There is an illustration from Monty Python that I’ve always wanted to use but I’ve shied away from, until today. It’s a throw away line from one of the more famous scenes. The Cart Master—wheeling his cart of dead bodies shouts through the city “Bring out your dead!” A customer, with nine pence in hand, takes his “dead person” to the cart master. What ensues is a lengthy debate from the dead person who says, “I’m not dead yet” and the customer who argues that he’ll be dead soon enough and so should just get on the cart.
It’s a bit of a humorous take on an absolutely horrible situation. The Decameron explains it this way:
It was not merely a question of one citizen avoiding another, and of people almost invariably neglecting their neighbors and rarely or never visiting their relatives, addressing them only from a distance; this scourge had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted their husbands.
At the end of this scene is a brilliant throw away line. Dead bodies are piled up on a cart. The surroundings are a drab brown, a mist of smoke surrounding them, the smell of death and filth in the air. Men are betraying one another. Into the scene comes a shiny Arthur—dressed in white and gold. A picture of splendor. At this sight of the glamorous king, the cart master turns to his mate and says, “He must be a king”. The friend enquires, “how do you know?” And here is the line that I’ve shied away from: “Because he hasn’t got [insert poop emoji] all over him.”
King’s don’t have fecal matter on them. They are above the stench, glistening white instead of the drab surroundings. That’s how a king is supposed to be. And that’s why Jesus is always so shocking to us. If you can pardon the expression, “he’s got [insert poop emoji] on him.” I shy away from that because I think we bristle at such a thought. He’s our Lord. And it seems offensive to say something like this. And I’ve avoided using that particular word so as not to multiply any potential offense. Yet, I think it’s an important point to be made about the mission and person of Jesus. And we see it crop up in Mark 2:13-17.
Jesus calls a tax collector, Levi/Matthew, to himself. That’s offensive enough. But what Jesus does next is shocking to the religious elite. He eats and drinks with them, the tax collectors and sinners. “Why does he eat with them…” Now listen to Jesus’ response:
“Those are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
From the perspective of a scribe and Pharisee Jesus’ comment doesn’t really answer their question. Can’t you heal the sick without eating with them? Can’t you preach the gospel to them without reclining at table with them? Do you need to share the cup with them in order to call them? Do you have to get [insert poop emoji] all over you?
Yeah.
You do.
That is Jesus’ point in eating with them. He doesn’t call them from a distance. We see this come up again in Luke 13. He’s the vinedresser who is pleading for one more year for the fig tree to bear fruit. And what does he propose? Getting into the dirt and clearing out the roots and surrounding it with manure. Getting his hands dirty.
The human response to the plague, that Monty Python so creatively brought out, was to turn on our fellow man. To wallop an old man over the head so he can go in the death cart today instead of waiting until next Thursday. And the king…oh the kings cannot be bothered with such stuff…gallops on by the muck and the mire. That’s what kings do. That’s how you can tell somebody is a king.
But not Jesus. Jesus enters into our suffering. He is the most pure of all and yet isn’t identified by his spotless purity—his being removed from the dinge—but rather blends in with the tax collectors and sinners. He looks like one of them. The real king is among the death carts.
And Pastors Today?
I think about this with pastoral ministry. What do we look like in the midst of suffering and squalor. Can you tell that we’re pastors because we don’t have [insert poop emoji] all over us? Have we removed ourselves from suffering? Perhaps even calling it “above reproach”, but in reality it’s “above the dirt”.
When we are living in a mess we shouldn’t be able to be identified by our spotlessness. I realize there is a way of thinking which believes our gospel is to prance by the suffering with a large banner that says “child of the king” in the hopes that they’ll realize they could get out of filth if they’d only bow to our Jesus. But that’s not the way of Jesus. The gospel is that Jesus incarnates into the filth and redeems us right where we are. He comes in a dirty manger, walks upon dusty roads, sits with filthy sinners, dies on a bloody cross, and raises out of a garden filled with the stench of death.
And that is how we know he is the One True King.
