The Selfless Way Of Christ

Something which existed since the beginning,
that we have heard
and we have seen with our own eyes;
that we have watched
and touched with our hands:
the Word, who is life—
this is our subject.
(1 John 1:1)

As no other words in the New Testament, these words make clear that our ministerial vocation emerges out of an experience that involves our whole being. The subject of our ministry is Jesus Christ, the Word who was from the beginning with God and was made flesh to live among us (cf. John 1:1,14). To be a minister is to witness to this Word, to reveal the presence of this Word within us as well as among us. Yet, this witness, which takes the form of preaching and teaching, of celebrating and counseling, of organizing and struggling to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings, is a true witness only when it emerges out of a genuine personal encounter, a true experience of love. We can only call ourselves witnesses of Jesus Christ when we have heard him with our own ears, seen him with our own eyes, and touched him with our own hands.

The basis of the mission of the 12 apostles was not their knowledge, training, or character, but their having lived with Jesus. Paul, who was not with Jesus while he was traveling with his disciples, encountered him on the road to Damascus. This experience was the foundation on which all his apostolic work was built.

There has never been a minister whose influence has not been directly related to a personal and intimate experience of the Lord. This deep and personal encounter can take as many forms and shapes as there are people, cultures, and ages. Ignatius of Antioch, Anthony of the Desert, Gregory the Great, Benedict, Bernard and Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Fox and John Bunyan, Charles de Foucauld, Dag Hammarskjold, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton. Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day—all these witnesses have seen the Lord, and their actions and words emerge from that vision.

Thus, ministry and the spiritual life belong together. Living a spiritual life is living in an uninterrupted and intimate communion with the Lord. It is seeing, hearing, and touching. Living a life of ministry is witnessing to him in the midst of this world. It is opening the eyes of our brothers and sisters in the human family to his presence among us, so that they too may enter into this relationship of love.

When our ministry does not emerge from a personal encounter, it quickly becomes a tiring routine and a boring job. On the other hand, when our spiritual life no longer leads to an active ministry, it quickly degenerates into introspection and self-scrutiny, and thus loses its dynamism. Our life in Christ and our ministry in his name belong together as the two beams of the cross.

This direct relationship between our ministry and our spiritual life is the basis of this three-part series which begins this month and will continue through the summer. I want to explore in the first article what it means to be called to live a life in Christ.

In one of the most profound prayers ever written, the apostle Paul writes to the Christians of Ephesus:

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him. May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit and how infinitely great is thepower that he has exercised for us believers. This you can tell from the strength of his power at work in Christ, when he used it to raise him from the dead and to make him sit at his right hand, in heaven..."
(Ephesians 1:17-20)

This prayer makes clear that the spiritual life is a life guided by the same Spirit who guided Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the breath of Christ in us, the divine power of Christ active in us, the mysterious source of new vitality by which we are made aware that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us (cf. Galatians 2:20). Indeed, to live a spiritual life means to become living Christs. It is not enough to try to imitate Christ as much as possible; it is not enough to remind others of Jesus; it is not even enough to be inspired by the words and actions of Jesus Christ. No, the spiritual life presents us with a far more radical demand: to be living Christs here and now, in time and history.

We will never come to know our true vocation in life unless we are willing to grapple with the radical claim the gospel places on us. During the past 20 centuries many Christians have heard this radical call and have responded to it in true obedience. Some became hermits in the desert, while others became servants in the city. Some went to distant lands as preachers, teachers, and healers, while others remained where they were, raised families, and worked faithfully. Some became famous, while others remained unknown. Although their responses reveal an extraordinary diversity, these Christians all heard the call to follow Christ without compromise.

Regardless of the particular shape we give to our lives, Jesus' call to discipleship is total, all-encompassing, all-inclusive, demanding a total commitment. One cannot be a little bit for Christ, give him some attention, or make him one of many concerns.

It is not possible to follow Christ while fulfilling the demands of the world, to listen to Christ while paying equal attention to others, to carry Christ's cross while carrying many other burdens as well. This is certainly attempted, but it is not possible in the end. Jesus insisted, "No one can be the slave of two masters" (Matthew 6:24), and he did not hesitate to confront us with the uncompromising demands of his call: "It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life.... Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 7:14, 10:37).

These words are not meant for a few of Jesus' followers who have a so-called "special vocation." Rather, they are for all who consider themselves Christians. They indicate the radical nature of the call. There is no easy way to follow Christ. As he himself says, "He who is not for me is against me" (Matthew 12:30).

Upward Mobility
Our lives in this technological and highly competitive society are characterized by a pervasive drive for upward mobility. It is difficult for us even to imagine ourselves outside of this upwardly mobile lifestyle. Our whole way of living is structured around climbing the ladder of success and making it to the top. Our very sense of vitality is dependent upon being part of the upward pull and upon the joy provided by the rewards given on the way up.

Our parents, teachers, and friends impress upon us from the moment in which we are able to pick up the cues that it is our holy task to make it in this world. To be a real man or woman is to show that one can not only survive the long competitive struggle for success but also come out victorious. Individuals as well as institutions tell us in a variety of ways that we must conquer knowledge and people; we must strive to wield influence and be successful. And even love itself is either something to be conquered or is a reward for the victorious ones. Thus, life is presented as a series of battles which we can

win or lose. When we win we have lived up to the ideals of our milieu, but when we lose it is clearly because of our own shortcomings.

In their impressive book, The Hidden Injuries of Class, authors Cobb and Sennett make it clear that we are trained to believe, even with the most blatant evidence to the contrary, that no one but we ourselves are to blame for our failures. If you remain uneducated, poor, or unemployed, if you have an unhappy marriage or uncooperative children, the main reason is that you yourself have not tried hard enough. You have been either lazy, undisciplined, immoral, or just stupid. Thus, we not only have people who suffer from unemployment or a broken family but also from guilt and shame.

I am not denigrating ambition, nor am I against progress and success. But true growth is something other than the God chose to reveal his divinity by submitting unreservedly to the downward pull.

The uncontrolled drive for upward mobility in which making it to the top becomes its own goal and in which ambition no longer serves an ideal. There is a profound difference between the false ambition for power and the true ambition to serve. It is the difference between trying to raise up ourselves and trying to lift up our fellow human beings.

The problem is not in the desire for development as an individual or a community, but in making upward mobility itself a religion. It is the religion through which we make ourselves believe that success means that God is with us and failure means that we have sinned. The question then is, "Is God running with us?" If he is, he will make us win.

We are taught to conceive of development in terms of an ongoing increase in human potential. Growing up means becoming healthier, stronger, more intelligent, more mature, and more productive. Consequently we hide those who do not affirm this myth of progress, such as the elderly, prisoners, and the mentally retarded. In our society, we consider the upward move the obvious one and tend to treat the poor cases who cannot keep up with us as sad misfits, people who have deviated from the normal line of progress.

When we look on the national level, we see the blatant and shocking implications of this idolatry of the upward move. Our nation has so dedicated itself to the goal of ever-increasing growth and development that one cannot imagine anyone being elected to office without a promise to increase wealth and power. Those who see the need to reverse this trend and publicly defend their vision thereby exclude themselves from national leadership. If anything is certain, it is that this nation desires to be the best, the strongest, and the most powerful. The "We're number one!" attitude is nurtured with all diligence and on all levels: transportation, athletics, technology, and military power.

Moreover, we expect more of the things we have, whether that be cars, buses, or planes; bronze, silver, or gold; computers, satellites, or laboratories; nuclear warheads, M-X missiles, or Trident submarines. It is this drive for more that has brought us to the brink of a war which cannot be won.

Downward Mobility
The story of our salvation stands radically over and against the philosophy of upward mobility. The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom can only be found through downward mobility. The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave. The divine way is indeed the downward way.

In the center of our faith as Christians stands the mystery that God chose to reveal his divinity to us by submitting himself unreservedly to the downward pull. God not only chose an insignificant people to carry the Word of salvation through the centuries, not only chose a small remnant of these people to fulfill his promises, not only chose a humble girl in an unknown town in Galilee to become the temple of the Word, but God also chose to manifest the fullness of divine love in a man whose life led to a humiliating death outside the walls of the city.

This mystery was so deeply ingrained in the minds and hearts of the early Christians that they sang in the hymn of Christ:

His state was divine
yet he did not cling
to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave
and became as we are;
and being as we are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:6-8)

Indeed, the one who was from the beginning with God and who was God revealed himself as a small, impotent child; as a refugee in Egypt; as an obedient adolescent and inconspicuous adult; as a penitent disciple of the Baptizer; as a preacher from Galilee followed by some simple fishermen; as a man who ate with sinners and talked with strangers; as an outcast, a criminal, a threat to his people. He moved from power to powerlessness, from greatness to smallness, from success to failure, from strength to weakness, from glory to ignominy. The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth was a life in which all upward mobility was resisted.

Some people wanted to make him king. They wanted him to show power. They wanted to share in his influence and sit on thrones with him. But he consistently said "no" to all these desires and pointed to the downward way. "The son of man has to suffer... can you drink the cup?" Even after his death, when his followers spoke of him as a defeated freedom fighter and said, "Our own hope had been that he would be the one to set Israel free" (Luke 24:21), he had to remind them again of the downward way, "Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:26).

Jesus leaves little doubt that the way he lived is the way he offers to his followers: "The disciple is not superior to his teacher, nor the slave to his master" (Matthew 10:24). With great persistence he points out the downward way: "Anyone who wants to be great among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve" (Matthew 20:26-28). The downward way is the way of the cross: "Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

The disciple is the one who follows Jesus on his downward path and thus enters with him into new life. The gospel radically subverts the presuppositions of our upwardly mobile society. It is a jarring and unsettling challenge.

Yet, when we have carefully looked into the eyes of the poor, the oppressed, and the lowly, when we have paid humble attention to their ways of living, and when we have listened gently to their observations and perceptions, we might have already a glimpse of the truth Jesus spoke about. It is the glimpse of the "grace-healed eyes" Tertullian spoke about.

Somewhere deep in our heart we already know that success, fame, influence, power, and money do not give us the inner joy and peace for which we crave. Somewhere we can even sense a certain envy of those who have shed all their ambitions and live their lives in simple obedience. Yes, somewhere we can even get a taste of that mysterious joy in the smile of those who have nothing to lose.

Then we realize that the downward road is not the road to hell, but the road to heaven. Keeping this in mind can help us accept the fact that in the kingdom of God the poor are the messengers of the good news.

These intuitions and insights reveal that something in us is already suspicious about the upward way. But still the radical response of Jesus remains shocking. We are quite willing to say that we should not forget the poor, that we should share our gifts with the less fortunate, and that we should give up some of our extras for the many who have not made it.

But are we willing to confess that the ones whom we should not forget, those who are less fortunate and did not make it, are the blessed ones in the kingdom of God, the ones who call us to downward mobility as Jesus did? It all sounds pretty morbid, unless we come to know that following Jesus on the downward road means entering into a new life, the life of the Spirit of Jesus himself.

The Spiritual Life
If discipleship requires following Jesus in downward mobility, is this truly a human option? Is it possible to take Jesus totally seriously? Or would that simply mean embarking on a self-destructive, even masochistic, road? I wonder if in practice we haven't already answered this question. Haven't we already decided that Jesus cannot be taken at his word, but rather needs to be adapted to our upwardly mobile way?

I am not asking this as a cynic or a moralist. That would not be taking the matter seriously. Rather, I want to raise the question concerning the nature of the spiritual life. When we think that living the downward way is within our reach and that our task is simply to imitate Christ, we have misunderstood the basic truth which has been revealed to us. The downward way is God's way, not ours. God reveals himself as God to us in the downward pull, because only he who is God can empty himself of his divine privileges and become as we are. The great mystery upon which our faith rests is that the One who is in no way like us, who cannot be compared with us, nor enter into competition with us, has descended among us and taken on our mortal flesh.

This downward mobility is unnatural for us, because it belongs to the essence of our sinful, broken condition that every fiber of our being is tainted by rivalry and competition. We are always finding ourselves, even against our own best desires and judgments, on the familiar road of upward mobility. The moment we think we are humble, we discover that we are wondering if we are more humble than our neighbor and that we already have some type of reward in the back of our mind.

Downward mobility is the divine way, the way of the cross, the way of Christ. It is precisely this divine way of living that our Lord wants to give to us through his Spirit. How the way of the Spirit radically differs from the way of the world is made clear in the words of the apostle Paul to the Christians of Corinth:

The hidden wisdom of God...is the wisdom that none of the masters of this age have ever known.... We teach...the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man.... These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, the depths of God.... Now instead of the spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us. Therefore we teach... in the way the Spirit teaches us: we teach spiritual things spiritually.
(1 Corinthians 2:7-13)

These words summarize succinctly the meaning of the spiritual life. They tell us that it is the life in which the Spirit of Christ, who reaches the depths of God, is given to us so that we may know, with a new knowledge of mind and heart, the way of God.

When Jesus died on the cross, the disciples experienced a deep sense of loss and failure. They thought it was all over and clung to each other in the fear that they would be dealt with as Jesus had been. They had not understood the downward way of God. But when, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit whom Jesus had promised came, everything changed. The Spirit blew their fears away. The Spirit made them see who Jesus truly was, and revealed to them the new way. The Spirit gave them the strength to proclaim to all nations the way of the cross, the downward way, as the way to salvation.

Jesus himself tells us who the Spirit is. On the evening before his death he said to his disciples:

It is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate [the Spirit] will not come to you; but if I do go, I will send him to you. And...he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself but will only say what he has learned...all he tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said, "All he tells you will be taken from what is mine."
(John 16:7-15)

Here Jesus reveals to us that the Spirit is the fullness of God's being. It is the fullness that Jesus calls "the truth." When Jesus says that the Spirit will lead us to the complete truth, he means that the Spirit will make us full participants in the divine life, a life that makes us into new people, living with a new mind and in a new time: the mind and time of Jesus Christ.

In and through the Spirit of Christ, we become those who are Christs living in all places and at all times. In and through the Spirit, we come to know all that Jesus knew, and we are able to do all that he did. This is the great wisdom of God, the wisdom that none of the masters of this age have ever known, the wisdom which has remained hidden from the learned and the clever but has been revealed to mere children, the wisdom which comes to us through the Spirit and can only be taught to us spiritually.

Thus discipleship is the life of the Spirit in us, by whom we are lifted up into the divine life itself and receive new eyes to see, new ears to hear, and new hands to touch. Being lifted up in God's own life, we are sent into the world to witness to what we have seen with our own eyes, have heard with our own ears, and have touched with our own hands. It is a witness to the life of God's word in us.

The way of the cross, the downward mobility of God, becomes our way not because we try to imitate Jesus, but because we are transformed into living Christs by his Spirit. The spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of Christ in us, a life that sets us free to be strong while weak, to be free while captive, to be joyful while in pain, to be rich while poor, to be on the downward way of salvation while living in the midst of an upwardly mobile society.

Although this spiritual life might seem enigmatic, intangible, and elusive to us who belong to a scientific age, its fruits leave little doubt about the radical transformation it brings about. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control are indeed the qualities of our Lord himself and reveal his presence in the midst of a world so torn apart by idolatry, envy, greed, sexual irresponsibility, war, and other sin (see Galatians 5:19-23). It is not hard to distinguish the upward pull of our world from the downward pull of Christ.

Henri Nouwen was a Sojourners contributing editor when this article appeared. This article recently formed part of The Selfless Way of Christ (Orbis, 2007) and appears here by permission of Orbis Books.