The Many Colors of Jesus’ Face
In 1951 Wihla Hutson and Alfred Burt wrote a wonderful Christmas song titled “Some Children See Him.” Remember that 1951 was more than ten years before the landmark Civil Rights legislation in this country, when massive segregation was still rampant (indeed, characteristic) in our society, and we were yet less than 100 years past the Civil War. It is nearly impossible to believe, very sad yet all too true, that the truths expressed in that song are, at the Christmas of 2013, still denied by some members of our society. The latest example was the claim by a commentator on a national news network that it is an “historical fact” that Jesus (and Santa Claus!) was “white.”
“Some children see Him lily white,” Hutson and Burt wrote in 1951, some “see Him bronzed and brown.” With hair soft and blond, or dark and heavy. “Some children see Him almond-eyed,” some with Asian skin or African. “The children in each different place,” they concluded, will see the face of the infant Jesus just like theirs, “but bright with heavenly grace.” That was in 1951, sixty-two years ago. And then last Wednesday Fox News anchorwoman Megyn Kelly said, “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact.” (The Latino version of Fox News did a story two Christmases ago about Nativity sets in various cultures being an important expression of cultural religious identity.)
Even set aside the obvious reply that the “historical Jesus” was a middle eastern Jew and therefore could have looked nothing like Anglo-American portrayals from the Middle Ages to the present day. Even set that aside, and there is a very good reason based in solid Christian theology for portraying the Savior in the forms of everyone’s culture and race.
O God of Every Nation
William Watkins Reid, 1958
O God of every nation,
of every race and land,
redeem the whole creation
with your almighty hand.
Where hate and fear divide us
and bitter threats are hurled,
in love and mercy guide us,
and heal our strife-torn world.
It seems the 1950s were a good era in some parts of the Church for an understanding of a Jesus who belongs to all the world in all the ages. But what is the theological justification I mentioned above?
Chapel of the Ascension, Mount of Olives
The Ascension of Jesus
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God. [Luke 24:50-53]
For a brief 33 years (we think) the Christ, the Son of God, was incarnate in space and time and human flesh. “The Word became flesh, ” John tells us, “and lived among us.” (John 1) But before those brief moments, He was, in the beginning, with God. And when those moments had passed, He returned whence He came: 17 “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17)
“Do not cling to me,” Jesus told Mary Magdalene. This was not a heartless, “Don’t touch me.” (How could Jesus have chosen such a moment suddenly to become heartless?) He was telling Mary that the world had seen him localized in space and time, as a human being of their own culture. That was His human nature. But His Divine nature, they would need to see, is not captive to space and time. His Divine nature belongs not to one culture, one race. “Do not cling to cultural ideas of me,” Jesus tells us, “for I am Ascending. From now on I do not belong to the race, or culture, or religion of any one peoples, for now I belong to Eternity.”
We cannot understand Jesus if we see Him, even in His earthly sojourn, as only Caucasian, only African, only Palestinian, only Asian. To understand the Ascended Christ among us, we must see Him as “God of every nation, of every race and land.” Perhaps if we can do that, we will begin to see ourselves in that same Light. Perhaps then hate and fear will no longer divide us. Perhaps then we will finally experience the healing of a strife-torn world.
Who does Jesus look like? He looks like you — every one of you. And yes, like Megyn Kelly, too.
~ Will, ObJNJesus
Ye Bow & Shuttle 