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“Jesus Christ was a man that traveled through the land,
A Carpenter true and brave;
He said to the rich, ‘Give your goods to the poor,’
So they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
“Yes, Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand,
A carpenter true and brave,
And a dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
He laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
“He went to the sick and He went to the poor,
He went to the hungry and the lame;
He said that the poor would win this world,
So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.”
-Woody Guthrie, “Jesus Christ Was a Man,” 1940
As someone raised in a Protestant church, and who goes to one now, I’ve been getting progressively into the Christmas season, in a good way. I haven’t been running around getting presents; without kids or grandkids nearby, that’s not a priority. But I have been thinking more than usual about Jesus of Nazareth, who Jackson Browne called “the rebel Jesus.”
Several days ago I heard for the first time a song which got me thinking I should write one of these columns. The name of it is, “A Strange Way to Save the World,” by David Allen Clark, Donald A. Koch and Mark R. Harris. Here’s the words which got me thinking:
