I have to admit right here and now that I come from a long history of Christian Church attendance and ministry. I have been a seminary trained pastor. One of the big questions that churches and people seem to wrestle with is, “How do we present Jesus to the world.” A version of that question seems to have come up in the church I currently attend. Before you think that I may be trashing my church, I am not, but sometimes I do have some objections to how we/they and others choose to do ministry.
Our church is a very special one. It is one that truly is striving to share and live out the message and ministry of Jesus. Our church, however, just recently looked at their demographics and realized that our median age is getting older. We don’t seem to be reaching the new generation of young adults. With the concern that this information produced, a new associate pastor was hired with the job of reworking the worship services and surroundings to be more young adult friendly or attractive, or something.
This bugged me. I have always been bugged by the Church in general’s attempts to “Dress Up Jesus” as I call it. Again, I have to admit that our church’s efforts were fairly low key, especially when compared to those employed by other churches. We didn’t put on a carnival. We didn’t put on a circus type show in our “sanctuary”. The staging, lighting, sound, and stage and wall dressings were changed or updated; and the worship teams and style were changed. As I say, it wasn’t much but it was a change for the reason of making our church, our message, us, and possibly our Lord more presentable/acceptable to those we were trying to reach.
I have to say here that I used to be a dress up kind of guy—that is in a wardrobe sort of way. In my teens and early adulthood, I was one who really hit the highest and most current fashions. It was important to me. My wife looks back at that and then looks at me now and wonders what happened. If I’m going to be at my most comfortable, I’m going to be in a T-shirt and cargo shorts with my Birkenstock sandles. In colder times, I wear jeans or cargo pants with denim or plaid shirts, a barn coat and fedora hat. I feel I have, through the years, found my style. I do still own some dress clothes and my wife really loves it when I dress up when we go out. What I’m trying to say is dress clothes, though they look good on me and make me look good, don’t really show the real me. I am a casual, rumpled, sometimes mess of a guy. Dressing me up doesn’t change that.
I’m not saying that Jesus is a casual, rumpled mess. What I’m trying to say is that Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the World does not need to be dressed up. In fact, I believe that any attempts to dress up Jesus only serve to shadow the truth of who He is. To give some support to what I am trying to say, I would like to look at some Bible verses and see what sort of packaging we see of Jesus.
The first one to look at would be at His birth. Luke 2 tells us that Jesus was born in a barn. Have you ever been in a barn? They don’t smell good. I would venture to say that none of the animals in that stable/barn were house trained. No matter how clean you try to keep a barn, it smells like animals and their processes. Not only was Jesus born in a barn, but he was wrapped up in basic swaddling wraps of the day. I know many have gone so far as to say that Jesus was wrapped up in rags, but that is not true. He was not, however, dressed in the trappings of a royal baby. He was dressed in the clothings of a common, working class baby. Then, of course, His first crib was a feeding trough for the animals of the barn, what we call a manger. This and all of the other things I haven't shared about His birth is how God Almighty decided to “package” his Son as he gifted the world with Him. Not very attractive, huh?
The packaging continued as he grew. He was known as just plain Jesus, the son of the carpenter. As we get to the beginning of His ministry, Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke). It was here that he was tempted by Satan, himself. One of the temptations directly related to how Jesus would present Himself to the world. He was challenged to throw Himself from the highest point of the Temple and have the Angels catch him in full view of everyone there. What a show! What a miraculous spectacle! It would have really impressed many people. It would have been a real attention getter, but Jesus chose against it. Jesus, chose not to present Himself that way. Jesus chose against the show, the trappings, the marketing, the hype.
We can see from the Gospel accounts of his ministry that Jesus stayed committed to this choice. He was basically a vagabond of sorts. He never sought the place of honor. He commented to one would be follower that He had no place to lay His head (Matt 8 & Luke 9). Whenever He was invited into the house of a dignitary He wasn't even honored with a foot wash. At the time of the Passover, just before his crucifixion, something special played out. The King was entering the city, but he specifically chose to enter it in an unexpected way.. He had no trappings of royalty. No armor nor army.. No prancing steed. Just Him, on a young donkey with a small band of ragtag followers. Not quite the presentation that one would expect from the King of Kings. Of course the people sang and praised Him, but they were mistaken. They still thought he would be the great religious and political deliverer—an earthly savior. These same people would be screaming for His death in a matter of days.
And then…did He ascend to a throne? Not unless you consider a cross a throne. This savior who came to earth in such a meager way…who chose to follow a life and ministry out of the spotlight...who entered His capital city on a small donkey would not ascend a throne, but be raised up in ridicule and shame as a common criminal on a cross of crucifixion. So much for the packaging of a King. So much for the Dressing Up of Jesus.
But this unpackaged, plain brown wrapper Jesus did touch lives. People came to him. People followed Him. People later died for Him and His message. How could that happen with such a non- packaged Jesus? It happened because people had a need for this type of savior. People as a whole and as individuals had a hole in their beings that only this type of savior could fill. This Jesus, this generically packaged Jesus, this non-flamboyant Jesus, this non-king like Jesus brought the One True God of Love, Mercy and Grace into people’s lives.
A very short tax collector who was hated for his oppression of his fellow countrymen didn’t need a package. He needed someone who would see him in a tree and befriend him, going to his house for dinner (Luke 19). A dressed up Jesus wasn’t what the woman caught in adultery needed as she was surrounded by her well dressed religious leader accusers. She needed someone who truly loved her. Someone who would look into her and be able to show mercy and grace. The woman at the well, whose life had been off the rails for a very long time, needed a dusty, hungry and thirsty traveler to sit down, talk with her, and give her a drink of living water. The publicans and sinners that Jesus sat with and ate and drank with… the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears… the foreigner, Syrophoenician woman, who brashly argued with Jesus to get her daughter healed…Mary Magdalene…Peter, the fisherman…they all had a need in their lives that could only be met by Jesus as he was, not as we would package Him or dress Him up.
Jesus is enough. His message of love, grace and mercy is enough. It’s never the packaging that is important. It may dazzle the eyes, but it is honestly the gift that is inside that is important. With Jesus, the gift inside is what we need. It is what the world needs. You may say, that if the gift is still the same, what harm is there in packaging? I would answer that we humans are so shallow, we’ll end up like toddlers on Christmas Day. We’ll forget the gift and play with the packaging.
Let’s choose not to dress up Jesus. He doesn’t need it. We don’t need it. They, the world, don’t need it.
