Jesus In A Tuxedo T-Shirt

"I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt. 'Cause it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party too!" - Cal Naughton Jr. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

If you have not had the pleasure of seeing the ridiculous, irreverent, and side-splitting movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby the scene that is linked in the picture above (and here) will give you a taste of the uncomfortable and edgy humor that fills the 108 minute comedy. While I certainly cannot recommend the movie starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as an edifying edition to anyone's spiritual discipline, I can say that this scene in particular helps me to playfully wrestle with my own and others' understanding of who Jesus is. In the scene the main characters of the movie fight over the version of Jesus to whom they are saying Grace. Is it the baby Jesus, teenage Jesus, bearded Jesus, tuxedo t-shirt Jesus, or some other version of Jesus that can most graciously hear our prayers?

We may find this moment of the movie and this debate laughable and so far from applicable in our understanding of Jesus; however, this coming Sunday's Gospel lesson from Mark 8 shows to me that even when the real Jesus walked the earth humans have struggled with how to understand him. Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him when Jesus explained that the Son of Man must "undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Peter had his own image of what the Messiah would look like, but when Jesus explained all this the man formerly known as Simon went bizzerk.

Of course, Peter did not say that the Messiah would wear a tuxedo t-shirt or wear gold-plated diapers, but still his own belief about who the Son of Man would be kept him from seeing the truth about Jesus. How many times in our own lives do we hold so tightly to a belief about Jesus, or about God's nature in general that it keeps us from seeing something new about the Divine? God is beyond any of our understandings, and yet we continue to argue with one another often believing that someone else doesn't know who God is or that someone else's view of God is wrong! While God is intimately close to us we will never fully comprehend with our minds what it means to experience God, especially as we follow a suffering Messiah (how can that be?). In this season when we make our way to the Cross with Christ my hope rests not on my preconceived notions of who Christ is, but instead upon how God reveals Godself presently... tuxedo t-shirt or not!