In last week’s second reading Paul held himself up as a model for imitation to the Thessalonians (2 Thess.3:7-12). For Paul imitation is neither the “sincerest form of flattery” nor a “cheap copy,” but a means to model oneself in the life of Christ. Paul holds himself up as a model of imitation strictly because of his apostolic call. And Paul offers himself as a model because the apostle’s life is to be shaped in the image of Christ. It is a model, however, in whose likeness all Christians are called to shape themselves. The occasions in which Paul calls his churches to imitate him are instructive for understanding the nature of the Christian path. A number of times Paul describes himself as a parent for his congregations, both mother (1 Thessalonians 2:7;1 Corinthians 3:1-2:;1 Corinthians 4:15; Philemon 10; Galatians 4:19; see Beverly Gaventa’s new book, Our Mother St. Paul) and father (1 Thessalonians 2:11;1 Corinthians 4:14-16; 2 Corinthians 11:2). This places the members of his churches as children in the faith, whom he sometimes casts as infants (Galatians 4:19;1 Corinthians 3:1-2, 4:14; 1Thessalonians 2:7; Ephesians 4:14-15), but whom he calls to maturity (Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 2:6, 13:10,14:20; Philippians 3:12,3:15; Colossians 1:28, 4:12; Ephesians 4:13). Spiritual maturity develops at least partly in imitating the spiritual parent. So what is the content of Paul’s call to maturity through imitation? Apart from last week’s call to work for a living and not burden the Church (2 Thessalonians 3:7, 9), Paul also calls us to imitation in other concrete ways: 1. 1 Thessalonians 1:6: the Thessalonians imitate Paul and Christ by receiving the word with joy in spite of persecution; 2. 1 Thessalonians 2:14: the Thessalonians imitate the churches in Judea by suffering persecution; 3. 1 Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1: the Corinthians are to imitate Paul by maintaining the traditions (11:2) and the way of life in Christ (4:17) he has demonstrated and taught, just as Paul imitates Christ; 4. Philippians 3:17: the Philippians are to imitate Paul and his co-workers who have striven to put Christ first, in joyful suffering, and to maintain the “same mind” in Christ; 5. Ephesians 5:1: the Ephesians are asked to imitate God and live according to the sacrificial example of Christ. Paul’s call to imitation can be seen as the ordinary and everyday application of his example (work for a living; hold fast to the traditions and the ways you have seen in me) to the extraordinary call to model oneself on Christ’s sacrificial example (suffer persecution for the sake of the Kingdom). Paul’s apostolic example is a challenge to Church leaders today, it seems, if we are to take this apostolic example as measuring stick. If Paul’s call to imitation is to bear fruit, though, it is clear that clergy must be modeled in Christ’s image so as to be models for the laity. For the laity, however, these worthy models must become a call for us also to model ourselves in Christ’s image. As D. M. Stanley, S.J., in a classic article from 1959, said, “the acceptance of the kerygma, as we have already seen, implies much more than intellectual assent to certain abstract doctrines: it involves a way of life in conformity with the Gospel which Paul has preached and which is exemplified in his own life. The complete acceptance of the Gospel demands some very practical, down-to-earth applications to Christian living” (“Become Imitators of Me” in Biblica 40 (1959) 869). Stanley also says that imitation is “the working out in {the early Christians}, through divine grace, of what constitutes the object of Paul’s kerygma, their assimilation to Christ who has attained glory through suffering” (868). Stanley’s insight links imitation with the second reading this week, Colossians 1:12-20, in which we are told that we have been made by God “fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Our ordinary daily witness can never be made in the image of something cheap, tawdry, flattering, or empty, and this is a challenge for clergy and laity alike, for it is Christ, ultimately, whom we are called to imitate, through models of great worth, Paul and others, in order that we might share in extra ordinary cosmic victory he has won.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.