The Face of Jesus
“God the Father has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. He is the image…icon…face…of the invisible God. In him all things hold together.”
What did/does Jesus look like? Across time, there have been numerous portrayals. Recently, there was some FaceBook conversation about how quite white depictions of Jesus may (hopefully) unintentionally communicate an exclusionary, depreciatory message to people of color. Namely, the famous Sallman heads of Christ, versions of which, adorned the Sunday school rooms of my childhood.
(In hindsight, my Sunday school teachers in those days of segregation were among the first to plant the subversive seeds of the Technicolor inclusive love of God. Thank you Mrs. Woodall, Mrs. Larkin, and others.)
In the synchronicity of things, my recent excavations in the closet adjacent to my study unearthed one of my mentors and hero’s study,ENCOUNTERING GOD BY KNOWING JESUS, by Oliver Clark. On the cover, you can see a sort of clock of Jesus’ faces. At 3 o’clock, the (im?) famous Sallman depiction; at 1:00 an Asian version; at 7:00 an African; at 10:00 one of the Hook’s heads of Jesus that mean a lot to me, though a congregant once playfully called it ‘Cheesus Jesus’, i.e. cheesy. Learning and warning: our favorite face of Jesus may reveal more about us than Jesus.
Scholars distinguish between what is called ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’. Though Hitler dispatched some Nazi scholars to somehow prove Jesus was a cracker Aryan, there is pretty much unquestioned agreement that historical Jesus’ face was a lot closer to ebony than ivory.
In the Colossian verses above, there is an exquisite depiction of the bridge between historical Jesus and timeless Christ. The proclamation that God shows face and puts skin in the cosmic drama in Jesus the Christ becomes the interpretive key for lives worth living and dying for.
A Christological approach to scripture reveals that the Bible is not a huge monolithic monolog. Streaming through the books and eras of the Bible is a great dialog. Of course, people can always play the pick and choose card game of finding a verse here or there to back up their perennial prejudices and bigotries du jour. Yet authentic head and heart study of scripture shows that the God of Jesus always moves forward, not backwards – that the great heart of the universe moves toward including not excluding people – that God’s unconditional love creates a higher more demanding ethic than a deification of time-bound rules.
A great example of this lively unfolding of God’s will and nature is in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7). ‘You have heard in the past love ones like you, hate your enemy; now I say love your enemies. You have heard an eye for an eye, now I say do not seek vengeance.’
Beep. Beep. Beep. Huge Notice here: Jesus, Jewish to his core, is not rejecting but calling attention to the intent of the Law. In times of unlimited retribution, measured eye for an eye action moves humanity further. But then in the unfolding perception of the kindness of God, one moves to forgiveness.
The sweep of the Judeo-Christian faith is that God is honored not by correctness but by compassion…by inclusion not exclusion. The God we know in Jesus cares cosmically more than we do about Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, and all the ‘ims…ists…ians’ we can come up with.
Thinking back on those Sunday school and later MYF youth days, much of that time was George Wallace days. Days when Wallace made so many white types feel good about their racial bigotry, which of course fronted for their (our) insecurity and fear. There were the White Citizens Councils in the community and the Concerned Laymen in several prominent Methodist Churches…though in time thank God most in those congregations repented.
So here we are again. In uncertain times, we want to go back and shrink the number of those we care about (have there ever been ‘certain’ times?). The incubus of bigotry like a plague can always break forth again.
So simply, not simplistically or easily, look into the face of Jesus revealed in Colossians, partially but never completely captured in the artists’ faces of Jesus. “Come to me all…all…all.” (Matthew 11. 28-30)
In the face of the inclusive cosmic Christ, what will we say and do, now that it is our time to face the resurgence of the popularity of bigotry?