In the 1970s, when the gasoline shortage was at its height, any possible proposal for increasing the miles per gallon ratio was taken up with enthusiasm. One popular but not terribly effective scheme was to tuck your own car right up behind any large truck barreling down the highway. The conventional wisdom was that the tremendous draft created by the truck would help drag your own vehicle along thereby reducing the air friction on it and thus increasing your own gas mileage. Following in the wake of the truck took some of the effort to move forward off of your own car.

For many Christians, following in Jesus' steps has become its own kind of spiritual coasting, riding in the wake of Jesus' own first-century actions and reactions in order to relieve some of the responsibility for making our own twenty-first century responses. We're not called to follow in his wake. The risen Christ who lives today wants to make through us new waves with our faith. Jesus was not simply a good man and an outstanding moral teacher whose past actions we may continue to follow like a law. Jesus is an indwelling, a living presence ready to live today and act in new and creative ways in this always changing world.