Thoughts: Who Is This Man?

Last Sunday we concluded our Community of snowbirds with the fifth session of study of "Who is this Man?" by John Ortberg. I gained a great amount of interest and wonder how the social repute of Jesus might be dealt with these days. Ortberg draws from the fact that in the culture of Jesus' day, officials, politicians, and soldiers, His reputation as a political nightmare and agitator of the people preceded Him.  Among the religious leaders, His reputation was securely forged by the scandal and outrage of His messianic claims. Beyond these reputations, the most common accusations of his personal depravity had to do with the company He kept, the Sabbath He broke, and the food and drank He enjoyed.  In two different gospels, Jesus remarks on His reputation as a glutton.  "The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!'" Luke 7, Matthew 11.  In fact, if I were to remove the accounts of His meals or conversations with members of society's worst, or His parables that incorporated these untouchables, there would be very little left of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  According to etiquette books and accepted social norms, both from the first century and the twenty-first, the reputation of Jesus leaves much to be desired. 

Ironically, the reputation of those Jesus left behind does not resemble His reputation much at all. I'm thinking it interesting that Dorothy Sayers, in 1949 wrote a piece "Christian morality" in The Whimsical Christian,  describes the differences:  "For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian churches have labored, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master.  They have hustled the Magdalens from the communion table, founded total abstinence societies in the name of him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatergoing....Feeling that the original commandment 'thou shalt not work' was rather half hearted, they have added to it a new commandment, 'thou shalt not play." To me her observations have a ring of both comedy and tragedy.  It seems the impression Christians often give the world is that Christianity comes with an oddly restricted understanding of words such as virtue, morality, faithfulness, and goodness.  I wonder why this reputation is far more similar to the law-abiding religion of which Jesus had nothing nice to say. And am reminded of:  "Woe to you, hypocrites!  For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven."

It seems to me that when the apostle Paul described the kind of fruit in Galatians 5:22-23:  that will flourish in the life of one who follows Jesus, He was not giving the church a checklist or a rigid code like the religious law from which He Himself was freed.  He was describing the kinds of reputations that emerge precisely when following the friend of tax-collectors and sinners, the drunkard, the Sabbath-breaker, the Son of God.  Jesus loved the broken, discarded people around Him to a social fault.  He was patient and kind, joyful and peaceful in ways that made the world completely uncomfortable.  His faithfulness was not a badge that made it seem permissible to exclude others for their lack of virtue.  His self-control did not lead Him to condemn the world around Him or to isolate Himself in disgust of their immorality; rather, it allowed Him to walk to His death for the sake of all.  

I'm not denying that there are pockets of the world where the reputation of the church lines up with that of its Founder.  The prophets and identity managers of the church today pray for many more.  Until then, in a world deciphering, critically or otherwise, the question of reputation, "What does it mean to be Christian?" perhaps I think I'll ask instead, "What did it mean to be Christ?"