Too often, we forget just how radical Jesus was; we paint a soft picture of Jesus as a nice guy, bending down to teach little children about God’s Kingdom. Nice guys don’t do what Jesus did; nice guys are too worried about being nice to upset anyone. Jesus wasn’t a nice guy; He was a good guy, good beyond anyone else in this world.
We shouldn’t be asking what would Jesus do, but rather we should be thinking about what He did, and asking ourselves, what did He ask us to do? He did not ask us to be nice, but he did ask us to be good, to love God and to love our neighbor.
Loving God and our neighbor means that sometimes we will have to forsake being nice in order to be good. But we are not called to do what Jesus did. There is only one Jesus, and only Jesus could do what He did. Asking ourselves to do what Jesus did places us in the role of savior, not of the saved. We are none of us saviors, but we are all saved.
The tomb is empty, and sin and death are destroyed. Not through anything we did, but through God’s only Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is our Lord, our leader, our God; He is in charge, which we forget all too often. He has asked us to love God and to love our neighbor; what are we doing to follow His command?
The Rev. Jason Shelby
Rector