What About Jesus?

Just recently, a Washington lawmaker asked me a question over breakfast that has stayed with me ever since. The national legislator is a Christian, but genuinely was having a hard time understanding the message and motivation of the evangelical “advisers” to President Donald Trump. He posed the sincere query, “What about Jesus?” It is exactly the right question and I have thought about it since our conversation: “What about Jesus?”

What do these evangelicals do with that question as they listen and talk with and for Donald Trump? Would Jesus talk this way about immigrants, act this way toward women, use such divisive language of racial fear and resentment, show such a blatant disregard for truth, prefer strong-man to servant leadership, and really say that one country should be “first?” What do we do with Jesus? That is always the right question, including when it comes to politics, and especially if we say we are followers of Jesus Christ.

I ask you to watch this short four-minute video in which several Christian elders from across many traditions and racial lines ask that vital question in their message of Reclaiming Jesus in a Time of Crisis. Listen to their voices and the core teachings of Jesus they are raising.

Listen and then share this with your pastor and church, your family and friends, and on your social media to all the networks of people with whom you share your stories, pictures, and your life. Help them raise the question too: What about Jesus?

Pentecost is this Sunday, and we’ll recall the time when frightened Christians were in hiding — until the Holy Spirit came among them and empowered them to take their faith to the streets of their public life. That’s how the church was born, by telling the world who Jesus was and is.

By sharing this powerful video featuring elders from across the families of U.S. Christianity proclaiming together how the true gospel of Jesus Christ can guide us through our current political and religious crisis. Just as the disciples first took their faith to the streets when the Holy Spirit came to them on Pentecost, you can take this Pentecost message for our time to your social media newsfeeds and your churches this week and all during the Pentecost season. Here are the most important actions you can take to reclaim Jesus this week:

• Share this powerful video on your Facebook wall and Twitter feed.
• Bring it to your pastor and ask him or her to show it to your congregation this Sunday as part of how you observe Pentecost.
• If you are a pastor, please watch this video and prayerfully consider commending the message of these church elders to your parishioners or congregants on Sunday.

The Holy Spirit is at work even in the darkness of this political moment. We feel it calling us to reclaim Jesus from those who have appropriated, co-opted, and hijacked his name for worldly power. Will you join us and show the world that the followers of Jesus refuse to be complicit and refuse to be silent?