Lent 3
8 March 2026
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
LIVING OUR BAPTISM #4:
FOLLOWING JESUS, NAMING HIM “LORD”, AND PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Mark 1.16-20. Romans 10.8-13
In His Steps is a 19th century spiritual classic written by Charles Sheldon, telling the story of a minister named Henry Maxwell. One Saturday afternoon Rev. Maxwell was in the process of preparing his sermon on I Peter 2:21: For this you have been called because Christ died for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. While in his study, a homeless beggar appeared at his front door asking for work. The pastor kindly told him he knew of no work at the present time. And the man walked away.
As Maxwell was preaching the next day, the same beggar who had come to this house the day before, appeared in worship and at the end of the sermon walked to the front and began to speak. He told of his plight and how many Christians refused to help. He asked the congregation what it meant then to walk in Jesus’ steps. After speaking he collapsed, was brought to the pastor’s home to rest, and later in the week to everyone’s shock the man died.
The next Sunday the deeply shaken pastor got up to preach and offered this challenge, a kind of spiritual experiment. For one year, he said, let’s agree to do nothing without first asking, “What would Jesus do?” And let’s meet in small groups weekly and talk together about how we are doing. If your Sunday School class is in need of some adventure, maybe you’d like to give this challenge a try. In Maxwell’s church, the results brought about some beautiful ministries in the community as well as some disturbing and unwelcome change to people’s lives.1 Such is the way of following Jesus.
What would Jesus do? I don’t think the answer to this question is as simple as it sounds, but I also do not think we go far as followers of Jesus without asking this question. If we have been baptized in the name of Christ, it is a question we cannot escape.
This Lenten season we are pondering what it means to Live Into Our Baptism. So far we’ve heard the waters of baptism: (1) claim us as the Beloved Precious Child of God and (2) call us to turn, to repent, to change the direction of our lives, and to be washed by God’s grace – cleansed of the stain our sins leave upon our lives in order that we may live as God’s Beloved the life God intends for us, the life Jesus calls us to live. Today, in the waters of Baptism we hear the call to Follow Jesus, Name Him “Lord”, and Pledge Our Allegiance to the Kingdom of God.
Baptism is our public testimony that we are committing to live our lives as followers in the way of Jesus. In very concrete ways we are seeking to imitate his life in our own 21st century world. The baptism of Jesus was a sign of the beginning of his mission: which was the preaching of the kingdom of God drawing near in merciful grace and saving power.
In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus is at the seashore calling Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John to follow him. And Mark says they “immediately left their nets and followed him.” We’re not sure if any of the twelve disciples had much of an idea what Jesus meant by following him, but eventually in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus makes it clear: If any want to become my disciples, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. And in John’s Gospel at the seashore after Peter’s denial and Jesus’ death and resurrection the last words Jesus speaks to Peter are the same as the first: “Follow me.” In the Book of Acts, those considered believers, followers of Jesus were called “People of The Way.” So Baptism means placing your hands and feet heart and tongue in the Way of Jesus and following him as a disciple.
The word “disciple” literally means “learner.” We learn not only about Jesus, we learn of Jesus in a deeply personal kind of knowing. Christian philosopher Dallas Willard preferred to use the word “apprentice” for disciples, describing an apprentice as “someone who has decided to be with another person in order to be capable of doing what that person does and becoming what that person is.”2 Following Jesus as an apprentice means that you dwell in the gospels and you let the words of Jesus dwell in you and you see what Jesus does and you seek to do those very things.
And what did Jesus do that we are called to imitate? Befriend the poor and the outcast. Welcome the sinner and the stranger. Tend to the well-being of the sick. Feed the hungry. Shower the world with God’s grace. Make disciples of the Jesus way. And speak truth to those in positions of power, especially when the message of the gospel is distorted, when religion practices exclusion, when the church seeks political power, or when injustice comes to any child of God.
Following Jesus is a lifelong apprenticeship meant to be done with others. We learn how to follow Jesus in the company of those who are trying to do the same. This following will lead us to places we could never have imagined at the beginning. We will be changed along the way. We may find ourselves in strange, even scandalous company. There will be trials and triumphs. But Christ is by our side the whole way and will not abandon us. And beyond our best hope some days, as we follow him we will become more like him, even though we cannot always see it.
To follow Jesus also means naming him “Lord.” When I baptize people, I invite them to share their faith by saying aloud “Jesus Christ is Lord.” It is the earliest baptismal vow Christians made at baptism: “Jesus Is Lord.” As Paul wrote in Romans: If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
At times this verse has turned Christian faith into a magic formula: “If I believe in my mind and say with my lips that Jesus is Lord, then I’m saved, I’m a Christian.” But the meaning of these words: “confess” and “believe” run much deeper. Jesus said, Not everyone who calls me “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of God in heaven. To call Jesus “Lord” is to align your life with the teachings of Jesus. William Sloane Coffin said that “to believe” means “I have given my heart to.”3 It is to say, “Jesus is not just my Savior who washed my sins away, but my life will now center around the way of Jesus.”
Our baptismal vow says: “Jesus is Lord, not I.” Calling Jesus “Lord” means daily loyalty to him and daily obedience to his call to follow him. To call Jesus “Lord” is to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously: Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Speak the truth. Consider the lilies. Seek first the kingdom of God. We cannot brush aside the radical teachings of Jesus just because they don’t help us get ahead in “the real world.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose Christian teachings and life of discipleship we are studying on Wednesday nights wrote in his classic The Cost of Discipleship: “Only those who obey believe.”4
This baptismal vow also has a political meaning and carries with it great danger. The Roman Emperor required that all citizens in the Empire make the vow: “Caesar is Lord!” and give him their ultimate loyalty. But Christians, sometimes at the risk of their very lives, refused to bow their knee to Caesar, only to Christ. Jesus, not Caesar, not any earthly person, is Lord. To call Jesus “Lord” is to dethrone every other Lord of our lives.
During the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, German Christians as a whole gave themselves over to Hitler and fell under his spell. They succumbed to the dark energies of racism and nationalism. Race and nation had become gods, the teachings of Jesus were pushed aside, and Hitler the Fuhrer was followed as Lord.
So a small group of pastors and churches left what had become the Reich church, the national church, patriot churches. They left and formed what they called The Confessing Church. Above all, they confessed Jesus is Lord, which meant Hitler was not. They issued what is called the Barmen Declaration. One article of the Confession states: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and obey in life and in death.” In another article of the Confession it reads: “We reject the false doctrine that the church is permitted to abandon the form of its message . . . to its own pleasure or to adapt it to prevailing ideological and political convictions.” In that company was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the brilliant young theologian who was executed on Hitler’s order because of his opposition to Hitler and the Third Reich. He would not bow his mind, his life, his allegiance to Hitler.
The church in America today is being tempted, as the church has been tempted since Constantine in the fourth century, to give itself over to the political powers-that-be. The false gods of Christian nationalism and white supremacy are being adopted by Christians all over our country, in the name of Christ while at the same time abandoning the teachings of Christ.
The gospel of Jesus has political ramifications, but the church must not become a political religion and give itself over to political ideologies of the right or left. Our baptismal vow says, “Jesus is Lord and no one else! No president. No prime minister. No pope. No pastor. No person. Only Jesus is Lord.”
So in baptism we commit to walk in the way of Jesus, to follow him, and to make him the center of our lives: Speaking up when people are demonized and dehumanized. Acting out when the weak and the poor are mistreated. Doing justice. Loving mercy. Walking humbly with God.
To name Jesus Lord means we turn from our self-centered ways and our rationale for silence and enter the kingdom of God. Jesus taught us to pray for the kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom of God is God’s passion for the earth, God’s way of ruling the world made known in Jesus Christ. Which is not by military force or political power or religious coercion. “The kingdom of God has come near,” Jesus said. “It is within you.” As near as your own breath. It is something we enter and something that enters us. The Gospel of Thomas records Jesus saying that the kingdom is “inside us and outside us,” that it is “spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”5
In our Baptism, Christ has come to open our eyes, the eyes of the heart, so that we might see and enter the kingdom of God. In baptism we are turning, we are reorienting ourselves toward the free and loving and just kingdom of God. So Jesus says, Seek first the kingdom of God.
I don’t know about you but I wasn’t told much, if anything, about that when I considered baptism. I wasn’t told that asking Jesus into my heart and God’s plan of salvation included me standing up and speaking out on behalf of justice for the poor and the ostracized. The sinner’s prayer left that part out. The Roman Road forgot to turn onto the Kingdom Road. I heard a lot about the cross of Jesus, but very little about my own cross. But that’s what’s included when we say we want to follow Jesus, when we name Jesus “Lord”, when we pledge our allegiance to the kingdom of God.
When we step into those cleansing grace-filled waters of baptism, we cannot know all it will mean. But the living Christ promises to be with us all the way and he will teach us together how to walk in his steps.
_________________________
- See Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps, first published 1896 by Chicago Advance. More than 50 million copies have been sold.
- Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, Harper San Francisco, 1998, 282.
- William Sloane Coffin, Credo, Westminster John Knox, 2004, xv
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Macmillan, 1959, 59.
- The Gospel of Thomas, Sayings 3 and 113.