Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year B
If Jesus were in advertising, Madison Avenue experts would judge his approach to be a dud. Today’s Gospel is especially clear about this, but it’s a trend that you can find throughout Jesus’ life. His first spokesman is John the Baptist, a wild-man dressed in camel’s hair, eating bugs and honey, yelling about sin and repentance and the coming judgment. Where are the perfect teeth, the groomed hair, the tailor-made suits and slick pitch – all the things you look for in a spokesman? Jesus himself isn’t much better. All his talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, his constant harping about turning away from sin, and now, today, his talk of rejection and crosses and death. Any half-decent focus group would never sanction Jesus’ advertising campaign. ‘Why can’t you focus on the rewards of exclusive membership rather than the cost of complete discipleship? And what is this business about being seen with lepers, tax collectors, and people possessed by demons? What demographic are you going for with all of this?’ But as always, Jesus thinks as God thinks, not as we do.