A Sunday In Easter Season Thought: What Does Imitating Christ's Life Really Mean

We read or hear that we, our lives should imitate Christ's life. Seems a bit bold, even harsh, for those of us who know we are sinners. Could even seem absurd.

But, no, that really is what we need to do. Problem is what exactly does it mean to imitate Christ's life, being the sinners we are?

And not only is the meaning a bit befuddling, but were we to explain clearly what it means, we're still left with exactly how we go about doing this.

Wait, maybe a softer way to state the case might work here. We could adjust this to our life should somehow imitate Christ's life. Better?

Not really. Even if the softer version does seem a bit more realistic - "somehow" - we still face the dilemma of deciding on the meaning of the softer version, as well as the matter of "how." 

So for those of us sinners who care, or maybe dare is a better word, to taker seriously this call to imitate the life of Christ, it seems we need something we can wrap our minds around, something clear things up, something to show us the way.

Well, we've some such something right here, right now, on this Sunday in Easter Season.   

    “‘Imitation of Christ’ does not mean that we must seek an exact parallel of incidents in our lives and that of Jesus. It means that we must strive to think and act according to His spirit, as we should judge He would speak and act or think in any given circumstances. The hundreds of expressions of our spirituality are our own, just as the events of our Lord’s life were peculiarly His own. His day was not as our day; His circumstances of life were not as ours. Yet he lived, and he asks us to live in like manner. It is an ideal, of course, and we strive to approximate it. We must look beneath the outward circumstances, the mere activities of Christ’s life, and try to discover the deep moral truths and principles which guided them. Most of our Lord’s life was unexceptional, if viewed only in these circumstances. He was not always working miracles, but he lived among men and women graciously. What made Him a Light among men, a Light that shone with ever increasing brilliance until today His figure stands as the greatest in human history, was His inner life, His spirit. He came not only as the Son of God; He came to us also as the Son of Man. He not only died for us, but He lived for us as well, to show us how to live.” (Rev. George Zimpfer)

Meaty, isn't it? But what's better is that the meatiness isn't hard to swallow - even for us sinners. 

Indeed, with the easy to swallow meat that Rev. Zimpfer serves us, it would be no exaggeration to say that none of us sinners should feel either overwhelmed or exempt from the call to imitate Christ, no?

And so we must thank Rev. Zimpfer for making our Easter in Easter Season a good one. We've got something to chew on during these hours of respite from our work and the typical activities of our busy lives. We can productively use whatever time we've carved out to boost our spiritual lives - which we really need to do on any given Sunday.  

Just read those words, and maybe more than once. We can chew on them, at some point swallow them and make them our own. And, who knows, with God's grace, maybe we can begin to really imitate Christ's life.

Even us sinners.

 

Happy Easter!