What Jesus DID Do....

There is a rather strange catch phrase in popular Christian culture, WWJD, which, for anyone who is unaware, stands for What Would Jesus Do.  Many Christians, especially younger people, seem to use this as a guiding principal for their lives, which I find a bit disconcerting.  While, on the surface, this may seem to be a good source of direction, if you look a little deeper, I fear it is a little too wide open for personal interpretation, and ultimately, unnecessary, because we actually already know what Jesus would do.  Why are we guessing, based on our own biased interpretation of what we think he might do in a given situation, when we can simply open the Bible and find out exactly what he did?


The advent of social media, My Space, and later Facebook, along with Twitter and all the other easily accessible ways of connecting, have made our world seem smaller and more intimate.  But it has been a double edged sword.  While we can more easily connect with people we know and love who are distant from us, the instant gratification of spreading our opinion to the four winds has also created an atmosphere of self involvement unlike anything I have ever experienced.  People fire off an email or post a status or tweet without giving a second thought to who they are affecting and what their words might mean to someone else.

I have seen friendships end in bitter anger over words thoughtlessly dropped on a social media site - words which would never have been said if they were face to face.  I have heard of marriages which have ended because of careless actions on facebook.  I know of families which have endured strife and conflict due to words thoughtlessly flung out in a social forum, without really considering what they are saying about the people they love.  Words deeply affect people, and when casually flung about without thought for the consequences, people are wounded, sometimes beyond repair.  Those words are rooted not in glorification of God, but in self-glorification.  I don't think that was the path God had in mind when Jesus journeyed to the cross.

In Chapter 13 of Paul's first letter to the Christians in Corinth, he talks about God's intentions for his people, and the example that Jesus left for us.  The early Christians of Corinth had fallen into the life of the profane world which surrounded them, (a world not unlike the society we live in today,) and had forgotten the sacred plane to which had God had called them.  He beseeched them to forget the divisiveness which separated them, both from each other, and from God.  He asked them to forget their litigiousness, which was causing conflict and stress between brothers and sisters, neighbors and spouses.  He exhorted them to abandon their sexually immoral behavior, and return to the One who brings eternal life.  He asked them to discontinue keeping score on each other, and to focus once again on their own spiritual salvation.  Reading the words he wrote to the wayward early Christians, we see he asked them to stop sitting in judgement upon one another, but rather to love one another and live a life in such a way that the unbelievers would want what they had enough to seek God out for themselves.

I cannot improve on the words of Paul, so I will leave you with them today, along with a reminder that each person you meet today is a child of God.  Whether they are redeemed or not is not up to you, it is up to God, and the price has already been paid.  God does not ask us to decide whether someone works hard enough to deserve a good life.  He doesn't ask us to determine whether or not a person is worthy of a bigger house, a new car, access to health care or a raise.  God doesn't require us to figure out, nor does he care, whether someone is Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, rich or poor, black or white, male or female.  God does not ask us to decide the worth of another person at all.  God has asked us to simply love one another, as he has loved us.  That's it.  Nothing more is required.  That is what Jesus did, and it is what God asks of us as well.

1 Corinthians 13 ~ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.  (NIV)