Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I spent some time earlier this week looking through a National Geographic publication titled, Jesus: An Illustrated Life. It is one of those magazines that we see regularly in the checkout line at the grocery (exactly where I had seen this one some months ago.) It had caught my eye and it has been sitting on a stand on a bookshelf in my office for months now. I finally took the time to sit with it and pore over its pages full art and articles, including many artistic renderings of Jesus across the ages from many different cultures.
Of course, there were classic Byzantine and Renaissance paintings of the “White” Jesus that many of us are most familiar with; but also 18th century Japanese mosaics, dark-skinned modern-art Haitian depictions, 17th century Indian paintings of a more olive-skinned Jesus, and a mosaic from the Annunciation Basilica in Nazareth, Israel, depicting the Virgin and Christ Child in a Thai styling, and so many more.
I’m pretty sure that we all have a different image of Jesus in our mind’s eye; and it would probably do us all good to be reminded, as I was by this magazine, of the vast array of “faces of Jesus” that are present in the world.
“We don’t know what Jesus looked like, but if all of the things that we do know about him are true, he was a Palestinian Jewish man living in Galilee in the first century; so he would have looked like a Palestinian Jewish man of the first century. He would have looked like a Jewish Galilean.” – Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Of course, what Professor Cargill is talking about in the quote above is what the historic Jesus of Galilee looked like, which is a very different thing that what Jesus Christ looks like in the daily lives and imaginings of his followers in any given age and locale. It is right for us to hold that Jesus looks like us, as long as we remember that the us he looks like is a broad and all-inclusive us. It is particularly important, I think, for the children of every culture and race to have images around them of Jesus that look like them. Jesus lives in the hearts, minds, and souls of his believers, and in that way, he truly does look like each one of us.
We should always remember that Jesus will not be limited to or by any of the artistic representations that we may or may not have viewed. Jesus Christ is not bound by the historic appearance of Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus Christ transcends place, time, culture, and race. Jesus Christ will always be and look like who Jesus needs to be in every unique setting and situation, in order to best love and serve each of us. And, of course, Jesus will always look like our neighbor in need as well.
May we always look like Jesus to our neighbors, and may we always recognize Jesus in each of them.
(P.S. -Let me know if you’d like to borrow the magazine!)
Peace,
Pastor Layne