Wrestling Jesus – Day 17 of Lent

Reading: Luke 9:51-55

Deacon  I got a call this morning from my friend Brian Diggs, who is the Director of the UMCOR West Depot in Salt Lake City, an ordained United Methodist pastor and…The Deacon of Doom. See, Brian's hobby is working out his altar ego (pun intended) in the professional wrestling ring, portraying a preacher-gone-bad and bringing the hurt of judgment on his opponents (although, as a designated bad guy, he usually loses in the end). 

Salt Lake's public radio station KUER did a profile on Brian this morning. You can find the audio here as well as some pictures of The Deacon serving communion and preaching at PCCC. The interview is interesting, particularly as it pertains to how Brian combines a deep pacifism in his personal life with the cartoonish violence of the wrestling ring. Give it a listen.

What connected for me as I listened to the interview, though, was the idea that Brian's character, the Deacon, represents a lot of religious people who would use verbal (and sometimes physical) violence to shut up their opponents or take them out altogether. While most preachers aren't wrestlers, if you put some in trunks and stuck them in the ring you'd hardly know the difference based on their rhetoric. Brian acts out The Deacon as a parody of these crackpot crusaders.

Interestingly, many people in Jesus' day were looking for a Messiah that fit more the profile of the deacon than the mild-mannered, pacifist preacher. Todays text reveals that even the disciples were hoping for a royal rumble or a sanctified smackdown of their opponents. 

Jesus will have none of it, however. He rebukes their reliance on violence, but don't think that means that Jesus wasn't as tough as they come. He would do battle with the religiously self-righteous, but would do it by allowing himself to be defeated on the cross–only then to make the greatest comeback in history. It's the Jesus way we are to follow, rather than the way of the pretentious Deacons of the world. 

Prayer: Lord Jesus, teach us the way of humility and peace in the midst of a world of violence. Amen. 

Scroll to Top