Just act … like Jesus

Just act … like Jesus.  Matthew 8.1-4

First, he sent me a text message:  “Need your opinion!!! Holla.” The text message came from the Duke of Earl, who was my bodyguard from my ministry days on the streets of Long Beach, who by the way, happens to be black.  So I called him today when I had the chance.   ‘Got your text … what’s up?’ I asked.  ‘I want your opinion about what is going on in Charleston.’  ‘My opinion?’  I queried, thinking how can anyone have a difference of opinion on the sheer evil that was demonstrated? ‘Yeah, like what do you think of this white kid who shot up the black church and is now in jail?’  ‘Well, I think he is sick—I feel a kind of pity for him that actually wells up in my throat.’  ‘I don’t feel pity for him,’ he spat back, ‘not at all’.

Duke went on to tell me how the Charleston shootings looked and felt to him. ‘Did you see the picture of the church people?’ he asked me.  'You know, the women in their hats and all that?’  ‘Yeah, I did… I watched the Sunday morning worship service.’  ‘Well that was my mother, those were my aunties . . . do you get it?!’ he asked, and as he talked, his voice grew louder and louder.  ‘That is the church I grew up in, only in Chicago.’  (the African Methodist Episcopal Church)

The Duke proceeded to tell me how people (including politicians in the last week) have said all the right things, but failed to act.  ‘I was watching as that pastor, that senator’s casket passed by the South Carolina statehouse today, underneath the flying Confederate flag… are you kidding me?!  That kid had the courage to go in and kill people for his beliefs, yet no black men are tearing that flag from the pole?’  [I took exception to his use of the word ‘courageous’; it is not courageous to shoot unarmed people who are defenseless.]

‘But as for his other comments?  I get it.   See, folks can say all the right things, they can take the microphone and get folks stirred up with emotion, but can they DO the right thing?  Do they do the courageous thing?  Do they walk their own talk?

Let’s look at Jesus for example.  Jesus has just preached a long message about love—the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7), about how we ought to be daily living out our lives as Christians, about the power of our individual prayers and not judging others.  Yes, all of that, and more.  And then, Matthew records . . .