A Bloke Called Jesus

A Bloke Called Jesus is a sequel to Outback Christmas

It portrays highlights from the life of Jesus in Australian story & poetry. Jesus is an ordinary bloke like the men who settled our country He lives in the Australian past, the Outback of the last century. He is a bloke like us, yet somehow different as he walks relentlessly to his death as an innocent victim. He visits shearing sheds, meets blacks at watering holes, attends tin kettlings, and droves through the mulga outback. Yet he also claims to come from God and to speak for God.

This brief portrait of a bloke called Jesus is taken from the Gospel of John. Themes of that gospel are carried through the book. John begins his Gospel at the beginning of the world, the time the Aborigines call the Dreaming.John’s characters, like the average sceptical Australian, have great difficulty believing the stories about Jesus – or Jesus himself. Reports of his miracles are but tall tales to most of them. In the end, Jesus is threatened by evil powers which combine to destroy him. He dies a victim, like so many of the ‘heroes’ of our Australian heritage. Ironically the act of lifting Jesus up on the cross is viewed by John as lifting him up on a throne. His crucifixion was his coronation.

A Bloke Called Jesus like Outback Christmas, intersperses serious and light poems. It uses the same imagery of the Australian Outback and seeks to highlight the human dimension of the characters in the Gospel story.