Jesus - the ideal vicar?

 

 

I’m not sure we would really want Jesus as our Vicar.

We would certainly call him a character!

We’d probably think he was rather unpredictable and eccentric.

His leadership style wasn’t always collaborative.

Sometimes he seemed pretty impossible and would behave outrageously.

He wasn’t always very practical or strategic.

Sometimes he would delay or disappear at inappropriate times.

On one occasion he was asleep when he could have been rather more pastoral.

 

Sometimes what he says seems rather unclear and unhelpful.

He seems willing to be somewhat enigmatic, maybe even baffling, perhaps deliberately.

He speaks in riddles and is fond of paradox and ambiguity.

Sometimes he won’t speak plainly.

Or just refuses to say anything.

 

He can be straight-talking and pointed but also mysterious.

Quite often even his own disciples didn’t know what he was on about.

Sometimes he doesn’t really seem to answer the question.

Or he answers a question with another question, which, let’s face it, is pretty annoying and not normally what we want.

Sometimes people were scared to ask him anything.

He wasn’t averse to public debate.

Sometimes he rather showed up his opponents.

 

Sometimes Jesus seems rude, or overly direct, or what he says is just too challenging or extreme or hard.

He’s not realistic.

Who does he think he is?

Some of Jesus’ rhetoric would undoubtedly get you rebuked by the Diocese.

It’s not the kind of thing you ought to Tweet.

You’d be required to apologise.

You could probably expect complaints under The Clergy Discipline Measure.

 

And of course we must always remember that Jesus ended up getting himself crucified.

Some people really, really hated him and wanted to get rid of him.

Jesus wasn’t always gentle and meek and mild.

He was extreme.

 

And yet people wanted to see and hear him.

As the Authorised Version has it: “The common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37)

Or in a more modern less fun version: “The large crowd listened to him with great delight”

 

In our Gospel today, in v20, some Greeks come to Andrew who goes to Philip with a request: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” (John 12)

 

For all Jesus’ strangeness, there can be no better, more important request.