How tall was Jesus?

 My friend sent this funny joke 

Which of course made me google how tall Jesus was, and then I found myself plunged into the baffling, hilarious world of religious people arguing.

I know, I know - never read internet comments. But some of them made me laugh so hard.

The consensus seems to be that historically, the average height of a poor man in Jesus' society was between 5'1" and 5'5".

This seems to not sit well with some people. Someone commented that it's blasphemous to say Jesus was short. (I don't know how or why they came to that conclusion. They probably don't either.)  Someone else commented they were certain he was over six feet because God made mankind on the 6th day. You know. The usual wild conjecture.

The Bible doesn't give us any physical description of Jesus. It says he had hair on his face, so we're guessing a beard. And it says he wore sandals, and had clothes that the soldiers gambled over. 

Anyway, those thoughts and ideas were fresh in my mind when I went to church, and the homily was about ... how tall was Jesus. What? I almost laughed out loud.

The sermon started off with a caveat that we don't know how tall Jesus was, but then pointed out something I'd never heard before. 

Do you know the story of Zacchaeus? He was a tax collector, a rich and ruthless man, but when Jesus came to town he threw his sense of personal dignity to the wind and climbed a tree to see over the crowds.

Apparently, Greek has unspecified pronouns like English does.

Who does the second "he" belong to, in this sentence? Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he could not because he was short.

Grammatically, unclear. It could be either Zacchaeus or Jesus. 

So next we turn to context clues: so Zacchaeus climbed into a sycamore tree to see him. Still unclear.  If there was someone short in a crowd and you wanted to see them, climbing into a tree would be one way to do it.  On the other hand, if you were short and wanted to see someone taller in a crowd, climbing into a tree would be one way to do it.  The context doesn't clarify anything.

So yeah. 

This story might have been about a short tax collector, or - as much as we're not used to thinking it - a short Son of God. 

The message pointed out that in the same way that Zacchaeus gave no thought to maintaining his status or dignity and clambered up a tree, Jesus gave no thought to maintaining his status or sense of dignity. He came all the way down to us - God with us. He wasn't a glorious, beautiful, radiant human. There are no words describing how handsome he was, or how strong or - or anything. Whether he grew to be a 6'1 man or a 5'1" man, he came to us as a baby (and we all start off pretty short lol). 

No matter how you look at it, he climbed down an impossibly long way.

And sometimes looking for Jesus means we have to climb a bit. Throw our serious sense of self to the wind and just do whatever unexpected, unusual, even shocking thing is needed - look past the crowds of people and the religious noise and so many silly arguments until we meet him for ourselves. 

In a tree.

<3