The Many Faces of Jesus
The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 21, 2013
The Many Faces of Jesus
Isaiah
53:1-3
Who has believed what
we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering* and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering* and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
His picture adorns Sunday School classrooms by the
thousands,
his hair long and flowing,
his eyes soft, inviting, warm,
his skin smooth, lambent,
as though it glowed from within,
ever transfigured.
This is the image we have of Jesus –
handsome, strong, yet gentle.
But, how do we know whether the image we have,
the pictures we have,
are accurate?
Nowhere in the Bible can we find a description of Jesus,
any detail of his appearance.
We can’t find any description even in apocryphal texts,
books written shortly after the time
Jesus walked the earth,
but not included in the Bible.
The Old Testament tells us King David
appeared “ruddy and handsome,”
(1 Samuel 17:42)
but we find nothing like that in the New Testament about
Jesus-
nothing that tells us the color of his eyes,
whether his hair was curly or straight,
the shape of his nose,
the complexion of his skin –
nothing.
Our image of Jesus comes from
the minds and imaginations of artists.
Artists from Italy, France, Spain,
Germany, the Netherlands and other regions.
Artists who portrayed Jesus as an infant;
the boy who stayed behind in the Temple;
the itinerant minister preaching his Sermon on the Mount;
feeding the 5000;
confronting Pilate;
dying on the Cross.
These artists conjured Jesus’ image in their minds.
They were not biblical scholars;
they probably did not have access to the Bible,
and many may not have even known how to read.
But they could create,
they could see an image in their mind,
and from that they drew,
they painted,
they sculpted,
influencing one another through the centuries,
a 14th century painted Jesus
looking remarkably like a 6th century mosaic Jesus;
hints of a 15th century Spanish artist’s Jesus
in a 17th century German artist’s sculpture.
Most of the images we have,
images we know,
come from European countries,
so it isn’t at all surprising that
Jesus is portrayed as distinctly European:
Jesus with light hair,
fair skin,
bright eyes.
Hollywood reinforced this image throughout the 20th
century
as they tried to bring Jesus to life in motion pictures.
Of course they wanted Jesus to have star quality.
The actor Jeffery Hunter is probably the best known
of the cinematic Jesus’s,
starring in the 1961 epic, “The King of Kings.”
Who would have thought
that Jesus had electric blue eyes?
But still, we don’t have an answer to our question,
a definitive answer:
what did Jesus look like,
really look like?
Did he look like the images we have
on Sunday School classroom walls?
Like pictures we have in Sunday School textbooks,
pictures we have in Bibles?
Could he really have looked like Jeffrey Hunter?
Probably not.
All those paintings,
those mosaics,
the sculptures,
the movies:
they probably got more wrong
about Jesus’ appearance than they got right.
Let’s begin with Jesus’ hair.
He is almost always pictured with long flowing hair.
Was that the style in that part of the world,
in that day?
That’s something that is not so clear;
Scripture seems to say, no
that it is unlikely Jesus had long hair.
Listen to what Paul had to say about men with long hair:
“Does not nature
itself teach you
that if a man wears
long hair,
it is degrading to
him.”
(1 Corinthians 11:14)
It is a verse I’ve known well
since my high school days
when my uncle used to repeat it to me
anytime I needed a haircut.
Is it likely that Paul would have written those words
if he had known that our Lord had long hair?
What about the color of his hair?
Was it straight or curly?
Thick or thin?
Were Jesus’ eyes blue? Green? Hazel?
What about his skin –
was it smooth, light, fair?
About ten years ago a magazine asked just this question:
what did Jesus really look like?
Rather than turning to artists,
the editors turned to a forensic anthropologist
and asked him and his staff to create an image
of what someone from that part of the world,
someone who lived two thousand years ago
might have looked like.
The result was radically different from what we’ve grown
used to.
The result was an image of Jesus with dark hair,
thick, short, curly;
dark skin, swarthy,
olive-hued made darker by the sun,
creased and carved by wind and sand.
And his eyes were definitely not blue!
Now this attempt may not have resulted in a precise image
of what Jesus looked like,
but the creator probably got closer to reality
than all those artists toiling over their canvases,
hammering their chisels over the centuries.
What we’ve done over two millennia
is we’ve tried to cast Jesus to look like us,
to make Jesus one of us.
But isn’t that backwards?
Jesus doesn’t bear our image;
we bear Jesus’ image,
each of us, all of us,
all 430 of us in this church community,
all two billion followers of Jesus Christ.
Every follower of our Lord Jesus Christ reflects his image,
which means that Jesus has features in common with
a person from Britain,
a person from Italy,
a person from India,
a person from Ghana,
a person from Brazil.
Jesus’ features are common with all
and distinctive to none.
We heard Isaiah prophesy,
“he had no form or
majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his
appearance that we should desire him.”
There was nothing distinctive about Jesus
because he looked like everyone else.
He looked like an Israelite,
a Samaritan,
a Greek,
a Roman.
Jesus’ appearance transcended ethnicity,
geography
and of course, race.
Jesus’ appearance transcends hair color,
eye color,
and of course, skin color.
And if the color of Jesus’ skin doesn’t matter,
then why should the color of any person’s skin matter?
Aren’t we all created equally in the image of God
and don’t we all reflect the image of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Yet, we have we made skin color a barrier,
ethnicity a barrier,
language a barrier.
Why?
Why, when Jesus showed us by his life,
and teaches us through his words to break down barriers.
Why are we so insistent on
ignoring his teachings,
ignoring his life,
distorting the gospel so?
As Jesus fed the 5,000
do you suppose everyone came from the same
ethnic background,
spoke the same language,
had the same skin color?
When the 3,000 joined the new Christian community
in those first few days following Pentecost,
(Acts 2:41)
did everyone look the same,
share the same ethnicity,
speak a common language,
have the same skin color?
When Philip ran after the chariot of the Ethiopian Eunuch,
(Acts 8:26)
climbed in,
taught the man and then baptized him,
did Philip waste even a moment thinking about
the color of the man’s skin,
wondering why it was so dark,
worrying that perhaps he should not have got into the man’s
chariot,
that perhaps it would have been wiser for him
to have waited until another chariot came along,
one carrying a man who looked more like Philip himself?
Have we learned nothing from Paul’s words we hear
every time we welcome a new member
into the universal Church of Jesus Christ:
“there is no longer
Jew or Greek,
there is no longer
slave or free,
there is no longer
male and female,
for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:28.
Unity.
Equality.
Unity.
Equality.
“All who believe were
together”
as we read in Acts.
(Acts 2:44)
Together.
Not separate but equal;
united and equal.
It was almost 50 years ago when
the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
spoke those famous words on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial,
“I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character….
That some day our nation will be
lifted from the quicksand of racial injustice
to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
It’s been 50 years since those words were spoken
and still we wallow in the quicksand of racism
when our Lord calls us to stand together, united,
on the rock of brotherhood, sisterhood,
all humanity together.
Our Book of
Confessions reminds us that
“God has created the people of the earth
to be one universal family.
In [God’s] reconciling love,
he overcomes the barriers between [humankind]
and breaks down every form of discrimination
based on racial or ethnic difference,..
…, the church labors for the abolition
of all racial discrimination
and ministers to those injured by it.”
(The Confession of 1967, 9.44)
This is the life we are called to live!
The aphorism is true: no one is born a bigot,
no one is born prejudiced.
Hatred,
contempt for others based on what they look like:
these are learned traits,
vile, contemptible traits
taught by parents,
by peers,
by community,
and yes, even by churches.
They are traits our Lord Jesus Christ utterly rejects as
evil,
a virus we disciples of Christ
are called to eliminate utterly and completely.
We are to turn away from every voice
that speak racist poison,
including those who try to stoke fear and hatred,
voices from 1930s Germany,
voices from 1960s Deep South,
voices of too many today,
voices that find eager audiences on television
and the Internet.
Are we to live in servitude to the evil of
bigotry,
prejudice,
intolerance,
ignorance,
fear,
hatred?
Or shall we live in faithfulness,
community,
grace,
tolerance,
peace,
love?
To paraphrase Moses’ successor Joshua,
choose this day how you will live.
As for me,
I choose to follow the man of many faces:
our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 11:00 AM
<< Home