Can you imagine a porky Jesus?
One year a church had two men playing the role of Jesus. One was played by a small thin man that looked good hanging on the cross in his loin cloth and light enough to be hoisted up during the ascension scene. The trouble was he couldn’t sing.
Then there was the guy who they wanted to play the part that had a great voice but he was well, a little on fleshy side. The singing Jesus was, you guessed it, dare I say it, a porky Jesus. Just a little too porky to hang on the cross in a loin cloth and way too porky to hoist the 30 feet into the ceiling in the ascension scene, so they had the petite Jesus and the…porky Jesus.
I am pretty sure that the reason they never painted Jesus as porky was because while we have no way of knowing what He looked like, it is pretty certain that a man who had no home, walked every where he went and often worked without eating to the point of exhaustion, was not porky.
Remember the story of Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed, sinking boat? Of all the explanations I have ever heard, not one time has anyone blamed sleep-apnea due to mild or morbid obesity. The most likely reason Jesus was able to sleep in such an unlikely circumstance was that he was so mentally and physically exhausted that he passed out in the back of the boat!
You never see a porky Jesus because he was serving himself to death. He was walking along endless lines of hurting people whom He healed. He very likely spent few nights indoors. After all He was not born in a house and after He began His ministry, it is very likely that he spent more nights praying and sleeping on a hillside than in a guest house.
I wonder how many times someone invited Him to dinner and by the time the dinner was over they were so convicted or enraged that they did not invite Him to spend the night!
No, I am pretty sure there was no porky Jesus. The man Jesus was thin, weary and in need of supper, a shower, and sleep! The point is that He was so busy living, loving and going out into the world that he was as we would call it, malnourished.
While Jesus was not porky, the same cannot be said my most of us who call ourselves His followers.
“In a study on body weight and religion, sociologist Kenneth Ferraro of Purdue University discovered that active church members are more likely to be overweight than other people.
Ferraro found religion was associated with obesity in all 50 states. Broken down by religious groups, Southern Baptists were the heaviest, while believers from non-Christian religions were the least likely to be overweight.
Among other indicators, believers who watch or listen to religious broadcasts were more likely to be overweight.”
We have traded the Great Commission for the great Concessions. We call the food courts at sporting arenas concession stands. Because it is where we go to concede or yield to our cravings for food.
Church goers love to go to a church fellowship meals and have a Bible study. They love to concede to their appetite for food. But don’t ask many of them to serve a meal to the needy. And whatever you do, don’t make it a habit of going to the great concessions and not taking something or you will soon be treated as an outcast!
Does it strike you as odd that churches will build enormous meeting halls and furnish state-of-the-art kitchens but never host a daily or weekly meal for the needy and hungry?
Oh, you will have no trouble finding a porky Baptist or a porky Methodist or a porky Pentecostal. You might even find a porky actor playing Jesus in a drama, but when you look at the homeless missionary of the New Testament, you will not find a porky Jesus.
Maybe churches should begin to refocus on serving the needs of the community rather than the needs of its members.
