Recently I heard a talk by local author BJ Hollars. He was discussing the personal stories of freedom riders from the sixties who got on buses with a dangerous insistence that all people are created equal and therefore should be treated equally. (Hollars tells these stories in his book The Road South.) At one point he repeated the question of one of the people who got on the bus accepting the tremendous risk to personal safety. That person asked something like:

For what would you be willing to get on a bus?

This is another version of the kind of question Jesus asked his disciples. For what would you be willing to die?

Jesus answered that question with his whole life. We are called to go with them on that journey.

So in a nation rife with strife …

On the eve of a major transition in our national government …

On the day we remember the witness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and those whom he accompanied…

I ask you:

For what would you be willing to get on a bus?

A follow up question:

Is that the bus which Jesus would have taken?

A final question:

What in the story of Jesus has brought you to that conclusion?

About Philip Ruge-Jones

After I served for eighteen years as a professor of theology at Texas Lutheran University, my family decided to return to the Midwest where my wife and I grew up, attended college and seminary. Read more...