Popularity is overrated, it’s fleeting, and yet in one way or another we all desire it.
Fame is not a ticket to happiness – the body count of young actors and rock stars who found fame and success and ended up taking their own lives is proof of this. And yet many think fame would make their lives easier or somehow more meaningful.
The events of Jesus’ life stood in contrast to the culture of his day and they still stand in contrast today. A number of times he had both the ability and the opportunity to seize a moment and promote his own fame. He had all the right qualities to become rich and famous, but he avoided some of the greatest opportunities.
In John 6 we read that, “Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” Which of us has not dreamed up a similar scenario: the rush of a crowd whose desire is to crown us as their leader, their champion, their… idol?
But Jesus hadn’t come to lead them in a battle to conquer their oppressors, and when they heard him say the opposite, that they needed instead to love their enemies – well, the crowds got a lot smaller, and the opportunities for worldly fame and popularity vanished to the point where he ended up on a cross, alone and forsaken.
Philip Yancey puts it well in his book The Jesus I Never Knew:
It never ceases to amaze me that Christian hope rests on a man whose message was rejected and whose love was spurned, who was condemned as a criminal and given a sentence of capital punishment.
Is this the Jesus you imagine? A man with a message so radical he was subjected to a cruel beating and infinitely painful death?
His message is no less radical today than it was 2000 years ago. In the words of the recently deceased songwriter Larry Norman: “Why don’t you look into Jesus, he’s got the answers.”
