You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. (Philippians 2:5)
One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone. Only his disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”
Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!”
Jesus warned his disciples not to tell anyone who he was. “The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”
Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?” (Luke 9:18–25 NLT)
There is an old saying found in the Mishnah – a collection of rabbinic thoughts from the centuries around the time of Jesus – that translates to: “Let thy house be a meeting-house for the wise; and powder thyself in the dust of their feet; and drink their words with thirstiness.”
Throughout the years, many scholars have talked about this passage as a picture of a person who invites the rabbi into their home, to sit at their feet and learn from them. Many other scholars, because of the specific meaning of the Hebrew word translated into English as “powder,” say it is a description of following so closely after your rabbi as he traverses the road between towns that you are covered in the dust kicked up by his feet.
Since it is impossible to know the original intent of the author of this saying, which version of dust-covering he intended, most modern commentaries on the Mishnah mention either reading is possible.
A better understanding, though, is that both meanings are crucial to being a good disciple.
We should be inviting Jesus into our homes so we might sit at his feet, like Mary in Luke 10, eagerly drinking up his words. We should be students, hanging on his every word, asking him questions, yearning to glean more of his wisdom, to take in more of his essence into ourselves.
But we should also be like the twelve, following Jesus around from town to village to city as he proclaimed the Good News through teachings and healings. They followed close after him on the road through the everyday moments – what Eugene Peterson calls “your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life.” They learned not just by listening but also by watching what he did, who he talked to, how he reacted to both the smooth roads and the potholes.
It is incredibly easy for us to say we are trying to be like Jesus, but truly seeking to follow him as if we were disciples requires much of us. Even as we glorify the time the disciples had with Jesus, many times we fall back into a rhythm in our own lives of being like Mary. It is great to sit at the feet of Jesus, to learn from him, but we must also follow him where he leads us, beyond the safety of our own home. We must venture out into our communities, and possibly even beyond them, to where God is inviting us, his twenty-first century disciples. We must follow where he is leading us.
To paraphrase Luke 9:23, we must give up our own way, take up our cross daily, and follow Jesus.
Are you willing to get up off the floor at Jesus’s feet and follow him out the front door into your community? What is causing you to second-guess setting aside your own plans and following his?
Michael Benson is the communications director for the North American Baptist Conference.