We Are All One (3)

A Man with a Big Nose

We all tend to accept people who look, sound and dress like us more readily than someone who is of a different skin color or uses language differently. We may have learned in school about other cultures, or we may have been taught that it's best to keep an open mind and learn about the other person before making judgments; but typical human behavior is to hold back until we're sure.

Renaissance artists knew this. There are a lot of paintings, sculptures and stained-glass windows of Bible characters, including Jesus, created by artists during that period. They tended to dress the characters in the same kind of attire worn by people of their culture. Now, perhaps they didn't have access to all the archaeological data showing the dress and manner of people of that time; or maybe, as artists, they were exercising their privilege to interpret the subject matter in the way they wanted! Or perhaps they were trying to steer their audiences toward acceptance of their work by making it look more familiar.

Some film-makers in the last century have tried to portray Jesus as understandable, 'like us but more so'. "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977) for instance, has a blue-eyed, British-accented actor in the lead role. Others tried to be more realistic, showing someone as Jesus who looked, maybe, a little Middle Eastern, in a robe we might recognize as looking something like maybe what they wore back then. There have been several movies with a black Jesus too. But they were all good-looking actors, the kind you might invite over for a barbeque this summer.

What did Jesus really look like? We don't know, except that the prophet Isaiah said in chapter 53 "There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him." And in the Gospels, the authorities had to have Judas point out Jesus for his arrest (see for example Matthew 26:47-49). And he was, undeniably, Jewish; so he looked Jewish, including perhaps a larger nose than Caucasians like me. And he dressed like the average Jewish man of his day, with a tunic (like an oversized t-shirt) and probably a robe over that most of the time. And he probably had longer hair than I wear, and it was probably wrapped up in a turban that had the ends of it hanging loose. So he might not make it through airport security today without a pat-down and some extra questions!

Would you invite someone like that to your barbeque? Maybe not. But the Gospel writers and the authors of the rest of the Bible say this is the one who came to die for us; to make us all into one family (Eph. 2) and bring us into God's presence forever, with no separation (Colossians 1). And if he has accepted all of us, with all our differences and all our weaknesses, and made us one, then can we accept one another in the same way?

I praise God that in many ways we have. And I pray that we can grow in it.