the color of Christmas

One of my favorite classes in college was called, "The Faces of Jesus". In it we looked at a variety of stories, art, the gospels, and people around us and discussed where in them we could see the face of Christ. While the class presented options that varied from Renaissance paintings to a rabbit in a story to a sick person in the nursing home - the one thing we agreed on is that the image of Jesus isn't a static one. It isn't like an iconic photo of a model or rock star. But you might not know that if you grew up in the USA in a white protestant church. It seems like the main visual representation we get of Jesus in most churches looks a bit like this:

the only variation being that sometimes he isn't so tan, he might have more blonde highlights and in some cases the eyes are blue. Now I know that artists, and all of us really, are bound to imagine this One person, this Emmuel, this One in whose image we are created - looking a bit like those around us. So there are images of Jesus from all cultures, with different features, hair color and cut, clothes, etc. But I wonder if those of us with the most power and privilege in this country might benefit from thinking a bit about what it is Jesus might have looked like in the flesh. He was after all a middle eastern man.

Scientists who have tried to put a "face" to this middle eastern Jewish carpenter from about 200 years ago have come up with this image:

I'm not saying this is any more accurate than the Sunday school Jesus, but it helps I think to add this one to the mix. Just as it helps to look into the faces of ALL the people of the world to get a hint about what the image of God might look like.

During this season we are bombarded with images of the baby Jesus - but as you may have noticed, many of those little babies in the mangers are white babies. Maybe it isn't a big deal. Maybe it is just that we all imagine the Christ, the one who was and is for us, as looking like us. There is a Christmas song called, "Some Children See Him" that talks about that. It says that all children see the baby Jesus as looking like themselves. It speaks to Christ's ability to touch us all, regardless of race. But I wonder if those of us who are no longer children might get that message more deeply if we saw images that did not look like us. Maybe in an age of racial profiling, in a day when all middle eastern men are presumed guilty, in a time when most of those we have locked in prison are people of color - maybe it wouldn't hurt for us to think of that little baby as a little brown baby rather than a white one.