Identity Crisis?

John 13 – Intro

Barefoot Guy

When I first started at college I was the barefoot guy. It had started in the summer when I frequently went without shoes. At some point I got the probably-mistaken impression that “someone” thought it was cool, or kind of free-spirited or something. I don’t know. Also I didn’t like shoes.

Then at one point I walked across hot pavement and someone was like “Woah” and then that was “my thing.” Looking back it was more like “Woah, that’s weird and gross” not like “Woah, you are one cool dude.” But that became “my thing”.

I stopped wearing shoes altogether. For like two years. In restaurants. In school. In bathrooms. I know… gross… but it was my thing. It was an identity. In college they would talk about the guy-with-stretched-out-ear-lobes and they would talk about the barefoot-guy, who also brings his guitar and does worship in the quad.

This was my identity.

Towards the end of my time at that school I had the growing sense that my “thing”, my identity, was super-stupid. I tried phasing it out at that school, but people made a big deal if I wore sandals. So when I transferred schools, I did an amazing triumph of personal rebranding. At my new school… I wore shoes. And there was great rejoicing.

Christian Guy

I had another identity, and this is one that I didn’t change. I was and am “Christian” guy. I was an am an “evangelical Christian guy”. And that comes up in conversations about who you are, as you are telling people who you are, and as soon as you say that, there is a host of associations and assumptions about what those things mean.

People have their own definitions of what it means to be a Christian. It may mean something about morality, something about politics, something about family values, something about judgment and condemnation. It may have positive associations of “lovely people” or negative associations of someone who has been hurt or even abused by someone with the “Christian” title.

And, like it or not, if you are a Christ follower, you inherit all of that identity association. Because people fill the word “Christian” with whatever they think it means. Now that’s probably inevitable, and we can’t really pull of a marketing campaign to change that, but I think it also happens because the word “Christian” doesn’t mean much. It isn’t a strongly defined word.

In fact, it only shows up in the Bible a couple of times, and it isn’t what they called themselves, it is a word other people called them. Probably, possibly meant as an insult.

The word that does show up over and over again to describe the early followers of Jesus, the early church is this one: disciple. Disciples of Jesus. And all of Scriptures is written by people who identified themselves as disciples of Jesus.

And I love this word as an act of identity. Because it is beautifully well defined. It means follower, a certain kind of follower. But it is given a very special and specific meaning to disciples of Jesus, it is almost scary. Because if we want to call ourselves disciples of Jesus, we have to do this thing (and this thing is hard).

The disciples are about to change schools. Everything they know is about to change, and their “thing” their identity has to change. Jesus is going to prepare them for what’s coming.

Discipleship Identity Crisis

John 13:1

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

To the end. This could be to the very end of his purpose, to the completion of his goal. He loved them towards accomplishing his purpose.

Or temporally, up until the last moment he loved them. All the way to the cross and beyond. Or better yet, both and. Both of those things.

This marks a turning point, in the last few days of Jesus’ ministry before the cross, Jesus is going to focus his time and attention, his teaching, on his inner group. On his twelve disciples. These are the guys who have been with him through thick and thin. Through years of ministry, there have been many followers for a time, but these are the guys who kept on keeping on. Following after Jesus up to Galilee and down to Jerusalem, up to Galilee and back to Judea. You see Jesus, and behind him are his posse. The Twelve.

Jesus is now going to really focus on preparing them for what is about to happen. It turns out so much of his ministry, his story, is going to be entirely dependent on these guys. They need to witness, they need to eventually understand.

But more, they are his disciples. And we need to define what that means. And I heard this very active definition that I love.

Disciple: a disciple is one asks what to do in a situation and, before the answer is given, has already decided to do what the leader says.

When faced with a life decision, a disciple asks “what would you do in this situation” and even before the answer is given, has already committed to doing exactly that.

And the disciples have been doing this literally, walking in the literal footsteps of Jesus. For years.

That is their identity. They are the Twelve Disciples.

But they are about to have an identity crisis. The one they have been following, and they have built their identity on him as his disciples, he is about to die. To be gone. And even though Jesus knows he is coming back, and there will be a brief window of further preparation, he knows that he is then going away again such that they will never again follow him in the same way they have been for years.

It is an identity crisis. And they will need a new identity. A new identification. A new way to be disciples and a new way to be known, even self-known, as disciples. And in John 13, he teaches them.

Now there is a powerful acting out of this teaching, and we are going to spend some time there in a couple weeks.

There is a powerful context to this teaching, and we are going to spend some time there in a couple weeks.

But we are going to skip to the very heart of the teaching. If you are reading in one sitting, this all builds beautifully so I encourage you to just read John 13 this week or this afternoon. It all fits together perfectly, as if Jesus is a Master Teacher 😉, but there is so much here we would miss it if I tried to do it all in one. So we will do this three times.

So there is a living example, and a shocking context, but then Jesus dives into the heart of his teaching. And it is to give his disciples a new identity.

John 13:31-35

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. 33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’

Jesus is going away, to the cross and to glorification. They are going both places, but not quite so fast.

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

A new commandment??? Not really that new.. but it has a new focus. This isn’t loving your neighbor or loving the world. It is more focused than that. You are to love the world, to love all people, to love your enemies even… but this has a special focus. Not to love them less… but maybe to love one another even more.

To love one another so much… that people notice. In fact, that you become famous for that, that that becomes a distinguishing characteristic: that love for one another comes to define you.

How are they going to know you’re my disciple? Because you’re not obviously walking behind me anymore. You are no longer, literally, covered in the dust of the Master.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

If you are a disciple, love for one another defines you.

Are we Famous?

We are going to examine and unpack that kind of love. But this week I just want us to ask that question of ourselves. Is that my identity? Is that something people recognize in me.

Am I a disciple of Jesus, or am I just a Christian? And if I am a disciple of Jesus… does everyone know that I am by the way that I love his people? His church?

Am I famous for that? Are we famous for that? I know “Christians” aren’t generally famous for that.

A Loving Church

We are blessed with an incredible head-start. This has been, for all of my time here, an incredibly loving church. I will even say a famously loving church. It helps that we like each other.

Not being funny, that’s a great starting place. Do you think all Twelve Disciples liked each other? I don’t think so. We know they had arguments, and some political grasping for position, and some were on the inner-inner-circle with Jesus and some were left on the fringes. Wildly different social strata, styles, ways of speaking and ways of being.

Liking was irrelevant. I like the vast majority of you! 😃 I am commanded to love all of you, and to love you famously.

That’s how people are going to know I am a disciple of Jesus.

Is this my identity? Is that who I am?

I this your identity? Is it that tied to who you are? Is it intentional or accidental? Do I just like some people here and so I give them acts of love, but is this kind of love something more than that?

Something broader? More awkward, more risky, probably more difficult, but certainly more unusual?

Is that who we are? Are we famous for it?

I want to keep asking the question to keep wrestling with the question. Because we need to unpack this, we need to explore it, we need to be it.

But, like a good disciple, there is no question of “will I do what it takes to get there.” I am walking up to Jesus with my pen and paper in hand to say “how do I do this?” having already decided that I am going to do what he tells me.

And this is my statement of intent:

I am a disciple of Jesus, I want to follow Jesus, and that means I am going to love his people famously.

This is our identity, church. We are disciples of Jesus, our “Next Steps” are next steps in the footsteps of Jesus, covered in the dust of the Master, and that means we are going to love one another famously.