The Child

“Image is everything,” asserted tennis heartthrob Andre Agassi in an ad campaign for Canon’s cameras in the early 90s. The importance of image is evident in the very first story told in the Bible when God proclaims at the climax of creation, “Let us make human beings in Our image.”

St. Francis of Assisi is reported to have said, “Preach Christ at all times, and, if necessary, use words.” Though I am sure he was referring to action rather than image, it holds just as true for both. Many are the times in preaching that I found that words often got in the way. In my later pulpit years, I loved the ability to share images and sometimes video, thanks to technology that did not exist when I began my career, though I did make a few feeble efforts with the assistance of Kodak carousels. Trust me, my sermon using Raphael’s magnificent “Transfiguration” as an illustration for the text was much more effective using Apple’s Keynote (preferred to Power Point) than my earlier attempt with Kodak!

My wife generally has better artistic sensibilities than I and poured hundreds of hours into creating backgrounds to lyrics with images to add meaning and depth to a song. Among my favorites: the image of the Dalai Lama making a dramatic point with closed fist like a preacher hammering the pulpit as we sang “there is a power at work within us…” Every time I saw that image and sang those words, I could feel the power of his gesture surging in me as we then continued to sing, “Let us fill the world with love.” Love is not just a warm, gushy feeling, it is a powerful force, maybe the most powerful in the universe. That image conveys that power.

I have always said that songs are as much about the feeling they create as the words they contain, and images together with the emotion of the music can be incredibly powerful. We learned that long ago with the first music videos. Sure, words are important but making them more important than all other expressions of truth is simply another form of literalism.

While I have always understood at some level the importance of image in Christian theology—I think of the 30+ year legal battle over the cross on Skinner Butte here in Eugene as just one illustration of the meaning and importance given to the image of the cross—it wasn’t until I read Dom and Sarah Crossan’s wonderful and literally beautiful book, Resurrecting Easter: How the West lost and the East kept the original Easter vision, that I realized how images have shaped our beliefs as much as anything else. In the book, the Crossans show how the Western tradition portrays a solitary rising Christ, sometimes accompanied by heavenly beings, whereas Eastern traditions most often portray resurrection as Christ leading humanity out of the dungeon of death. (See the wonderful Anastasis of the Chora Museum in Istanbul.) The Crossans name the former as the individual resurrection tradition and the latter as the universal resurrection tradition and make the case that the Eastern image, not the Western, is closer to the Biblical vision of resurrection. When you grow up with an image of Christ leading Adam and Eve along with the rest of the dead out of their tombs while tromping on the broken gates of Hades, you grow up with a different understanding of the meaning of Easter than the one with which I grew up. Easter is not about one guy or about me, it is about all of us, all humanity. Image is everything.

There hangs in each of the sanctuaries of First Christian Church in Albany, Oregon, and University Christian Church in San Diego, a descending dove, beautifully captured in stained glass. They were parting gifts from my mother to each congregation, a way of saying thank you to the church for the opportunity to serve together in ministry with my father (nine years in Albany, seven in San Diego). Art was an important part of Mom’s life, always creating things to add beauty in our lives, from decoupage candles to the amazing water colors she painted in the last few years of her life. From her I learned that the voice of God is often expressed through image more so than words.

Mom loved the dove as an image of the Holy Spirit as well as an image for peace. I asked an artist friend from the church we served in Whittier, California to incorporate the image of the descending dove into the chalice used as the logo for the Disciples of Christ, the denomination in which I am ordained. That symbol became the logo for the first congregation I served in Fresno and appeared in the Disciple magazine, the journal of our denomination, sadly now defunct. Judy (my wife) made it into a large banner and Mom made it into a pseudo stained glass window that hung in my office for years. That one image held more meanings for me than a book of sermons–the wonderful people of the first congregation I served, the denomination that has given so much meaning to my life, an image of the descending Spirit, the symbol of peace, and Mom’s love for that divine dove. Such is the power of image.

As my ministry of 29 years in Eugene was drawing to a close, I thought often of Mom’s gift to those two churches. For the first time I realized one is missing from the church in Portland where Dad concluded his ministry only because of Mom’s most untimely and tragic death before he retired. I began searching for something in that vein to gift to the Eugene congregation. I found many that might have looked nice nestled among the organ pipes or hovering in the dome, but none that said, to paraphrase Isaiah’s calling in the Holy of Holies, “Here I am, take me!” At the same time, something else was growing in me, a desire not to just continue Mom’s tradition, but to expand on it, to say in an image what I have been trying to preach, if at times inadequately, for 29 years. How I found that image is a long story of connections and relationships.

In 1995, a seminary classmate of ours, Dr. Chung Hyun Kyung, was chosen to speak at the minister’s convocation in Berkley. She had caused quite the stir a few years before when she was selected to fill in for another speaker who had fallen ill at the World Council of Churches assembly in Australia. The sermon she gave was one I recall, not from that assembly, but when she first gave it in our preaching course at the Claremont School of Theology. More song and dance than spoken word, it was, as she described it, “Buddhist-Taoist-Shamanist-Christian theology”. Her critics called it heresy. Dr. Joey Jeter, our preaching professor, called it an “A” sermon that he did not fully appreciate until he saw it on that world stage. He literally wrote the registrar at the School of Theology and said that he wanted to change her grade from the B he mistakenly gave her seven years before. And so I went to the Berkley conference to see my friend Hyun Kyung, a celebrity in her own right and now a renown professor of Asian women’s theology. It was a delight to see her lead the 500+ clergy in her own form of Tai Chi mixed with Korean folk lore and Christian theology. She taught us the meaning of St. Francis’ dictum with much movement and a minimal amount of words.

Also on the docket at that conference was a man whose name I hardly recognized, the afore mentioned John Dominic Crossan. As Dr. Chung was turning the Christian world upside down Down Under, Dr. Crossan was upending decades of historical Jesus scholarship here in the States with a book that became a New York Times best seller, much to his chagrin because, he says, he wrote more for his academic colleagues than a lay audience. I was delighted by Dr. Chung, but I was mesmerized by Dr. Crossan. I couldn’t get enough and began reading everything he had written. Like a rock band groupie, I found myself following wherever he went, or at least when I could. Turner Lectures in Washington, preaching conference in Orlando, World of Paul tour with Marcus and Marianne Borg in Turkey (thanks to the good members of Eugene First Christian). And so it was that I found myself in Albuquerque in 2019 for one more Crossan fix.

The first thing everyone noticed when they walked into that very large conference hall was the paintings of Janet Mackenzie, another speaker of the conference hosted by Fr. Richard Rohr. Much as Chung and Crossan had each created a big stir in their respective worlds, so too had Mackenzie. A contest by the National Catholic Reporter to select a new image for Jesus to commemorate the year 2000 resulted in 1700 entries. “Jesus of the People” by Janet Mackenzie was chosen and revealed on the Today show. Her Jesus was unique in two very specific ways. First, her model for Jesus was a woman. And as if that were not enough, a woman of color. Her intent was to bring the masculine and feminine together as close as possible and to include all races. The reaction was strong and intense. One would have thought she had portrayed Jesus as the devil himself. It was not her intent, however, to create controversy. She just wanted to paint a picture that would be easy to identify with for others who often have been marginalized, the people Jesus most often served. She said, “My painting does not replace interpretations of Jesus that have come before, it is a new version that includes two groups that have traditionally been left out of the physicality of Christ—people of color and women.” And identify they did.

For the next three years, “Jesus of the People” was on tour. People came out in droves. Often she heard people remark in amazement of how that picture reminded them of some relative or close friend. One such admirer even showed her a picture of the look-a-like, a bald, Asian man. Janet did not see the resemblance, but for this person, they could have been twins. In New Mexico after 9/11, the gallery had decided first to close and then on second thought, concluded that closing would allow the terrorists to win. The exhibit opened on schedule. The reaction was overwhelming, not in anger, but in grief. Over and over again people would stand before the painting and openly weep. That gallery, she says, became a “chapel of healing.”

Janet has since been commissioned to provide paintings for a number of churches, cathedrals, religious schools and more. Joan Chittister, spiritual director and renown author, wrote a devotional book on the Stations of the Cross inspired by Janet’s paintings. The artist’s themes, often depicting members of the Holy Family, almost always show women that are strong and empowering with an inner strength that comforts and maybe challenges the viewer. She strives through her paintings, as it says on her website, “to convey the heart of the feminine being as a universal symbol of hope.” I am convinced that she used for one of her paintings of Mary as such a strong, feminine image, my friend Hyun Kyung as a model. They could have been twins. Honest!

Looking for a dove, I instead found The Child (the image for this post). I cannot explain it fully in words, even now there is a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes as I recall those initial feelings when something spoke to me and said, “Here I am, take me.” There is first of all the woman I presume to be Mary, incredibly serene and yet strong. I think of the presence of my mother throughout my life. Give Mary red hair and she’d be my Mom’s twin! Ok, so maybe Mom’s skin was a little lighter.

Then there is the man I shall call Joseph, also strong and yet gentle. Most depictions of the Holy Family portray Joseph apart and almost aloof. She wanted to show the nurturing side of men. This Joseph is the loving father I wish for every child and the one I was most fortunate to have.

Finally there is the child with a forlorn look in her face. Dare we think of that child, a young girl, as Jesus? Might we think of God Incarnate, in human flesh, as a woman as well as a man?

Maybe it was in part my own grief that was calling to me as this child. Still grieving the loss of my mother some 20 years before, but now grieving the separation from a congregation to whom I gave so much of my life and which I still love. Or maybe it was the pandemic, and all that was lost in this last year, spending my 30th and last Easter in the church with just me and Judy and everyone else on Zoom, an all too familiar experience that sums up so much of the year. Or, just maybe, it was George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin and the many others whose lives did not seem to matter to those who took them. Whatever it was, The Child spoke to me in ways I cannot fully explain.

But here is the main thing, the image that says more than words ever can. At the heart of my theology is the belief that every child, every person, is created in the image of God. In the town of Nazareth there is a modern church built over an ancient home that tradition says was the home of Mary. In the courtyard of the church are mosaics of the Holy Family from countries all over the world. There you will see Mary, Joseph and Jesus as a Ukrainian family, a Korean family, a South American family, an African family, or a Swedish family. When people come from all over the world to see the home of Mary, and they do, they see a reflection of themselves in those mosaics.

To see in the Holy Family, not just a reflection of yourself created in the image of God, but more importantly, a reflection of those to whom society has not always been kind or just—the marginalized and enslaved, refugees and unhoused, gay and transgendered, victimized or oppressed—is the work of the Spirit, a heavenly dove descending on our hearts. This I have known and preached, and on occasion, hopefully have also expressed in words.

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Photo credit: The Child, oil on canvass by Janet McKenzie, given to First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Eugene, Oregon, by the Bryant family in memory of Betty Joy Bryant.