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Monday, March 21, 2005
Who Do You See?
When Jesus rode as grand marshal in the first Palm Sunday parade, he made the biggest and smallest splash all at the same time. (You can read the story in Matthew 21:1-11.)
Big splash: The crowd went wild, cheering and waving palm branches, laying down their own cloaks in his path like Sir Walter Raleigh.
Little splash: He rode on a donkey, for God's sake. Not the conquering hero on a noble armored steed, but a prophet of peace on a lowly beast of burden.
Even so, the buzz spread from street to street all over town. "Who IS this guy?"
That's the question for each one of us, when we take the time to look a while at Jesus. Who is he? What do you see? What does Jesus mean to you?
I own a coffee table book called "The Faces of Jesus." Frederick Buechner is the writer, but the bulk of the book is color prints from around the world and down the centuries -- each some artist's stab at portraying the unknown.
In a way, each picture could be the result of looking in a mirror. Crucifix Jesus looks a bit Italian. German Jesus has fair skin and blue eyes. Urban American Jesus -- yup, dreadlocks. Medieval Catholic Baby Jesus sits on his mother's lap giving a precocious papal blessing with his chubby little hand.
Some would call this projection. The psychological trick of blowing up real big some unconscious idea inside ourselves, and calling it God, to meet some deep unconscious need as only a "god" could do. Unless it's only our own best-developed self that could truly fill the bill.
In that case, religious people are by definition those who lack the courage and tenacity to work out our own secular salvation.
You won't be surprised to hear that I think otherwise.
Religious art, while powerful in its own right, gives a tangible form to the story of God at work in the world. Each painter or sculptor's Christ figure reveals its creator's response to Jesus' story. So, leafing through my picture book, I see scores of testimonials to his universal appeal to the human heart.
Not a conquering hero, but a persuader of the spirit. "Stop," he says, "look closely. Who am I to you? For you?"
At the end of his artful commentary on all those works of art, Frederick Buechner decides, "The face of Jesus is a face that belongs to us the way our past belongs to us.... According to [the apostle] Paul the face of Jesus is our own face finally, the face we will all come to look like a little when the kingdom comes and we are truly ourselves at last, truly the brothers and sisters of one another and children of God."
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:28 AM
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