Disreputable Jesus

While I was prepar­ing for this week’s mes­sage I came across this para­graph which I don’t think is going to make it in (does­n’t fit the flow), but it was so good that I feel com­pelled to share it with you:

Dorothy Say­ers in her book Unpop­u­lar Opin­ions wrote:

Set­ting aside the scan­dal caused by His Mes­sian­ic claims and His rep­u­ta­tion as a polit­i­cal fire­brand, only two accu­sa­tions of per­son­al deprav­i­ty seem to have been brought against Jesus of Nazareth. First, that He was a Sab­bath-break­er. Sec­ond­ly, that He was “a glut­to­nous man and a winebib­ber, a friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners” — or (to draw aside the veil of Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish that makes it sound so much more respectable) that He ate too hearti­ly, drank too freely, and kept very dis­rep­utable com­pa­ny, includ­ing grafters of the low­est type and ladies who were no bet­ter than they should be. For nine­teen and a half cen­turies, the Chris­t­ian Church­es have laboured, 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 the­atre-going. They have trans­ferred the Sab­bath from Sat­ur­day to Sun­day, and, feel­ing that the orig­i­nal com­mand­ment “Thou shalt not work” was rather half-heart­ed, have added to it the new com­mand­ment, “Thou shalt not play.”

So there.

Now that I look at it again it may make it in after all… come and find out!

By the way, this week we’re con­tin­u­ing our “Jesus Is Ask­ing You…” series of mes­sages with the piv­otal ques­tion Who Do You Say That I Am?