Yesterday I took my 11-year-old daughter to the mall. We were in the action figure section of a toy store among the Supermen and the loveable villains like Jack Sparrow when my eye fell upon:
Growing up Catholic, I've long been aware of the medals and statues of Jesus, Mary and the Saints. This little action figure bothered me though. Sure, it's kind of tacky. But that's not the issue, I think. His hands cast an eerie green light in the dark. I've seen that before. Heck the whole glowing Jesus I had as a kid in the 1950's was used as a night light. And that brings me to the first miracle. I'm still alive despite that radium Jesus.
Crossposted at The Next AgendaMore:
No. It took me by surprise that this Jesus was a toy. He was in a toy store with other action figures. Ronaldinho. Beckham. Batman. Homer. Bart. Nope, didn't expect to see JC there. Those Jesus statues of my youth were reverent symbols, reminders, why they were ... religious!
Now I don't have any bias against priests or ministers, some of my best friends are religious, but... this just seemed wrong. Jesus has been portrayed in many ways over the last two thousand years. He's been symbolized by a cross, a fish and a lamb. He's the baby, the shepherd, and the King. There are unofficial, sometimes controversial, even blasphemous representations, which include Jesus as woman, crucified. And that seems more acceptable to me because it is a serious attempt to better understand the good news message even if the art represents something that is not literally true. For many representations of Jesus, of every description see: Jesus of the Week
Most of the most familiar illustrations of Jesus aren't much more than blond haired blue-eyed figments of the artist's imagination. And we know for sure the man didn't dress like an Italian Renaissance noble. It is much more probable he looked African. So I fully support the portrayals in the Lodwar Cathedra, Kenya.
African Images of Christ
...The suffering Christ is central to their spirituality and prayer. The Turkana are a people who suffer a lot, from diseases, sickness, insecurity and hunger and have been left behind in Kenya's struggle for development. So, when they saw a Jesus who looks like them suffering and being crucified in their own locality they were able to identify very closely with him. "Look at Veronica wearing Turkana beads!" or "That's our shop on the corner!" were comments by children and adults as they stared at the stations or discussed them excitedly.
Our new stations help us remember that Jesus is still present among us and so the roots of the Gospel sink a little deeper here in Turkana.
The predominant political religious organizations of our day, the Baptists and the Muslims, are suspicious of all religious imagery for it may be, or become idolatry.
A few years ago a Texas woman had a religious experience. She found an image of Mary in the base of her front yard tree. It became a Mary Tree that drew the curious, those looking for confirmation of God and those seeking modern day miracles. Baptist minister E. L. Bynum was quick to condemn them.
The Roman Catholic religion is literally seething with ignorant superstition. Since the masses of its adherents are completely ignorant of the Bible, they literally feed upon the superstition generated by people who are given over to such things.
Catholics have no knowledge of the real saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and are lost in their sins. In this condition, they can exercise no spiritual discernment. It is therefore needful that we who know the truth, should go to them with the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.
While the Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals pretend to not encourage these visions of Mary and of Jesus, they are really guilty of encouraging this idolatry.
The Amarillo Daily News printed an article about one of these false sightings of Mary. Of course she is not the Virgin Mary, since she did have other children, after the birth of Jesus. Of course Jesus Christ was Virgin Born, but the other children were conceived in the normal manner.
Bynum saw the need to rescue Catholics from "that awful religion". But the revealed word in Lubbock, Texas has its own flavor for he condemns Billy Graham, James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Promise Keepers for their cooperation with the apostate idolatrists.
Looking for meaning in images. Hmmm. Bynum's dues probably aren't up to date to the International Visual Literacy Association where Visual Literacy skills are defined as:
"a group of vision competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visual actions, objects, and/or symbols, natural or man-made, that are [encountered] in [the] environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, [we are] able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, [we are] able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communications" (Fransecky & Debes, 1972, p. 7).
Don't despair Rev you might be able to visit their annual conference in Fort Worth in October.
Good Samaritan
Cathedral windows in Chartres might be a good place to start. He could benefit from Chartres' most famous living English language guide, Malcolm Miller...
From : The Book of Chartres
Chartres, he explains, was the Oxford/Princeton of the medieval world -- a great learning center and library. And where is the library? Why, all around us! For an hour we read some of the 10,000 images of saints, sinners, and common folk who tell their stories in stone and glass from every wall, window, and doorway.
Example: The story of the Good Samaritan, told from bottom left to top right of a window in the nave. The pictures, evocative and wordless, draw us in. First picture: a group of shoemakers pools money to pay for the window. Then the story: a man leaves Jerusalem and is beset by thieves who mug and strip him. A priest and a Levite pass him by. Finally a despised outcast -- a Samaritan -- stops to give aid. And you know the rest.
The parable ends with the Samaritan promising the innkeeper to come back and settle accounts. But we've read only half the window! There follow layers of interpretation -- the parallel between the robbed traveler and outcast Adam. The Samaritan's promise to return becomes the promised second coming. It's subtle, and it's all acted out by a huge cast of accurate medieval figures. (My wife counts 52 humans, one donkey, and a snake.)
These are no Saturday afternoon cartoons for uneducated peasants. This is serious scholarship for a smart public who, in a world with few books, doesn't read. The cathedral begins by assailing the senses with a vast and blurred symphony of color and space, shape and light. Once caught, we're drawn into its seemingly infinite library of artistic and architectural detail.
And I think about the practical, unlettered people who made this place -- who shaped a living book that reaches out across eight centuries and speaks to us with eerie eloquence.
(John Lienhard the University of Houston)
Ray Bradbury was familiar with the concept the building as a book. Fahrenheit 451's plot depends on his knowledge of medieval eidetic memory techniques. Illiterates would learn and remember the lessons of the Bible by studying the windows, the statues, and the very structure of the building.
We've lost most of the Medieval visual literacy. There are still professions and trades who wear distinctive hats, like bakers, or outfits like the white clothes of painters, but it is not so easy to distinguish among trades today. I doubt the Baptist minister could identify the saints portrayed by their symbols. I know I couldn't.
The nuns who taught me in my youth dressed in medieval garb that wasn't much different from the modest wear of Middle Eastern Muslim women today. Their style of dressing probably goes back a thousand years.
The Baptist minister probably wears a business suit to preach, not realizing what messages his garb conveys to his congregation. Unless you're Mennonite there aren't too many Christians who can be identified by their dress alone. In the street it is not too difficult to spot the Hassidic Jew, though.
In Victor Frankl's book: Man's Search for Meaning he describes his intense longing for his wife at the lowest point in his life. He was in Auschwitz, close to death, not know whether she was dead or alive.
"Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me." pp. 58-60.
Illustration by Marc Bauer-Maison
It was a miracle. Literally: something wonderful. He found a way to endure that day. Eventually the insight that came with the experience led to the most fundamental meaning in his life. Much later it formed the foundation of his professional work.
There are students of Holy Scripture who will not write or speak the name of G-d. Knowing the name, perhaps translated as "Who is and who shall be", requires one to honor the Creator with reverential respect. Early filmmakers would not portray either YWH or Jesus. When one of the two was required for a scene it was off camera. Instead there was a parting of the clouds and a voice-over. Sometimes the hem of a garment was seen from the rear with the slightest hint of sandal showing. Never would the face of G-d be shown.
Today most of us are a little less formal. A Christian's new relationship with God is not just to the Creator, all distant and remote. God became Father. Now he's Dad, no just dad.
So what does it mean that this little loaves and fishes Jesus shows up yesterday? Maybe it is a miracle. After all today's readings were about this very event in Jesus' public ministry. I looked more carefully. The package includes water-into-wine jars too. That's two miracles included for the price of one. Hmmm.
Maybe I shouldn't be taking this whole thing so seriously. The truck drivers down in Texas didn't a few years ago. That's when George Cromarty and Ed Rush wrote:
I don't care if it rains or freezes
'Long as I got my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through my trials and tribulations
And my travels through the nations
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far
I close my eyes and I see the images.
Cross. Fish. Lamb.
Baby. Shepherd. King
Father. Dad. Buddy.
I'm going to give this particular action figure package a pass. It doesn't mean that much to me. At my stage in life I need something different. But a miracle, nevertheless. Maybe the Jesus with twenty first century make-over is what I'm looking for. Keep the robes and the beard. Bring on a new attitude.
Tomorrow I'm going to look for one of these for the dashboard of my car: