WWJD?

September 23, 2001

Douglas S. Long

North Raleigh United Church, UCC

We had gathered Wednesday evening, this past Wednesday evening, to reflect and support each other. Our world was changing before our eyes, and 25 to 30 of us wanted to talk about it. Opinions were wide ranging… from rage to fear to guilt. …and for many of us, all of the above.

And then someone asked the question…

Randy I believe it was you… What would Jesus do? (I went to the UCC.org website this morning. Across the top in bold letters: What Would Jesus Do?)

The implication of the question, of course, is if we knew what Jesus would do, we’d know what we should do. (I wish that it was that simple.) Let me suggest that this is a very dangerous line of thinking here. We are talking about a person (Jesus) whose actions led to him being lynched by the status quo religious folk of the day.

I’ll say it straight out… unless we are prepared for a serious shunning by the status quo of our day, we’d best not play around with such questions like “What would Jesus do?”

…but Jesus, we need your help here. Can you shed some light on the darkness we find ourselves in. Shine Jesus, shine.

There was a little boy who was so very afraid of the dark. One night his mother asked him, told him, to go out on the back porch and bring her the broom. The little boy turned to his mother and said, “Mama, I don’t want to go out there. It’s dark.” The mother smiled reassuringly and said. “You don’t have to be afraid of the dark. Jesus is out there. He’ll look after you and protect you.” The little boy looked at his mom real hard and asked, “Are you sure he’s out there?”

His mother replied, “Yes, I’m sure. Jesus is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him.” The little boy thought about that for a minute, then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he boldly called, “Jesus? If you’re out there, would you please hand me that broom?”

Jesus, if you’re out there, would you please tell us what to do?

WWJD… a few years ago those letters were popularized on bracelets that young people wore, and still do. I remember the first time I saw them I was at an amusement park in Ohio (Cedar Point for the roller coaster fans among you). I was standing in a line, …a very, very long line with about an hour wait to ride on one of the more popular roller coasters, the highest in the world at the time, …when a group of women in front of me noticed a youth wearing a WWJD bracelet.

“See, there’s one of them” I heard her say. “One of those bracelets with the letters, WWJD. That stands for What Would Jesus Do?”

It was, as I said, the first I had heard of it, so I cocked my ear in their direction.

“I’ve seen a lot of them, “ she continued. “It’s quite a trend.”

I listened in on the conversation for a while… an hour is a long wait. You entertain yourself in any way you can. I was surrounded, participating in, a huge theme park designed to suck you in for entertainment, for which you pay a considerable entrance fee, and then over charge you for food and drink, tempt you with prizes and lure you with souvenirs, put you on rides and take your picture at the most thrilling moment … and then try to sell you the picture… basically trying to extract every cent you walked in with in one way or another… but there are ATM machines conveniently located at several places in case you run out of funds before the world class light show takes place which every child will beg his or her parent to stay for… after all, it’s only a few drinks and ice cream cones away from now.

I was surveying this whole scene rather cynically, okay, very cynically, in my hour wait for the Magnum, listening to the conversation of these women about WWJD when, in my disorientation, I forgot the bounds of proper line etiquette and, uninvited, jumped into their conversation. (They weren’t even facing my way.)

“Do you think he’d come here?” I blurted.

“Excuse me, “ the woman said. It wasn’t a particularly nice ‘excuse me’ but more of a ‘you shouldn’t have butt into our conversation’ excuse me.

“I mean WWJD… Do you think Jesus would come to Cedar Point?”

She squinted at me.

I shirked, vowing internally not to break the line etiquette again.

Do you think he would come here? It was a sincere question. I was looking at the incredible materialism, the business of crowd control and keeping people calm, the money being poured into entertainment, the children begging their parents for one of those things that everyone else is walking around with, and one of those too, and some salty fries, which make you thirsty for a drink. I was looking around at the people like me (I admit it, I was there) pouring scads of dollars each into a day of manufactured and manipulated entertainment.

Do you think Jesus would even come here?

There were certainly other places in the world for him to be, other things in the world of much more import.

As I’ve reflected on the question posed this past Wednesday night, WWJD, I have to be honest with you that one of my first thoughts was the same as at Cedar Point seven or so years ago… Do you think Jesus would come here?

It’s a legitimate question.

When God entered human history, when Jesus was born, it was not into the super power of the day… Rome... but into a country occupied by that superpower.

Do you think he’d come here?

He was born to a middle class, if there was a middle class, maybe I should say ordinary family, in a land far away from the center of the political universe.

In earlier sermons I have suggested had Jesus been born today, in our times, an analogous place might be Central America, or sub-Saharan Africa… or possibly Palestine still.

And even after his birth in this by-the-way place, Jesus didn’t seek out political power.

…but, we plead with ourselves, 2000 years ago Jesus couldn’t hop on a bus and travel up to Rome. He had no choice but to stay where he was. He couldn’t phone the emperor, email the news agencies, send press releases…

Sure, times have changed, …communication has changed, but Jesus clearly wasn’t a political animal at heart. Not in the sense of directly confronting the empowered political powers of the day. He didn’t travel to Rome to speak with the emperor. He didn’t seek a sitting with the regional authorities either.

No, I have to say that Jesus started at a different place, spoke of change on a different level.

“If men and women will change their hearts… if they will turn toward God… if they will act out of love… live out of the knowledge that they are children of the one God… if they will fill themselves with God’s spirit and not their own pride… The world will be changed. The world will change when hearts are changed.”

He’s speaking to me. Where is my heart?

His first major sermon, as recorded in the Gospels, was not in a city center, but on a hillside far outside the gates…

“Blessed are the poor in spirit (those who are not filled with pride)

Blessed are the gentle

Blessed are those who mourn,

who hunger and thirst for what is right,

Blessed the merciful, the pure in heart,

Blessed the peacemakers,

and those who are persecuted in the cause of right.”

“Blessed are you,” said Jesus, “when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of wrong against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you.”

This is not a popularity contest.

WWJD? I tell you this in all honesty, I believe if he spoke in the halls of Congress today, he would be crucified again.

I suggested to one of you, in a reply to your email, that it might be helpful to imagine the words and opinions that we speak coming from the lips of Jesus… and see if they still ring true. I cannot help but believe we would hear some things differently, and perhaps not say them at all. I heard a very upright captain in the NY police force, when asked by a reporter how we could stop such terrorists, replied clearly shaken and full of emotion… “We just have to make sure they know that when they hit us we will hit them back tenfold.” It sounds plausible to some… when one wrongs you, then punish them with ten times the amount they inflicted pain on you.

But I want you to imagine those words coming from the mouth of the Christ… “And I say to you, when someone does you wrong, do wrong to them 10 times the amount.”

Doesn’t ring true, does it?

So what would Jesus have us do?

Not what do we want to do and how we are going to justify it by the words of Jesus… but what, in our heart of hearts, do we believe Jesus would have us do?

There were a couple of folks holding signs of peace on a street corner here in Raleigh this week. A truck stopped, an altercation ensued, the signs of peace, along with one of the persons holding them were knocked down. (This is reported in yesterday’s N&O, by the way.) Now, as it happened, a NC legislator was witness to the incident. He, in fact, was the one who reported it. His commentary? “I didn’t help, because I wasn’t sure… I could take the peace protestors on.”

The legislator publicly sided with the driver of the truck, who stopped his vehicle and physically assaulted those who were holding signs urging peace. The legislator spoke of this incident as a badge of honor.

In a country where freedom of expression is a core value, there is something very wrong with this picture.

Wednesday evening at our house, there was an honest rage expressed by several persons. I share that rage. I heard a report this week, Reed Altman first shared it with me, that, after the bombing of the Trade Centers last week, there were 300 children stranded in NY City day care centers… children whose parents never came to pick them up… and never will. 300 hundred children who said goodbye with every assurance that their mothers or fathers would return that evening to take them home. 300 innocent children for whom home will never be the same.

I think of all the stories I have heard from last week, that spin hit me the hardest.

So hear me now as I say that as a country, as a world, we should do all that we can to prevent further atrocities, further terrorism, further loss of innocent lives.

We must do all that we can… which is not to say that anything we might do is permissible-

All that we can…

All that we can. Am I making a point here? Yes…

You see, I know that finding those responsible and ‘putting them away,’ in whatever form that ‘putting away’ might take… will not solve the root problem. I am not suggesting that those who committed the deed should be ignored. I am not suggesting that terrorism should be tolerated. It should not! I am of the opinion that they must be stopped from further action. …but doing all that we can goes much further.

If we believe the task at hand is simply to eliminate the perpetrators, we are terribly shortsighted. We must also seriously, truthfully, justly address the systems in which such hatred ferments. I must offer myself, my resources, my energy, my passion, my words to eliminate the inequity in our world at its root… The point at which I choose to harden my heart to suffering and pain, wherever it may be found, is the point at which I have shut out the God that Jesus proclaimed.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink… As you do it to the least of these, you do it to me.”

You see I heard another story last week that affected me greatly, not just the one of the 300 children stranded in day care but another story of thousand s of children. This one told by you Ghazala. She told me on Friday, in the middle of a gloriously beautiful day while we breathed in clean air and drank safe water, she told me while we ate lunch in this city with restaurants on every corner, Ghazala told me that thousands of children die daily in Afghanistan and Iraq, die from starvation. Not hundreds but thousands …daily. My newspapers do not report that, or, if they do, I have become insensitive to such staggering numbers.

WWJD?

I think one of the more persecuted souls among us put it this way…

Jesus would first mourn, weep is actually the word he used,

And then all of his consequential actions would be would based in love.

WWJD?

I believe if Jesus were alive and walking as a human in this world right now… he would be in NYC among the families wailing in grief and he would be among the poor and oppressed of Afghanistan.

I believe he would be in the halls of Congress pleading for a justice beyond retribution. I believe he would sponsor legislation calling for immediate release of funds to aid all those in need all over our troubled world, as well as legislation calling for a rethinking of a system which allows such inequity to exist.

I believe Jesus would be in our churches urging us to speak and to act and rid ourselves of our complacency because we are comfortable. I believe he would call upon us to work as hard for the comfort of others as we do for our own.

WWJD?

I believe Jesus would declare war…

on poverty and powerlessness, on hunger and over-consumption.

I believe Jesus has been doing that for thousands of years.

What would Jesus do?

The implication of the question, of course, is if we knew what Jesus would do, we’d know what we should do. I wish it were that simple. Let me suggest that this is a very dangerous line of thinking here. We are talking about a person (Jesus) whose actions led to him being lynched by the status quo religious folk of the day.

Again, I’ll say it straight out… unless we are prepared for a serious conversation with the status quo of our day, we’d best not play around with such questions like “What would Jesus do?”

Amen.