WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
A Christian is someone who worships Jesus of Nazareth (a Jewish teacher executed by the Roman Empire) as Christ, the longed-for Messiah who saves God’s creation from self-destruction. Christians believe Jesus to be God speaking love to this broken world by becoming human, living and dying as one of us, defeating death by rising from the dead to everlasting life, and inviting us to follow in the same way of God’s love, which will make all things new.
Not that any of us completely understand yet what this means. Newly baptized babies (in churches that practice infant baptism) can’t recite a statement of belief, yet their presence is part of worship. They contribute joyful noise in the worshipping community, and other worshippers can say the creeds (statements of faith) for them. The same is true of longtime believers suffering some crisis of doubt: other Christians carry the faith on their behalf. As church history professor William Stafford once said, “A good thing about having the creed immediately after the sermon is, no matter what the preacher might have spouted, the congregation gets to stand up and reply, “Well, we believe . . .”
You’ll notice that this definition has moved rapidly from the individual (“a Christian”) to the collective (“the worshipping community,” “other Christians,” “the congregation”). One reason for this move is the vast diversity among members of the faith. You can see this diversity in the varieties of Christian denominations: the Pentecostal, Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions, for example. Living in widely varying cultures, times, and places, we have developed many different local practices. They can be helpful in telling the good news of Jesus in their circumstances. They are very harmful if misused. All of us trying to follow Jesus will sometimes stumble out of the way, and some people wrong the word “Christian” by applying it to stumbling blocks or statues of themselves instead of to the way of Christ. The misapplication may be especially hidden to us if we lack the perspectives of much distance or experience.
Plurals are important here because Christians need mutual accountability. “Being like Christ” doesn’t work as a definition when it’s merely a self-description. If Christ is the Messiah, his followers are not. Yet some people will claim they are being crucified for the sins of the whole world when all they are doing is facing consequences for their own harmful actions. Being Christian is not supposed to be about boasting in our own righteous dealing. Ideally, Christians encourage each other to see God’s love as the source of all goodness and to show that love to the world.
So, rather than risk setting any one member of the faith up as an idol, consider what the believers have in common.
In his short, sweet book Being Christian, Rowan Williams names each of the four words in the book’s subtitle (Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer) as “essential elements” of Christian community. “Christians are received into full membership of the Church by having water poured or sprinkled over them (or, in some traditions, being fully immersed); Christians read the Bible; Christians gather to share bread and wine in memory of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth; and Christians pray. There is a huge and bewildering variety in Christian thinking and practice about all kinds of things, but these four basic activities have remained constant and indispensable for the majority of those who call themselves Christians” (vii).
Going under the water of baptism, and emerging from it, is a public sign of rejecting the systems of oppression and violence that we are born into and instead joining Jesus Christ in both death and resurrection. Baptism identifies a Christian. To be born into Christian life at baptism, you don’t have to be an infant, and you don’t have to be any specific race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender. One of the many vile aspects of so-called “white Christian nationalism” is the way it takes the Lord’s name in vain to promote the sins of greed, wrath, and envy, in the form of racism and nationalism.
Where am I getting these ideas about baptism? From reading the Bible. The Bible is a collection of books, written at different times for different purposes. When reading the Bible, it’s important to avoid twisting the words out of context. What I’m quoting here are some of the passages that were written to Christians about baptism. At the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus meets his disciples after his death and resurrection and gives them instructions: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19b-20).
Jesus sums up the commandments—Love God and love your neighbor as yourself—with the specification that your neighbor is the stranger of another nationality (Luke 10:25-37). And as Paul ventured out into other nations, he wrote “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).
Christians read and interpret the Bible in community. In community, we celebrate the eucharist (the Lord’s Supper, communion) in remembrance that Christ died for us and rose again. Many of us are also painfully aware that communities can fracture and turn against their own members. “It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’” (Acts 11:26b); they had scattered to foreign cities including Antioch after a fearful, angry mob killed one of their food pantry organizers.
As the mob were killing the organizer, Stephen, he described a vision of the heavens opening before him, the sight of God, and he prayed for his murderers. Most rejections are not as violent as that, but they still hurt. At such times, it is especially important to distinguish between the voice of the local community and the voice of Christ. Conflict among different interpretations of scripture or traditions may lead to rejection by a congregation (as it did in Stephen’s case), but the rejected will still have the companionship of the Bible—especially the prayers recorded in the Book of Psalms—and all the generations of saints, composers, and poets since. This “cloud of witnesses” is also Christian community, and it can serve as encouragement, especially while the isolated Christian seeks a local congregation. Being rooted in both congregational and individual prayer can strengthen Christians to be honest about the damage we have both suffered and inflicted. In prayer, we begin to heal.
Jesus uses many different images to describe his followers and how they are connected to him: disciples, friends, little children, plantings of grain, hungry lambs, the branches of a grapevine. “I am the vine; you are the branches” (John 15:5a). In the television series Our Flag Means Death (2022– ), there is a scene where a pirate ship has arrived in St. Augustine, Florida, and a tough-talking pirate, Pete, is about to steal oranges from a tree growing in a Christian churchyard (Season 1, Episode 7, “This Is Happening,” written by Zayre Ferrer). Another pirate warns against plundering from that tree, but Pete scoffs at the warning. “What are they,” he asks contemptuously, “Christ’s oranges?”
Pete means the question as a swaggering joke, yet it could also be a version of the question “What is a Christian?” If Mandarin oranges and Clementines exist, are Christians another variety? And “Christ’s oranges” is also a helpful metaphor for the answer to the question, a helpful metaphor in describing Christians the way Jesus tells Christians to be.
The oranges on the churchyard tree are Christ’s oranges, as Pete soon finds out. Despite the damage surrounding and affecting them, and their being subject to plunder, the oranges provide nourishment, healing, and reconciliation (they are fruits of the Spirit, if you use Christian terms). In the market there is a shortage of oranges. This is a serious problem; the pirates’ limited shipboard diet has them beginning to show signs of scurvy. In the churchyard, however, oranges grow abundantly. There is no shortage.
The oranges don’t just provide nourishment, healing, and reconciliation; they don’t just flavor celebratory cake and cook down into luxurious marmalade. Christ’s oranges also need connection, roots, and nourishment. Without these things, they will die. In the neighborhood of the churchyard tree, and connected to it by the lives of those who have worked to tend them, is another orange tree. This second tree seems spent, damaged beyond hope. A loving friend, however, recognizes the damage and names it. Being able to speak about the damage is the beginning of being able to forgive it. Forgiveness of grave wrongs is not an easy thing. When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, the prayer he teaches them includes a plea to be forgiven “as we have forgiven” (Matthew 6:12). This means refusing to be caught up in endless cycles of vengeance—like baptism, it is a rejection of violence and oppression, and it cannot be done alone. The friends who gather around not only become a family of choice (as siblings in baptism are), they see and speak hope. It turns out that “the old tree still had some fruit to give after all,” a petrified orange that becomes a sign of love.
A Christian is a sign of God’s love to the world. Often, we fail to live up to this calling. Our hearts can be so petrified! Yet God promises to replace our stony, cold hearts with truly human ones (Ezekiel 36:26, Hebrews 8:10). This is a slow change for most Christians. Sometimes we seem to be going in the wrong direction entirely, becoming even harder and duller of heart than we were when we first set out on the Christian way. There is reason for this: being truly alive in the world, being a sign of love, can hurt like hell. When that happens, remember that Christ not only died for us, he went to hell and broke down its gates so that everyone in hell could escape. Maybe our hearts are stones. Christians are still called to hope in Christ’s kingdom of peace, and to tell others of that hope. As he said, when told to keep his disciples from speaking out, “If these were silent, the stones would shout” (Luke 19:40).
