Whatever It Takes

Now that I have a teenager in the house, I’m starting to get used to the looks and phrases parents of teenagers get all the time from their daughters... you know, the eye-roll and the phrase, “Whatever.” Could you pick the mess you just made on the floor up? “Whatever.” Could you unload the dishwasher? “Whatever.” How about an attitude change? “Whatever.”

Sometimes… I feel like that’s kind of how we approach our faith lives – like a petulant, annoyed teen who just doesn’t want to have to do whatever it is the parent or – in this case, God – is asking of us. We kind of roll our eyes at God and go, “whatever – I’ve got better things to do right now.”

For example…

Jesus said love your neighbor…. “Whatever – Jesus didn’t have MY particularly annoying neighbor.”

Jesus said love your enemies…. “Whatever – like that’s realistic.”

Jesus said, “do unto the least of these as you would have done unto me.” …. “Whatever. People just need to learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

Jesus said “may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” …. “Whatever. I don’t like the way things are being done, so I’m just going to leave.”


Jesus said forgive as you have been forgiven…. “Whatever. Some things are just unforgiveable. Do you know what that person did to me?”

I have to wonder though… what if we took that petulant teenager and matured from teenage Christians to more adult Christians and went from the eye-roll “Whatever” and said instead: “Whatever it takes.”

Let’s hear how that sounds when we change the response…

Jesus said love your neighbor… “Whatever it takes.”
Jesus said love your enemies… “Whatever it takes.”
Jesus said, ‘do unto the least of these as you would have done unto me.’… “Whatever it takes.”
Jesus said, “may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”… “Whatever it takes.”
Jesus said forgive as you have been forgiven… “Whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes” was how Paul approached his ministry of spreading the gospel. “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.  To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law.  To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.  I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

What Paul describes here is not simple relativism or mere assimilation – it doesn’t mean checking your faith at the door or compromising your beliefs. Becoming "all things to all people" does not require losing one's self. Instead, Paul is describing a radical way of life in which he walks alongside all kinds of people in order to draw them to God.

For Paul, it wasn’t about sacrificing his faith or beliefs – quite the contrary – but it was about sacrificing his personal preferences and his personal desires in how the gospel was taught and preached – and was all about trying to reach in where people were at and work from there.

Now, the big issue in Paul’s day involved questions like whether or not they should be eating the food that was sacrificed to idols. Since idols were nothing – eating food that had been sacrificed to them meant nothing, but those who were weaker in their faith saw this as a profound problem.

I remember a story from one of my seminary professors one time regarding the celebration of Halloween. They had in their congregation some immigrants from Africa – Sudanese or Somali, I can’t remember exactly which off the top of my head. But they had been coming to his church for a while, until they came to a church Halloween party that was held in the church basement.

They stopped coming after that.

Several months later he ran into them at a different church and he asked why they had stopped coming. Their response was, “because you worship one God upstairs, and worship other gods downstairs.”

We may know, as "educated" Christians, that some of the cultural celebrations we take part in only have as much meaning as we choose to attach to them. Like eating food to idols, the focus of the celebration of Halloween is “nothing” to most of us.

Most of us view something like Halloween as simply a fun day where you get to dress up and give or receive candy. But to those people – they knew what the origins and original meaning behind the holiday was about, it’s pagan orientation – and felt participating in a pagan festival was not something they wanted to be part of. That to participate in such a pagan festival was contrary to living out their faith life as Christians.

In Paul’s view – the right thing to do – despite his understanding and knowledge – would have been to simply not participate in the festival for the sake of those who felt it was the wrong thing to do – that it was detrimental to their faith lives.
From Paul’s perspective… It didn’t compromise his core beliefs in any way, and maybe he didn’t get to necessarily DO the things EXACTLY the way he wanted to do them – but in his view – whatever was for the good of the Gospel – he was willing to do whatever it took.

The example I gave was a pretty rare and extreme circumstance for our culture and our concerns in 21st Century America. Few of us are facing people leaving the church because we throw a Halloween party – though perhaps we’ve turned away more than we know…

But we normally have to dig a little deeper and see what it is about our worship, our community and our actions that can turn people away from the Church. What arguments and divisions do we have among ourselves that wind up making people question their faith? Question the validity of the body of Christ and walk away and say “to heck with this church thing”?

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that, like in our gospel reading for both last week and this week, Christ is usually in the synagogue when he starts casting out demons… the demons oddly enough are found right in the midst of the worshiping community, because Satan knows if he can get a foothold there… get himself right in the midst of where God’s people are supposed to be at their strongest and destroying from within is a far more effective strategy than trying to destroy from without.

He thrives off the rifts among the faithful wherever he can because he knows what it does to a worshiping community when they’re in conflict. He knows how it affects not just the people on the inside, but the people who are still on the outside looking in.

He fosters that teenager within us who just rolls our eyes and says, “Whatever” and stomps off pouting instead of saying, “Whatever it takes.”

Paul knew this… he was clued into this little trick – and he wasn’t going to let it work. Paul was determined to do whatever it took in the hopes that we too would do whatever it takes to make Christ known not just in our community here within the church – but the community that exists beyond these walls that we interact with on an everyday basis.

A disenfranchised, un-churched, and sometimes even hostile community that has seen very little of the gospel in their lives and in the actions of the church.

Because it doesn’t take much to take one look around our world and see the desperate need for the good news in people’s lives today. We can see the brokenness among not just our own people, but the people we see at school, at work, sometimes even in the grocery store.

Right now we see a world that seems as far away as ever from realizing that God’s reign has come near in the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ ministry was both a ministry of word and deed. Jesus was the herald of the Good News of God’s reign coming near… and part of God's reign is the casting out of demons and the turning aside of illnesses; it has to do with restoration of those who have been oppressed to a full role in their communities – like the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law who, while sick, stood outside the community; it has to do with creating a people raised up to serve each other rather than quarreling with each other.

The fullness of God’s reign will mean illness and sin, despair, anger and frustration… will all be done away with, we will be restored to our proper relationship with God and with each other.

So how vital is it to know that the coming of God's kingdom is indeed good news? Why did Jesus feel it was so important that he continue sharing this good news of both word and deed that he up and left Capernaum without healing every single person there?

Why is that Paul felt it was so important that we share the Good News of Christ – the one who renews, heals, forgives and restores – that he gave up everything and was willing to do “whatever it takes”?  That his momentary comfort, happiness, and even preferences were nothing in comparison to bringing others the Good News of Christ?

Think of how many both today and in Paul’s day imagine the coming of God’s reign. The people in Jesus and Paul’s day read the same Old Testament scriptures we do. “That great and terrible day of the Lord.” Many imagine and envision the coming of God’s reign as a day of terror and reckoning. Many await it with great fear and trepidation.

We have entire shows on television now that are called things like, ‘The top 10 ways the earth could be destroyed.’ I tend to call the History Channel the “Doom and Gloom” channel nowadays.
We see the depths of human suffering and the depths of the human capacity for evil everyday on our television screens. Natural disasters, famine, war, global warming, economic disaster, terrorism… the world’s a scary place, and there are few people out there talking about a hopeful future for the human race.

If there ever was a time that the Good News needed to preached –it’s now. For the Good News is that we see in Jesus what it means for God’s reign to come near! It means healing, forgiveness, and restoration. That there is nothing to fear if we trust that Christ’s ministry and work were signs of the coming kingdom. That Christ’s earthly work in his short 3 ½ years was just a foretaste of what is still to come.

Paul GOT that in order to share that good news with EVERYBODY – that meant sometimes, in fact most of the time, meeting those people where they were at – and not making them come to where he was. That meant sacrificing his own personal comforts, his own personal styles, his own personal wants so that he could spread that message to people. It was THAT important to him. Because he felt it was THAT important to the world.

Mind you… that didn’t mean there still weren’t arguments – there were. That didn’t mean that Paul still didn’t tick off some of the people in his congregations… he did. That didn’t mean JESUS didn’t make people mad – he definitely did – made people mad enough they eventually killed him.

But when we can stop rolling our eyes and going “Whatever” like a teenager with the things that annoy us or we don’t like or that inconvenience us or that we may even just out and out disagree with … we need to take that moment and instead go, “We’re going to do whatever it takes to reach people who do not yet know the gospel of Christ.”