read it.

Charles Marsh, with the Lived Theology, in his opening to this book, wrote this: “the disciples of Jesus Christ are the ones who follow him into those manifold fields and ask the Spirit to let them their exemplify him.” Exemplify. Example. Imitation. Follow Jesus.

The Slade, Tuttle, Bussie book contains twelve wondrous stories of exemplification, stories of people who sought with their body and life, to follow Jesus into the injustices of this world in order to disestablish injustice and establish justice. As Lauren Winner, who wrote a wonderful chapter about Sarah Patton Boyle, of whom I had never heard, made this important observation: “when you read someone who bears witness, what's important is not that the writer you’re reading accomplished something, but that her witness gives you clarity about what's really going on.” I like that. Witness and example is not about results; they are about truth-telling and providing others with the kind of truth that summons someone else to hop on that same path.

Whose story reshaped your story?

So, whose stories are told in this collection of imitation and exemplification?

Florence Jordan (by Ansley L. Quiros; Clarence’s wife and fellow follower of Jesus)
Bruce Klunder (by Carolyn Renée Dupont; from Cleveland)
Tom Skinner (by Jemar Tisby; an African American who mapped a path)
Rachel Carson (by Mallory McDuff; ecology, environment)
Allan M. Tibbels (by Mark R. Gornik; West Baltimore)
Mary Paik Lee (by Jane Hong; Asian American path-making)
Flannery O’Connor (by Jacqueline A. Bussie; a stunningly insightful approach)
Pete Seeger (by Peter Slade; the people’s musician)
Toni Morrison (by Ann Hostetler; the novelist’s “embedded theology”)
Jack Egan (by Daniel P. Rhodes; North Lawndale activism for housing justice)
Sarah Patton Boyle (by Lauren Winner; a letter writer seeking racial justice)
Padre Ramon Dagoberto Quiñones (by M. Therese Lysaught; sanctuary movement)

In the essay by Jacqueline Bussie about Flannery O’Connor, the author says of moral exemplars: “Aren’t moral exemplars precisely the ones who reverse the cliché – those who don’t merely reflect their cultural moment, but who instead refashion it into a product of their liberating vision? True followers of the gospel don’t merely portray their era, but instead in a very real sense produce it.”

We need this book because stories produce cultures and visions of what could be, of the kingdom of God, of a life like Jesus’s. Preachers and teachers – if you are looking for stories about pursuing justice, this book – and its predecessor (Can I Get a Witness?) – are for you. I know they are for me.