Proverbial Hot Dog

What if it IS True? Blog

Discovering, wrestling with, and trying like crazy to live Gospel virtue.

04/08/14

John 8:21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come.”
So the Jews said,
“He is not going to kill himself, is he,
because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.
That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.”
So they said to him, “Who are you?”
Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning.
I have much to say about you in condemnation.
But the one who sent me is true,
and what I heard from him I tell the world.”
They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.
So Jesus said to them,
“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.
The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him.”
Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

You will die in your sins! This is a pretty harsh assertion from Jesus in today's Gospel. I think the challenge is to realize how to take this. It's easy to want to imitate the attitude Christ takes here and admonish everyone who isn't living the life we think they should lead. But is this what Jesus is telling us to do?

As a parent of a six year old and an eighteen month old I see an interesting parallel here. Our six year old loves to mimic our discipline of him to his little brother. However, we just want him to love him, not try to discipline him. He's not the parent, he's the brother. I think we easily get this relationship out of whack as well. We want to be the disciplinarian to everyone else while ignoring what God is trying to teach us. It's the classic analogy of the plank in the eye.

Repent! This is a popular cry of the Christian culture to the worldly culture. As a former non-believer in my 20s I hated this attitude. It seemed so self-righteous and certainly nothing I was remotely interested in hearing. Years after my conversion to Christianity I was at a concert in Atlanta. After the show there was a street ministry doing it right. They had hot dogs and sodas for anyone who wanted them. I didn't want a hot dog and I tried to give them money but they refused. They were there freely giving in order to win the opportunity to build relationship. That's a lot tougher than simply telling someone they're on a slippery slope toward eternal damnation.

So what's the lesson here for us? What's the virtue here? After all, Jesus was obviously successful using this tactic. But isn't that the answer. Jesus is the one who gets to use this tactic, not us. We, like my sons, just need to love each other. It's not our place to levy these accusations to others. We need to let this accusation sink into our hearts in a way that will look like something. That something should be conversion and shouldn't that conversion result in us giving each other proverbial hot dogs?

Good luck and God bless,

Leo Brown