“WWJD
(But It Isn’t What You Think)”
Mark
13:1-8
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
November
15, 2009
Each of you received a little gift on
your way into worship this morning – your very own WWJD bracelet!
At the time several years ago when the WWJD phenomenon burst on the
scene, WWJD was shorthand for the question, “What
would Jesus do?” It was a
question that originated in an 1896 book by Charles Sheldon, still in print and
having sold over thirty million copies, called In
His Steps. Though the book
gets a bit sentimental and syrupy in parts, I was moved by it when I first read
it in 1985.
Henry Maxwell was the pastor of
In the midst of his preparation, he
heard the doorbell ring. His wife
had gone out so it was up to him to answer it.
He wanted to ignore it. But
it rang again. Getting up from his
desk, he peered out a window and saw a young man, very shabbily dressed.
“Looks like a tramp,” Henry
Maxwell said to himself. “I
suppose I’ll have to go and – “ He
didn’t finish his sentence but went down the stairs and opened the front door.
There was a moment’s pause as the two men looked at each other, and
then the disheveled young man said, “I
am out of a job, sir, and thought maybe you might put me in the way of finding
something.”
“I
don’t know of anything,” the
minister said. (I told you it could
be
Sunday morning arrived and there was a
pretty fair crowd in church. It was
a good morning, apparently, for, we are told that “the
choir was a source of great pleasure to the congregation.
The anthem was inspiring…being an elaborate adaptation to the most
modern music of the hymn, “Jesus, I my cross have taken/All to leave and
follow Thee.” And, just
before the sermon, the soprano soloist sang a well known song, “Where
he leads me I will follow/I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way.”
Henry Maxwell liked to place such a solo right before the sermon, for
it inspired his preaching and the congregation and it seemed to make the sermon
better than it was. (I know the
feeling.)
It was said of the preacher’s sermon
that morning that it was interesting. It
was full of striking sentences…passion…having the good taste not to offend
with only a hint of a rant…it was effective.
If the Reverend Henry Maxwell that morning felt satisfied with the
conditions of his pastorate, the First Church membership also had a similar
feeling as it congratulated itself on the presence in its pulpit of this
scholarly, refined, somewhat striking face and figure (okay, maybe it’s not
exactly like First Pres, Jamestown), preaching with animation and urgency.
It is what happened next that gave rise
to WWJD. Let me read from the book:
“The
sermon had come to a close…when the entire congregation was startled by the
sound of a man’s voice. It came
from the rear of the church…The next moment the figure of a man came out of
the shadows and walked down the middle aisle.
Before the startled congregation realized what was going on the man had
reached the open space in front of the pulpit and had turned about facing the
people.”
“’I’m
not drunk and I’m not crazy,’ the man said, ‘and I am perfectly harmless,
but if I die, as there is every likelihood I shall in a few days, I want the
satisfaction of thinking that I said my say in a place like this, and before
this sort of crowd.’”
“The
Reverend Maxwell had not taken his seat, and he now remained standing, leaning
on his pulpit, looking down at the stranger.
It was the man who had come to his house the Friday before, the same
dusty, worn, shabby-looking young man…He had not been shaved and his hair was
rough and tangled. It is doubtful if
anyone like this ever had confronted the
“There
was nothing offensive in the man’s manner or tone…’I’m not an ordinary
tramp,’ he said, ‘though I don’t know of any teaching of Jesus that makes
one kind of tramp less worth saving than another.
Do you?’ He put the
question as naturally as if the whole congregation had been a small Bible class.
He paused for a moment and coughed painfully.
Then he went on.”
“’I
lost my job ten months ago…I’ve tramped all over the country trying to find
something. There are a good many
others like me. I’m not
complaining…just stating facts. But
I was wondering as I sat there in the back of this church if what you call
following Jesus is the same thing as what He taught.
What did he mean when he said, ‘Follow me’?
I heard your minister say (and here the man turned around and looked up
at the pulpit) that it is necessary for the disciples of Jesus to follow His
steps…But I did not hear him tell you just
what he meant that to mean. What do
you Christians mean by following the steps of Jesus?’”...
“’What
do you mean when you sing, ‘I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way?’
Do you mean that you are suffering and denying yourselves and trying to
save suffering humanity as I understand that Jesus did?...Somehow I get puzzled
when I see so many Christians living in luxury and singing, ‘Jesus, I my cross
have taken, all to leave and follow Thee,’ and I remember how my wife died in
a tenement in New York City…Of course, I don’t expect you people can prevent
every one from dying of starvation, lack of proper nutrition, and tenement air,
but what does following Jesus mean? I
know that Christian people own a good many of the tenements.
A member of a church was the owner of the one where my wife died, and I
was wondering if following Jesus all the way was true of his case.
I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night
– ‘All for Jesus, all for Jesus,/All my being’s ransomed powers,/All my
thoughts, and all my doings,/All my days, and all my hours’ – and I kept
wondering as I sat on the steps just outside what they meant by it.
It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that
somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived
them out. I suppose I don’t
understand. But what would Jesus do?
Is that what you mean by following His steps?
It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches have good
clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and can go
away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches,
thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and
never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and
drunkenness and sin.’ (selected
paragraphs from pages 6-10, In His Steps by Charles Sheldon)
In the weeks after the man’s
appearance in the church, Henry Maxwell invited his congregation to live with
the WWJD question as their guiding principle.
“Ask yourselves, ‘What would
Jesus do?’ – then be guided, for this next year, by your best answer to that
question.” The rest of the
book tells of the stories that occurred in the life of that congregation and its
members as it and they sought to live out their pledge to do so.
But having said all of that, the WWJD
question is not without some problems for us today.
One of the concerns I have with the “what would Jesus do” question is
that it is very difficult in our time to know precisely what Jesus would do in
all of the situations that confront us in the twenty-first century.
The contexts of our world and life are very different from those Jesus
encountered in his day. Moreover,
the question – what would Jesus do – often is posed manipulatively by people
and churches who are sure they know what Jesus would do which, conveniently,
just happens to agree with what those who are asking it would do.
A more promising way of framing the
WWJD question is, I think, what would
Jesus deconstruct? That question
suggests itself in our gospel reading of the day in which the disciples are
mesmerized by the grandiosity and magnificence of the Temple in Jerusalem –
the Temple that had been the center of Jewish life and identity, the Temple that
had nurtured in the people a sense of connection with God’s presence on earth,
but also the Temple that Jesus believed had gone rogue (in the vernacular of the
week) and had stopped bearing good and faithful fruit – and so Jesus said to
the disciples, “Do you see these great
buildings? Not one stone will be
left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Jesus predicted the
deconstruction of any institution, religion, nation, or people that sought to
reduce, narrow, flatten, or shrink God’s big, inclusive love and, though it
was the Romans who deconstructed the Temple in 70 A.D., Jesus did some pretty
significant deconstructing of his own. WWJD,
indeed! What
would Jesus deconstruct? Knowing
what Jesus sought to deconstruct can guide us as we seek to live our lives in
the same holy Spirit as Jesus lived his.
As I told the children earlier,
scripture becomes our “spectacles” through which we can see the
deconstruction of that which did and does not serve God’s vision so that a
life more in keeping with God’s vision can emerge.
In the tradition of the prophets before him, Jesus sought to deconstruct
the domination system of his day in which power ruled and might made right and
violence was deemed acceptable in the service of empire and the bruised reeds
and the dimly burning wicks of society were deemed expendable and left to fend
for themselves.
In its place Jesus commends the
“weakness” and “folly” of the way of the cross, of radical and shocking
love, of hospitality, compassion, forgiveness, and justice.
Deconstruction, theologian John Caputo of
“You
have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.’ But I say to you, Love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of
your Father in heaven…”
“Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
“You
have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
But I say to you…if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the
other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak
as well; and if someone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile…”
“While
his prodigal son still was far off, his father saw him and was filled with
compassion; and he ran and threw his arms around him, and kissed him…”
“Father…forgive
them…”
When Jeremiah was called to the
ministry of the Lord, God said to him, “See,
today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and pull down,
to destroy and to deconstruct, to build and to plant.”
It was the same call that was given to Jesus and, I believe, the call
that is given to us as well. But it
is not a call to be carried out by force, but by the subversive power of the
“weak” way of Christ, of love, for that is finally the only way that will
deconstruct walls that divide and oppress and build hope for a peaceable kingdom
within us, around us, and among us all.
So I commend to you the wearing of your
WWJD (with a twist) bracelet – asking yourself whenever you see it what Jesus
would deconstruct so as to make way for the realm of God on earth – and then
go and do likewise.
Amen.
1Caputo, John D., What Would Jesus
Deconstruct?
Copyright
© First Presbyterian Church 2009