Have you ever have someone speak malice against you? To slander your name publicly? If you have, you know it’s not fun.

I was coaching a group of high school kids this past weekend. Our team won a tournament that was a pretty big stepping stone for the program, and yet my day was soiled by a strange and frustrating moment. Just after the championship game I had a parent from the opposing team interrupt a conversation I was having with my coaches and parents. He jammed his finger in my face and said something like this: “I don’t appreciate the fact that you called my son a ……” (a very derogatory and harsh word). I stood there stunned, like I had just been punched in the face. “Sir,” I said, “first off, that is a ridiculous claim, who is your son?” I knew the allegations were totally untrue and unwarranted, yet the questioning of my integrity stirred a rugged pugilist deep inside me that had to be restrained (sorry, I’ve just always wanted to use the word pugilist in a sentence, haha).

After he explained his son played for the opposing team, I asked him if I might meet him and the three of us could settle this dispute together. He took me over to the opposing teams bench, and a mob of parents quickly formed around me. Now I recognized the kid when we walked up, it was the same young gentleman I asked to clean up his mouth after he walked by my wife and I earlier in the day spewing profanities. He was not comfortable with the fact I was standing before him now asking what exactly he told these parents I had said to him. Nor was he effective in bringing out any type of legitimate story as to why or how I made fun of him. He simply continued to crawl into a invisible cave and say “you were making fun of me…” His victim like attitude still caused enough controversy with the parents to make me feel uneasy, but not enough to remove the desire to kick his butt.

The situation was diffused when the coach asked me to leave his players alone and go to my team across the field. Finally I yielded and before I left I looked at the father who originally prompted the dispute, I shrugged my shoulders and said I don’t know what to tell you. He snaps back with his original intensity, “I just don’t think there should be a situation where a high school kid feels like an adult is making fun of them.” Despite the obvious fact his son was folding under the pressure, like a guilty person before a tough lawyer, the father was still upset. The coach ushered me away as I told him I agreed with him, and I hoped he would address with his son why he would lie to his face.

I did not get to enjoy the sweetness of our victory. My heartbeat was racing and I grind-ed my teeth together out of anger and confusion. The opposing teams parents stared at me like a leper, and soon I lost my anger for disappointment. Dissapointment in the whole situation. This is why I didn’t want to coach high school kids, I thought. And then I thought of all the great kids I get to coach, and all the parents that I encounter and truly enjoy knowing. I know it’s worth it, but man, that sucked, and I didn’t feel like my name was cleared as it should have been.

I can not imagine what it would be like to be Jesus. To be this guy with the most pure servant heart ever. He had committed his every day to others and never himself. And then to be put on trial for bull crap, and hear the very people he longed to serve call for his death. To hear what people must have said about him to the court and judge, it must have been hard to keep quiet. But he did. And then he was beaten ruthlessly, only to return to the court to hear the people cry for his death by crucifixion. There was no worse way to go, and there he is, an innocent man to be put to death. The shame of it all, the public slander that took place, even his friends wouldn’t associate with him, instead they lied to others claiming not to have known him. Seems radical really. To think that Jesus actually had the power to stop it all and reverse the whole situation, and yet he didn’t. Instead he humbly allowed them to do as they pleased. And he didn’t do it in vain, he knew what the result would be, and he kept his power subdued so that his mission might be fulfilled.

Now I don’t think I did the wrong thing in addressing the situation with the boy and his father, but I wonder how I could have handled it better, I wonder what Jesus would have done… Not what someone in the church would have done, but really Jesus, I wonder what Jesus would have said to the people, I wonder how he would have been postured, I wonder if it is different than what I think… That is what it means to be a Christian to me, to become more and more like the person of Christ. The radical man depicted in the gospels that shows us another way to live, a way unlike this world.