What Jesus Did - New Evangelizers

As Catholics and Christians, we study the life of Jesus in the Gospels and strive to emulate His example. For us, WWJD becomes What Jesus Did (WJD).

Jesus had presence in His public ministry. He didn’t rant or rave and there are only a few instances where he loses his cool.

This presence led Jesus through the intense scrutiny and constant pressure from the religious establishment. People sat up and listened when he spoke. Crowds gathered as Christ’s presence drew people in to hear what he was preaching and teaching. People heard him and the ones who opened their ears and hearts and really listened understood.

The scribe in a recent Sunday Gospel (Mark 12; 28-34) is an example. The Gospel tells the story of a scribe asking Jesus to publicly answer one of those types of questions designed to trap Him. “Which is the first of all the commandments?”

Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one, only Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

The scribe said to him, “Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true, that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any burnt offering or sacrifice.”

In his sermon when the above excerpt from Mark was the Gospel reading, Fr. Jarett Konrade, the campus chaplain at the Kansas State University, borrowed a poker term and called this the “All In” Gospel.

What does God want from us? God wants us to follow WJD and go all in.

No tiptoeing around the edges or sitting on the fence, we must go all in. Go all in or it will be, to borrow a phrase from Jesus, “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

All in, that is what God wants from us.

Presence. Jesus possesses the confidence, the patience, the love and faith in us to act with the conviction he did.

As Christians, we must strive to go all in and be like Jesus in all we do. There is no need for us to venture out on our own and attempt to reinvent the wheel of how we should live our Christian lives.

We are lucky and loved enough by God that he lays the game plan of WJD out on the table for us, just like a holiday feast.

Place your bets, people. Are you ready to go all in?

Need help? Follow the example of Jesus who went the ultimate “all in” to bet on us.

Copyright © 2012, Mike Hays

Mike Hays

Mike Hays is a husband, a father of three, a lifelong Kansan and works as a molecular microbiologist. Besides writing, he has been a high school strength and conditioning coach, a football coach and a baseball coach. His debut middle grade historical fiction novel, THE YOUNGER DAYS, is a 2012 recipient of The Catholic Writer's Guild Seal of Approval Award. You can find it at the publisher's website or on Amazon.