The Naked Preacher
By Dr. Mike Kear |
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"And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, 'Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.'" (Mark 6:3-4 NRSV).
I have often wondered how Jesus must have felt when his own family thought he was crazy. I wonder how he felt when his hometown friends were offended by him? I remember back when I lived in Albuquerque that there was a fellow who preached on public access cable television. He was a slender white guy with very long straight hair. And he wore no clothes. Well, almost none. Even public access has its standards. They made him put a small piece of denim over the pertinent parts. No one I ever met knew his name. We all called him The Naked Preacher.
You might drive by Kirtland Air Force Base or Sandia National Labs and see The Naked Preacher engaged in a solitary protest out front with banners and signs, preaching away and wearing no clothes (except maybe the little denim loincloth).
What must The Naked Preacher's parents have thought of his antics? What of his brothers and sisters? Do you think that lawyers and pharmacists and accountants ever said, "You know, I went to school with that guy! Always the life of the party!"?
Our most trusted counselors smoothly and easily exhort us to "just be yourself!" But does anybody really mean that? For The Naked Preacher, being himself meant standing up for whatever cause he believed in and doing so without clothing. For Jesus it meant revolutionary politics and scandalous theology. I don't know what became of The Naked Preacher, but I know what happened to Jesus.
The results of being who we are - being naked before the world - scares the life out of most of us. It scares me. We crave the acceptance of our family and friends, not their rejection and scorn. And yet that is what Christ asks of us. To be who we are. "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works..." (Ephesians 2:10 NRSV). Being who we are in him makes us prophets, poets, and seers. And prophets, poets, and seers are all a little crazy.
"Then he went home; and... his family... went out to restrain him, for people were saying, 'He has gone out of his mind.'" (Mark 3:19-21 NRSV).
There's a reason that everything is born naked. Rebirth is more than a metaphor: It is a stripping away of falsehoods and standing naked before God. How naked dare we get before our friends, our family, our community? Are we willing to bear the shame of our honesty? Prophetic utterance doesn't come cheap. Liberty has a price.
Do you think that Jesus' calling of his disciples might well have been interpreted, "Hey! Who wants to go crazy with me?"
 Dr. Mike Kear (pictured with his grandson, Ashton) is a former Baptist pastor and church planter, a speculative theologian and a writer, a bookseller and a blogger, a father and a grandfather, an emerging follower of Jesus and a delighted observer of life. He is a contributor to The Emmaus Theory and Outside the Camp. He lives in Enid, Oklahoma, with his wife, T.J., and two old dogs, Bandit and Nucha. |
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