Jesus didn't care about his reputation. He acted Christ-like regardless of who was around him and regardless of what the religious leaders thought about it.
Philip's reply was prophetic: while we don't hide passages where Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, or was called a glutton and a drunkard, we downplay the significant ways in which Jesus broke the stigma and social mores of his time to reach out to those on the margins.
How about you and me? Do we love people like Jesus did? Or do we let cultural and social rules determine whom and how we love?
Note to readers: after reading this cartoon, one of my friends commented that it really should have been Philip who was concerned with Jesus' reputation, and Jesus replying this his disciples will ignore the significance of this in the future. This makes good sense in general, except that this is the "western jesus."
Who is that, you ask? It is a Jesus who acts the way that contemporary North American Christians tend to. This idea and theme came out of reading Richard Beck's book unclean, taking some of the concepts from it and applying them to Jesus. In other words, if Jesus was the way we tend to be, how would he have acted in the situations he found himself in?
I realize after his question that this is not so obvious in this particular cartoon, so I am pointing it out here.
See all western jesus cartoons.
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