John Stott has an interesting piece on various attempts to bring Jesus up to date:-

1.  The ascetic – the inspiration of generations of monks and hermits.  This image is nearer to that of John the Baptist, however, and difficult to reconcile with the one who came ‘eating and drinking’, Mt 11:19.

2.  The pale Galilean.  The C19th poet, Swinburne, echoing the dying works of the apostate emperor Julian (“You have conquered, O Galilean”), wrote,

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean;
The world has grown grey from thy breath.

‘The image of Jesus was perpetuated in medieval art and stained glass, with a heavenly halo and a colourless complexion, his eyes lifted to the sky and his feet never quite touching the ground.’

3.  The cosmic Christ.  This image was much loved by the Byzantine church leaders, who, over against the advancing barbarians depicted Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords, and yet aloof from the real world and even from his own humanity.

4.  Jesus the teacher of common sense.  This is the Jesus of the deists – all human and not divine.  It is the Jesus of Thomas Jefferson (president of the US 1801-1809), who produced his own edition of the Gospels with all the miracles systematically eliminated.  ‘What is left is the plain man’s guide to a merely human moral teacher.’

5.  Jesus the clown of Godspell.  This captures something of the gaity of Jesus, but hardly takes his mission seriously.

6.  Jesus Christ the superstar, the disillusioned celebrity, who once thought he knew who he was, but at the end of his life was no longer sure: “Then I was inspired; Now I’m sad and tired.”

7.  Jesus the founder of modern business.  In 1922 Bruce Barton published a book called ‘The Man Nobody Knows’, in which he presents Jesus as skilled and powerful leader of men, teaching the secrets of success in business.  After all, Barton points out, at the age of twelve Jesus described himself as needing to be about his Father’s business(!)

8.  Jesus the socialist.  Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, said during a press interview in 1981 that he was a Christian, and that he loved the old Sankey and Moody hymns (‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ being his favourite).  He was not so sure about whether he believed the Creed, and said, “I do believe in Christianity in this sense: I believe that Jesus Christ was in fact a socialist”.

9.  Jesus the freedom fighter.  In Pasolini’s Gospel according to Matthew Jesus is depicted as a first century Che Guevara, with a black beard and flashing eyes.  His most characteristic gesture was to overthrow the tables of the money-lenders and to drive them out of the temple with a whip.

The contemporary Christian, 19-23.