“This is my Son, the
Beloved, listen to him!” --Mark 9:7
If you painted a
picture of Jesus’ face, what would he look like? Artists down through the ages have put brush
to canvas, pen to paper and hands to clay imagining what the first century man
looked like. Their visions of the Rabbi
from Nazareth are wildly diverse. This
image, one of the earliest (if not the earliest) portrayals of Jesus we
possess, comes from a Roman catacomb and is dated around the third century,
CE. Here Jesus is depicted as a young
man, a beardless shepherd, carrying a sheep on his shoulders.
Six days before the event narrated in this week’s Gospel
reading, Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah in response to the question,
“Who do you say that I am?” and then
proves he doesn’t have clue what that means.
(Mark 8:29). Then, on the
mountain, the voice of God weighs in on the question: “This is my son.” The voice says.
Through the centuries, Christians have confessed, as a cornerstone
of our faith, that Jesus was and is the Son of
God. But what does this
mean? Oh, not in some esoteric,
theological, ontological, head-trippy way – but to how we live our lives day by
day. Like the painters and poets before
us, we can answer this question in a lot of different ways. Paul, in 2
Corinthians 4:6, put it this way, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine
out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ.” The simplicity of Paul’s confession makes
sense to me. Essentially, Paul is
saying, “Look at Jesus. See God.” If we want to know who God is and what God
is about, study the life of Jesus. If we
want to understand the power of God’s love and grace, look at what Jesus said
and did. If we want to know what God
wants of us, look at what Jesus taught and commanded and lived. Or, as the voice on the mountain put it: “Listen to him!”
When I look into the face of Jesus, I see a healer -- in the sense of one who brings
reconciliation, wholeness and shalom into human relationships with God and between
people. A person of fierce compassion
who reached out to the lost and the lonely, the forsaken and the forgotten, the
broken and the rejected, friend and enemy.
I see a person who spoke the life-changing, world-turning truth of God’s
love to the powerful and the powerless, and was crucified for it. I see a person who was committed to bringing
life from death and was constantly inviting others into this healing work. I see in Jesus the face of the God who
created the heavens and the earth and you and me, and loves it all – right down
to the tiniest sub-atomic particle.
That’s the picture I would paint. How about you?
Peace,
Bishop Mike
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