When I was
working in Mexico in the 70s, Corona was the working man's beer:
the Bud of Baja California, the brew that you'd find being drunk
after a hard day by the local fishermen and farmers in a cantina
on the shores of San Quintin Bay. A few years later, it was the
Yuppie beer, ordered in upscale restaurants in Chicago, San Francisco
and New York by upscale movers and shakers at $7.50 a glass. Corona
hadn't changed, but its image had.
Jesus has always been the working man's Savior: we find him spending
much of his time with the poor, the weak, the downtrodden, and
even "the sinners." It isn't that he doesn't like rich
and "successful" people; he's just found it hard to
relate to them, as they have found it hard to relate to him. Today,
we hear a lot less about Jesus and the poor, and a lot more about
him and politicians and corporate executives. We hear his name
associated more with money and power than we do with weakness
and need. Jesus hasn't changed but, believe me, somebody's working
really hard to change his image.
A beer is a beer, and I guess a change in marketing doesn't really
matter that much (unless the demand for the brand increases so
much that the working man can't get it any more, or can't afford
it anymore). It seems to me that there is much, much more of a
problem with the current marketing of Jesus - like, maybe trying
to reshape the image of Jesus into a greedy, moralistic, and mercenary
deity goes just a wee bit too far? Doesn't it seem a bit wrong
to you for the one known for his Sermon on the Mount and his "beatitudes"
to suddenly be the darling of K Street, where all the professional
lobbyists do their business with our Government?
Who gains by this re-creation of Jesus? I think it's easy to see
that it isn't the poor, the old, the ill, the needy, or the middle
class family man and woman. If not them, then doesn't it make
a mockery of Jesus' message to the world to find that people who
call themselves "Christian" have had a major role in
this Jesus face lift?