What Does Jesus Look Like?
Sermon for Sunday, February 14, 2010 (Year C, Last Epiphany)
…Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed…. (Luke 9:28-29)
What did Jesus look like? That’s one of the enduring mysteries.
This morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke is remarkable, because together with its parallels in Mark (9:2-8) and Matthew (17:1-8), this story of the Transfiguration provides the New Testament’s only physical description of Jesus. It speaks of Jesus transfigured — glorified — but says nothing about his appearance before or after. Living as we do in a world dominated by visual images, it seems most odd that not a single eyewitness left even a passing comment on what the Master looked like.
Some say that, as Jews, Jesus’ first disciples were prohibited from making images of the divine. Remember that business about, “You shall not make for yourself an idol… [and] You shall not bow down to them or worship them….” (Ex. 20:4-5) Perhaps, as the divinity of Christ was acknowledged after the resurrection, the eyewitnesses felt that any concern with the Master’s physical appearance was irreverent.
It may also have been irrelevant. Physically, Jesus seems to have been unexceptional. When St. Matthew describes our Lord’s betrayal he says that Judas had to help the High Priest’s minions figure out who to arrest. “Now the betrayer,” Matthew reports, “had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.’” Evidently no one would have assumed by his appearance that Jesus was the leader of these Galilean troublemakers.
However, during the first centuries of the Common Era, speculation about Jesus’ physical appearance increased. Gentile Christians apparently found renderings of Jesus spiritually helpful. Images of our Lord began to appear at least by the 3rd century and became more common as the years passed. However, there was little agreement about what Jesus looked like.
We should recognize that culture influences one’s vision of Jesus. Xenophanes of Colophon, a Greek philosopher and religious critic who lived some 600 years before Christ, famously satirized the tendency of human beings to make gods in their own image. As he wrote, “The Ethiops [Ethiopians] say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, / While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. / Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, / …then the horses would draw their gods / Like horses, and cattle like cattle….” Xenophanes’ point is that when we humans portray our gods, we often take our cues from the surrounding cultural and even natural environment.
For example, a mid-3rd century image of Jesus as The Good Shepherd in the catacombs of Rome shows a rather boyish, beardless, short-haired Jesus carrying home the wayward lamb — perhaps the work of a young artist reflecting local beard and hair customs. By the late-4th century a mural in another Roman catacomb depicts an older, more care-worn Jesus, this time with long hair and a beard — perhaps reflecting changing styles of grooming among the artist’s fellow Romans.
As icons came to play a significant role in Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity, a conventional portrayal of Jesus developed: thin face, severe expression, long hair parted in the center and carefully pulled together at the back of the neck, short beard and mustache, right hand held up in blessing, and a nimbus (or halo) around the head. This conventional portrayal seems to have influenced art in the West, as well. For example, a 15th century painting of The Baptism of Christ by the Early Italian Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca depicts a thin, long-haired, bearded Savior, but he is posed against a lush green landscape more like the artist’s home in Tuscany than the hot, dry, rocky wilderness along the Jordan River. Again, El Greco’s 16th century painting of Christ Carrying the Cross portrays a light-skinned, rather Spanish-looking Jesus.
Culture continues to shape our vision of Christ. One of my favorite childhood memories is of a poster in my Sunday school classroom at Abington Presbyterian Church near Philadelphia. It showed Jesus seated on a hilltop, surrounded by boys and girls in typical early 1950s garb. Dressed in a flowing robe, our Lord had light Caucasian skin; a short, tidy beard; and long, light brown hair with nary a strand out of place. I remember that our Lord was welcoming the children, but seemed less than enthusiastic. A poster showing Jesus enjoying himself, or fighting a stiff wind with his hair blowing wildly, would not have been acceptable here because, rest assured, in those days there was little that was enjoyable, let alone wild, about Abington Presbyterian Church.
This poster may have been the work of Warner Sallman, the Chicago commercial artist whose three-quarter profile entitled Head of Christ is familiar to almost every Christian in America. It was painted in 1940 at the request of some seminary students who urged Sallman to create a virile, manly Savior. Sallman responded with a sepia-toned portrait which has become iconic. As David Morgan, an art historian then working at Valparaiso University, wrote in a 1996 book about Sallman, Head of Christ recalls “…the retouched studio photographs that replaced portrait painting in the late 19th Century.” This image of Jesus could easily sit on the side table with photos of parents and grandparents! In fact, printed on wallet sized card stock, Sallman’s painting was handed out by the USO and others to tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen as they headed off to World War II. By the mid-1990s over 500 million copies of Head of Christ had been reproduced on church bulletin covers, funeral cards, buttons, bumper stickers, and — my favorites! — the “Inspira-Clock” and the “Inspira-Lamp.”
While his Head of Christ has been criticized as cultural and theological kitsch, for many Americans Warner Sallman has answered the question, “What did Jesus look like?” He is in middle age; tall, lean, and emotionally reserved; with a short, tidy beard and long, slightly wavy hair, both medium brown with bright highlights; and he has dark blue eyes, tall forehead, straight nose; and white skin. Jesus looks almost Scandinavian — not surprising, since that was Sallman’s own ethnic background.
The more recent work of Richard Neave takes us in a different direction. Neave is a forensic anthropologist retired from the University of Manchester in the U.K. Forensic anthropologists help solve crimes by working with the skeletal remains of victims to reconstruct what they looked like in life. In a December 2002 story in Popular Mechanics (of all publications!), and then later in a BBC special, Neave described his effort to determine what a typical 1st century Palestinian Jew — and therefore Jesus — might have looked like. He carefully examined the skulls of three males who died at Jerusalem in about the 1st century, and compared the results with 1st century drawings from the area. After creating a composite skull, Neave applied clay in the proper depth to mimic muscles and skin, added eyes, beard, and hair, and his “typical 1st century Jew” was complete.
As the images on the bulletin board out in the Narthex may show, people raised on Sallman’s Jesus may find Neave’s Jesus rather surprising. Neaves contends that, as an average Jew, Jesus would have been just a couple inches over 5 feet in height; about 110 pounds in weight; with the stocky, muscular build of a laborer; dark eyes; and dark curly beard and dark hair, both cut short. The natural olive tone of his skin would have been deepened by exposure to the sun and weathered by the wind.
For some, this “Jesus” is entirely too Semitic! Add a keffiyeh, the head scarf typical of Arab males, and this rendering of Jesus may look too much like a cartoon version of a Mideast terrorist. Yet if Jesus was so typical of his race, place, and day that Judas had to devise a special sign to identify him, then perhaps Neave’s Jew may be as close as we will ever come to answering the question, “What did Jesus look like?”
Now, at this point those in our Monday Bible study may wish to remind the preacher that Kathryn Roberts has cautioned us about attaching physical characteristics to God, for when we do so our vision of God becomes distorted and impoverished — and with it our vision of ourselves. Thus, however interesting the question, “What did Jesus look like?” may seem, it is not only beyond our ability to answer, but more importantly, it is the wrong question to ask! For us the issue is not “What did Jesus look like?” (past tense), but “What does Jesus look like?” (present tense).
Remember that our baptismal covenant requires that we seek and serve Christ in all persons. The point is that Christ indwells every human being, friend and stranger alike. So if we wonder what Christ looked like in the year 10, but fail to wonder what Christ looks like in the year 2010, then our spiritual train has derailed.
So, what does Jesus look like? Here’s my answer:
- He looks like the athletes who marched into the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics on Friday night, a cross-section of the human family.
- He looks like the athletes from Georgia, still in shock over the accidental death of their teammate on the luge course.
- He looks like young children in foster care, acting out their anger in kindergarten.
- Jesus looks like a divorced father, finally employed again after months without a job, whose petition for bankruptcy will soon be granted.
- He looks like a teacher or office worker or line worker who has not yet lost her job, but worries that she may.
- He looks like a lot of people in Congress, squabbling endlessly, but accomplishing little.
- Jesus looks like a woman who cannot afford to have her breast cancer properly treated because she has no health insurance.
- He looks like a member of a French search-and-rescue team, burrowing into a collapsed house in Haiti to recover a child whose leg will have to be amputated.
- Jesus looks like a Palestinian teenager, or an Israeli teenager, or a Nigerian teenager, or a Russian teenager, or an African-American teenager — all wondering if their futures hold any promise.
- He looks like an aged woman in Darfur who has been driven from her home by war and will probably die in a refugee camp.
- He looks like a Wall Street banker who this year will collect a multi-million dollar bonus, and then complain to his colleagues about how Washington spends the taxpayers’ money.
- He looks like someone cued up to receive free food at St. Patrick’s.
- Come to think about it, Jesus looks like you, gathered here to say your prayers, make your communion, share some coffee, and then go out into the world to make Christ known — to incarnate Jesus — in some small but significant way.
“What did Jesus look like?” In the end, that question is of no importance. “What does Jesus look like?” By seeking an answer to that question you and I may catch a glimpse of “the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror” (2 Cor. 3:18) — by which St. Paul means in us. It is by means of our disciple’s work, our sharing of the Master’s ministry, that we ourselves are being transformed into the same image beheld by Peter and John and James upon the mountain. May we see Christ in others, and may they see the Lord in us. Amen.
— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor
Readings for Year C, Last Epiphany: Lesson — Exodus 34:29-35 • Gradual — Psalm 99 • Epistle — 2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2 • Gospel — Luke 9:28-43a
Collect for Last Epiphany:
O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant o us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.