WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS HE ?

I discovered the following monogram (BY Mark Townsend) on my FaceBook page. It was "too good" to allow it to disappear (as most things on FB usually do). It is repeated here "with the Author's permission".

FYI: Mark is a Parish Priest (Open Episcopal Church)
at the Parish of St. Francis and Mother Earth, Diocese of The Midlands, Hereford, Herefordshire, UK


‎(from "Diary of a Heretic")

I’ve been doing a little more theological thinking about the cross. I've always found the cross of Jesus helpful. I still wear two of them. Of course I can't cope with the “his blood washes away my sins” stuff but, rather, I see it as a deep and powerful symbol of the cost of being true to one's own deepest inner call / vocation. For Jesus (the man not the God) it was impossible for him not to offer grace to those to whom religion and politics had given the finger. It was what he knew deep down to be the way, to welcome the un-welcomable, to love the un-loveable. That’s why I can’t buy the idea that Jesus was an Essene either. I mean, those guys were the strictest perfectionists in the area. They wouldn’t have even visited regular people, let alone allowed fallen woman to kiss their feet or touch lepers. They made the Pharisees look like liberals.

Jesus was doing something new. He even parted company with his own teacher / leader John the Baptizer and took the gift of grace into the towns and back alleys from the desert, saying things like “come to me all who thirst.”

And as he welcomed them (the ones at the edge and way outside the box) so he also put his own head on the block with regard to those who ran the boxed up system, those who’d created religious boxes for the “pure” and “worthy” and who held down the lid tightly by sitting down on top.

And as his popularity grew so he became more and more of a threat to the tight buttocked establishment. But even knowing this, he continued undeterred by the reality of what may happen. He died for the sake of love and compassion (not unlike dear Gandhi). His rebellion was simply that he chose to say, in the words of the latter day saint Jeffrey Lebowski (a definite Dude in his footsteps), “fuck it” to the high and mighty, and do his own thing man.

His was a gentle rebellion. No guns. No ultra-left wing terrorism. No holier than thou attacks. Just a simple refusal to be controlled from above and a brave and daring mingling with the messed and muddled up section of society, where he could lovingly give back some of the treasure that had been stolen by the big men who ran the show. Yet it cost him everything!

And I (as a pretty lame follower of this first century Dudely hero) now wear the image of his death with pride. Oh I hate what they (the new messengers of boxed up religion) did with it to be sure. But fuck it I’m going to wear it anyway, because I know what it means to me.