I noticed a bumper
sticker on the rear window of a minivan parked in the Chase Bank
parking lot in Ballard. What Would Jesus Do? Since Ballard is
not exactly a major center of Christian piety, the sticker got my
attention. (For my non-NW friends: Ballard is one of the most
atheistic neighborhood in the US.) I then noticed another sticker
right next to the What Would Jesus Do? sticker. This adjacent
sticker had been damaged and hard to read. I looked closely. It was
also a Jesus sticker. It read, “Jesus would drive in the RIGHT lane
except to pass.”
I laughed and
laughed. Only in Ballard—or Fremont—would I see a bumper sticker
citing Jesus in support of proper freeway driving technique. They
should have included one of the famous quotations by Jesus about
traffic management:
“Nathaniel 13, verse 8: Why you take you donkey to town, do not
take up the whole road. Leave room for your neighbor to pass.”
Bartholomew 4:6. “You hypocrites! You prohibit donkeys in the
temple out of regard for God, but tie your donkeys in narrow streets
making passage impossible for your neighbors. Fools, do you not know
that obstructing your neighbor who is made in God's image is the same
as obstructing God?”
Of course, I'm
making up these “quotations” from Jesus. Jesus never said
anything about traffic management in Jerusalem or in Seattle. Jesus
never said or did anything that would offer a distinctly “Christian”
approach to driving.
When we ask the
question, What would Jesus do?, very often there is no
specific example in the Gospel that provides a straightforward answer
to the question. Instead, Jesus becomes a stand-in for our highest
ideals. The name, Jesus, gets wrapped around our ideas of what
is noble and wise and compassionate. Jesus was wise, compassionate,
honest, good. When we ask What would Jesus do? We are asking what is
the wise, compassionate, honest, good thing to do. And our answer to
the question says more about us than it does about Jesus.
I faced this
hermeneutical challenge as I worked on this week's sermon.
I began with
pictures in my head. Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara.
Each of these persons was born with special challenges. Each of them
has received intensive therapeutic intervention. And each requires
and will always require special help. We cannot fix these people. Not
if “fix” means getting them to a place where they will be able to
manage their own lives without special assistance.
These people are not
going to grow up and take care of their parents. They are not going
to earn enough money over the course of their lifetimes to pay for
their care. Some will never manage their own money. Some will never
speak. Some will never be able to change their own diapers. Not even
if they live to be sixty years old. They will not become “productive
members of society.” They will always be takers. Always.
With these people
filling my mind's eye, I asked the question: What would Jesus do?
When I took this
question to the Gospel I immediately ran into a problem. In the
Gospel, Jesus solved every physical, material problem he faced.
Paralyzed for 38 years—no problem. Jesus made the man's legs work.
Blind? No problem. Jesus cured the blindness. A son who had demonic
fits or seizures all his life? Not to worry. Jesus fixed it. Jesus
solved every physical, material problem he encountered. Miracles were
routine.
So when we looked at
my collage of images of friends with severe challenges and asked what
would Jesus do, the first part of the answer was easy: Jesus would
heal them, fix them, make life easy for them. Which gives us no help
at all. Because our friends cannot be fixed. Our friends have genetic
disorders, chromosomal abnormalities, severe learning disabilities,
and profound mental illness. And we cannot fix them. We cannot do
what Jesus did. We cannot do what Jesus would do.
Jesus healed people.
We are left to care for them. Jesus fixed problems. We manage
problems. This is our life as the people of God. This is our life as
the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus has placed among us people we
cannot fix.
I have friends who
attend the Bethel Church in Redding, California. This church
specializes in miraculous healings. My friends have witnessed
miracles. They experienced for themselves healing from incurable
conditions. I love their stories. I do not deny the occurrence of
miracles. But the town of Redding still has a hospital. And it is not
empty. Redding has assisted living facilities. And people are not
moving from assisted living back to independent living. Even in the
neighborhoods surrounding Bethel Church there are children with
severe disabilities. Even in the Bethel Congregation itself there are
families serving as caregivers.
When we consider our
children and friends and neighbors and parents who have special needs
and we ask what would Jesus do? The stories of healing in the Gospel
are not especially helpful. Because we cannot fix the people we know.
A few weeks ago, I
listened to a theologian who expressed great admiration for the
provision in the law of Moses regarding gleaning. According to the
law, if you had a grain field, at harvest time, you were obliged to
leave the corners unharvested. After you did your first gathering,
you were prohibited from going back over the field a second time to
make sure you had gathered every last stalk of grain. Instead, those
unharvested corners and missed stalks were to be left for poor people
who had no fields. Once you were finished with your harvest, they
could harvest those corners and gather any grain that had been
dropped in your harvesting process.
The theologian
applauded this approach, making a veiled political point, saying this
divine method of helping the poor meant no one got something for
nothing. The poor people experienced the dignity of work.
The theologian was
correct as far as he went. Those who can work, should work. But he
left out Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara. If my
theologian friend ran the world, a lot of people would die because
they are unable to go out to the fields and gather. They are unable
to cook. They are unable to turn on the water faucet. They cannot
change their diapers, even at age 25.
Most of us have
heard the phrase, “Give people a hand up, not a hand out.”
Certainly, where we can, we should give a hand up.
One of the proudest
moments of my life came during a performance by a brilliant musician
who had been close friends with my sister back when we were kids.
This singer paused in her performance and publicly thanked me for
giving her a hand up. It happened during her freshman year in
college. She was floundering, academically and socially. Then she
attended a coaching group I led. She embraced a number of good
habits. She got her feet under her. Grades and social life improved.
She developed a solid spiritual life. And went on to a great career.
She credited her turnaround to that coaching group.
I love the story. I
gave a little help and it seems to have made a big difference.
But the story is
useless—maybe even worse than useless, maybe even cruel—if I tell
it in front of someone whose child will never speak or someone who is
in college only because of the special assistance provided to blind
students. My friend had the capacity to take care of herself, with
just a little bit of temporary support. She got “fixed.” That's
wonderful and completely irrelevant when we consider the needs of
Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara.
A friend is visiting
us from Texas. He has a brother with schizophrenia. The brother began
attending a church. The church embraced him. They demonstrated
authentic “Christian” caring. They made him a part of their
church family. They helped him with rent occasionally. Helped him
find jobs. Took him on mission trips. For a number of years, this
church's embrace of Paul's brother was a perfect example of the power
of a loving church. They were a beautiful church. And life for Paul's
brother was better because of the care that church provided. Then the
brother went off his meds—meds he had been taking for years. He
quit all medication, completely and permanently. His mind went out of
control. He ended up hospitalized. People from the church—still
demonstrating the love of God—went to see him. But he sent them
away. He was hostile and fearful. He broke off all contact with the
church because voices in his head warned him they were aliens out to
get him.
They still loved
him. They could not fix him. Still they loved him. That's what the
church of Jesus does.
Late Friday night,
my friend Paul was asking me about today's sermon. I explained my
difficulty. I could not think of any problem Jesus could not fix. So
how did I get at the question, What would Jesus do, in the context of
people we cannot fix.
Then it came to me.
When Jesus was
hanging on the cross on that final Friday afternoon, he looked down
at the small group of friends who were gathered. In the group were
Jesus' mother, Mary, and his most intimate disciple, John.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple he loved standing there,
he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son!" Then He
said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that
time, the disciple took her to his own home. John 19:26-27
The problem Jesus'
mother faced could not be fixed. She was a widow and soon to be
childless. And faced decades of life with no one and nothing. What
could Jesus do? What did Jesus do?
He asked his most
intimate disciple to take care of her. Till the end of her life.
Forever.
This is the picture
of God's will for us in the face of those we cannot fix. Let us care
for them. That's what Jesus would do.
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