Michael Boggs, More Like A Lion - The Overflow DevoSample

What Would Jesus Undo

About a year ago I was leading worship at a student conference in Gatlinburg, TN and a guy named Shane Claiborne was speaking at one of the sessions. I’ve heard a lot of sermons in my life, but I wasn’t prepared for Shane’s opening comments. He started off by giving some statistics from a book (which I believe called Un-Christian). Here’s what he said:

“Several hundred non-Christians were asked to say a couple of words they thought best described Christians. Their answer? Here’s the top 3: anti-gay, hypocritical, judgmental.”

There were no good things in the top 10 and love never made the list. Let me say that again. LOVE never made the list!!!

Before he even got to his first point, I was saddened by those facts. Had I done something in my life to lead people to answer that question that way? Why wasn’t love on the list? The Bible says, “they’ll know we’re Christians by our LOVE” (John 13:35).

I knew from reading the Bible there were many things Jesus was undoing in His lifetime on earth. Jesus turned over the tables in the temple to tear down a greedy and crooked religious system. (Matt 21:12-14) He looked at some of the so-called religious leaders and called them hypocrites because “they preached but they did not practice”. (Matt 23:3) Moreover, He was essentially handed over to the authorities by the very people who were praying for a Messiah to come and rescue them. (Matt 26:50)

I began to wonder, “what Jesus would undo if He were physically walking the earth today? What would He undo in our churches, in our relationships and maybe more importantly, what would He undo in us?”

I believe there’s a lot He would undo and, if it’s not of Him, I say let the undoing begin.