just like jesus

I have posted twice before about what Jesus looks like. If you asked me about that I would probably say it is not important to me, but I've kind of had some of my prejudices about it shown up recently.

I was looking at this clip on YouTube, which is an amazing drama which some young folk from our church did at a main event at the start of the year depicting the struggle over a soul. I was actually quite disappointed to discover it was not original. I then decided to look at some of the other versions, but did not very far 'cos I found myself getting offended at some of the men playing the role of Jesus: Some were fat, or too old, or not handsome, or too handsome, or too amateur, or... just not like I imagined.

This got me thinking: Do I reject Jesus because I do not like the person who is representing Him to me?

Do I get offended if the person bringing a message or a word is too young? or too old? or fat? or needy? or professional? or nervous?

I know it is very easy to be swayed by cultural differences. We might esteem the liberated worship of African churches, but then write off American churches for what we see as their slick performances. Even within the UK we can disregard the established Anglican and Catholic churches and not consider that there may be very sincere believers who do touch with God through liturgy and ceremony.

When I have been to church with a friend of mine (still charismatic, but a different stream) I have found some of their “niceness” very difficult. When she came to our meeting, her husband struggled with leaders wearing hoodies. But we sang the same songs!

Even the apostles in the early church struggled to cope with believers from different backgrounds. Although Jesus had no issues about who he spoke to or ate with, God had to send Peter a vision to prepare him to listen to and go with Cornelius to preach to his household. It was a real dilemma for the Jewish believers to know what to do with the Gentiles who started to believe in Jesus.

Mother Teresa used to seek for the image of Christ in every person she dealt with. On days when she had to deal with really difficult people she would tell the sisters “I met Christ in the most distressing disguise today”.

I don't know if she ever failed to love someone as the image of Christ. I know I do.