Jesus Today . . .

JESUS WOULD TELL THEM TO SHUT UP!

Lately I have been serving the Denton public schools as a part-time school bus driver. I will not go into the reasons for my doing this in this essay, but I do want to share with you one of my many interesting experiences. And I would that more people could have the experience of living with 40 kids inside a school bus --- especially their parents!

One afternoon when they were on the verge of murdering each other, I sought tranquility by talking with one of the offenders about what he was learning in Sunday school. Some of his peers were calling him names and he was calculating what he might do in revenge. What would Jesus do?, I asked, not sure that it was the right question for a rowdy 12-year old, Sunday school or not. Surely inspired by something, Holy Spirit or otherwise, he blurted out without hesitation, Jesus would tell them to shut up!

Not being one to quench the Spirit or the spirit, however it was, I retreated to my driver’s seat, conceding that that is precisely what Jesus might do, tell them to shut up. It was all the theology I needed for one afternoon. But the lad set me to thinking, as one should in the face of such prophetic outcries. Do we really know all that much about what Jesus would do and not do?, I have been asking myself. About a lot of things in our lives.

There was of course the right answer, which the enterprising young demon did not give: Jesus would turn the other cheek. With that response I would (we all would) pat the lad on the head and say, Good boy, the Lord give you victory over your enemies! But we know that Jesus did not always turn the other cheek. All four evangelists tell us how Jesus drove the money-changers from the temple, and Matthew and Mark tell how he turned over tables and chairs. And John tells us that he got after them with a whip --- and only he tells us how Jesus scattered their money all over the place!

That is such an unlikely report on the activities of the Son of God that it lends credulity to the Scriptures. No one would have fabricated such an account, and even we are reluctant to face up to this episode in the life of Jesus. Some want the narrative to say that Jesus used a whip only on the animals. Even my dear Ouida is tempted to equivocate. “You don’t think he actually struck people, do you?,” she pleaded, betraying a fixed stereotype that most of us have of the Lord. All right, maybe he did use a whip, we admit in the face of what is written, but maybe he only waved it threateningly in the air. We lack the candor of the lad on the bus who had no problem with a Jesus who tells people to shut up, sometimes. Did he not talk to Peter somewhat that way, or with even greater severity: “He rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men’” (Mk. 8:33). In all my days I have never called another man Satan, but then again I am not Jesus!

He who laid down the principle of non-violence was indeed sometime violent, or something like that. If only John tells us about the whip, only Mark gives us a striking fact about Jesus cleansing the temple: He would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple (Mk. 11: 16). So the Lord not only upset tables and chairs, scattering the money, but he also took a whip after them and policed the area lest they bring in anymore of their merchandise. We see a Jesus with a lamb in his arms more easily than a Jesus with a whip in his hand doing guard duty. We may conclude from the narrative that the money-changers saw that Jesus meant business. It is noteworthy that it was following this affair that they began to contrive a way to do away with him. We may also conclude that the folk looking on got a bang out of the show!

While I grant that such a norm as “What would Jesus do?” is appropriate for the believer, I suggest that such a rule is often difficult to apply in our complex and explosive world. What would Jesus do about some of the weighty problems we face as parents and grandparents? And did Jesus ever run a business and try to cope with all the governmental regulations and still make a profit? What would he say about the knotty issues between labor and management or how would he settle a strike? How do we apply his ethics to international crises, whether in Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. How would Jesus have voted on the AWAC issue, or what would he tell the British to do about “the Irish problem”?

We can always say that Jesus would do the loving thing, and he would call for mercy and forgiveness. But what is the loving thing in such matters as gun control, the military draft, and coping with inflation? How do we apply the mind of Christ to such sensitive issues as abortion, euthanasia, drug and crime control, racial and sexual inequities? Jesus’ disciples today disagree on all these things even though they look to him as Lord.

We have to admit that we do not know what Jesus would say about abortion and all its complexities or what he would do about drug abuse. Yet he is Lord over all life and he is vitally concerned about all our problems. He seems to leave us on our own with ideals to live by the best we can. He provided the paraclete or comforter to be with us and strengthen us, but the Holy Spirit is not “the answer man” who tells us how to save the economy. As a believer our President might pray for guidance, but the Father will not necessarily tell him how to handle the Russians? God does not seem to have laid out that kind of game plan, for we are largely on our own, with principles and a Person.

Is Jesus relevant to our kind of world? Very much so, but we do know how the script reads. We keep on looking through that glass darkly, and the mysteries remain, however faithful we may be. Perhaps that is what it is all about: we live by faith in a world that we cannot understand. We believe in the victory when defeat seems to be all about us. We are persuaded He is with us even when the bottom seems to be falling out of our lives. We are winners even when we seem to be losers. All because Jesus overcame the world --- but only in a certain way, a way the world does not accept. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). To really believe, that is what it is all about. We will not answer all the questions or solve all the problems, but as believers we are overcomers. It is enough to settle for that.

Yes, Jesus might tell noisy kids to shut up, or adults for that matter, or he might say nothing and turn the other cheek. Yes, he might take a whip to greedy men, or he might give them his cloak as well as his coat. He might go the second mile and he might not. We don’t always know. We only know that he did the Father’s will perfectly. We cannot do that; we can only want to. And that is the essence of our being like Jesus and doing as he would do. It is a matter of the heart. We want to be like Jesus in the midst of all the uncertainties of our troubled world. If that is our heart’s desire, we will be right even when we are wrong. --- the Editor