what.would.jesus.do?…

…to be honest I don’t know
anymore. The first time someone sprang
that little motto on me I was taken back.
I think it was the seventh grade.
My world turned upside down…

-Jesus would talk to the
lonely kid at lunch with no one to sit with
-Jesus would bake cookies for
dying old people
-Jesus would stay after
church to stack chairs
-Jesus would do his homework
(and get good grades)
-Jesus wouldn’t talk back to
his parents

It was simple really. In any given situation: Jesus would be an incredibly nice guy.

I never got a WWJD
bracelet. I thought they were a little
cheesy, but mostly I just had a hard time putting them on – to put that fabric
through the clasp, with only one hand? Impossible. But still I wrestled with the question. What would Jesus do? And doing the best I could with the answers I
was given – I became a perpetually nice guy.

Today I was supposed to play
baseball with my young friends who live on the street. They showed up toying with a sick bird and
high from sniffing glue – glue cans in their pockets, another stash tucked into
the front of their shirts, and a sick bird passed and squeezed between the
palms of their hands.

They were throwing the bird
in the air – it would try to fly free but end up twenty yards down the road
with a boy chasing after it to catch it and repeat the process. It was devastating every time, to watch this
bird flap its wings hysterically and almost get free, only to be choked out by the
calloused hands of a twelve year old. I
spent some time trying to save the bird.
It ended up in a tree. It’s
probably still there, wondering how in the world it survived playtime today.

Eventually, I wound up
chasing one of the boys for a few blocks.
I wrestled him into an ATM booth to fish the glue out of his shirt and
his pocket. I did it out of love. I did it because I think there are better
ways to fight off the ugliness of the world than sniffing glue. I did it because I love this kid more than I
love anyone else on the planet at the moment and I don’t want his brain to melt
out from behind his eyes.

He got angry. He fought me. He told me he wouldn’t play baseball. He got worked up until he fell asleep on a trashbag next to a dumpster
in the open lot where I was teaching baseball to a few of his friends.

See, it’s not so easy
though. It isn’t clear cut: Glue is bad – so Matt saved the day. That’s
not it at all. I don’t blame him for sniffing the glue. His parents
might as well be dead. He spends all his time on the streets.  He was raped by an older boy about two weeks
ago, and he’s carrying around deep pain and humiliation and anger that
I can’t
even imagine. He wants a way out of
the life he’s been handed, and the glue is the cheapest ticket.

So what would Jesus do? The glue isn’t the issue. He’ll get more. It costs five rand (less than a dollar) at a
little shop down the road. The issues
are far deeper. The Jesus I’ve come to
know loves to cut to the root. He
doesn’t spend much time fighting the obvious, outward symptoms – he takes his
sword to the root and brings his life to the dead places in me. But at the same time he has wrestled me into
all kinds of corners to break me of my addictions – to take my eyes off of the
easy fixes and to call me out of my hiding.
So I’m sitting here, hours later, staring at this can of glue and wondering: is it worth it to save a kid from glue for a
day – to leave him pissed off next to a dumpster exhausted in his anger?

Maybe.

All of our most sincere
actions – even the things Jesus would do – ring loud and empty when
they come
without love. So tonight I am praying
and hoping that God can bend our actions that seem to fall in the gray
when they come out of
love. I’m begging that God would let the
ringing that comes from love be louder than the question marks that
cover
the things I do.  And I’m starting to believe that God can turn the
things we do in love, even the ridiculous things that we can’t really
imagine Jesus
doing, into echoes of his own love. And that he can shape and tune them
to ring like bells – to signify the coming of something new, full and
loud. God breaking in. My habit lately is to skip over asking what
would Jesus do – to just beg Jesus and the Spirit to come and take over
and do their work, because most of this is far beyond me.

I will probably see the boy
tomorrow. He will probably ride on my
back to the store where we buy bread. He
will probably reek of glue and gas and piss and sweat. He will probably smile again and ask me for
things. He will probably be more careful
to hide his glue from me from now on.
But I hope to God he keeps catching glimpses of the fact that I love
him. And those are the bigger questions: Father, how in the world are we going to love
that boy tomorrow? How can we get to the
root of all this? I admit I have no idea
what I’m doing. Teach me. Show me what to do. Breathe some Spirit into this kid. Draw him into you.

The boy’s name is
Jonathan. Pray for him. I really do love him more than anyone on the
planet right now and God wants him bad.
I hear his name or see his face and my heart breaks and leaps at the
same time.

Sorry for the length – sorry for
the word vomit. I just needed to write.