creche: imagine!
Advent: this is where we are heading, to the evening when we read the old, old story.
The beloved old story is and for centuries has been the object of vast imagination. In my Time most delightfully in mixing Matthew's epiphany narrative with Luke's nativity narrative to have a third, unscriptural story in which We Three Kings with their gifts and camels show up at the manger scene the same night the shepherds, angels, sheep and goats arrive from the fields. Of our imagination, one might say "that's not how it happened," except of course nobody KNOWS how it happened, or what happened, or whether, if, or when; because Mark and John don't mention it at all.
We DO know that our traditional stable-out-back scene that we imagine is not compatible with Luke's story that the Holy Family was in the ground floor level of the house where the animals were kept safe overnight, because there was no room for them upstairs in the guest room.
We DO know that the Bible tells two different canonical stories, written by different evangelists, for different audiences, which we blend to create our noncanonical third story that we lay out every December when we unpack the creche scenes, and that we love for our children to recreate in every year's different Christmas pageant!
But it's a good story, and it's our story, and we're sticking with it. In addition to its charm, it shows how religion and religious tradition evolves in human hands. For another, it lets us see others' stories as we want them to have been told, helps us identify, unite with a story. Warner Sallman's 1940 "Head of Christ" does the same. It has been reproduced, I read, half a billion times, and, at least for me in Sunday School as a child, pictured things about Jesus that I loved as a child, that he was
a kind, wise, gentle, intelligent, man with whom, unconsciously White, I identified. One of us.
What's the TRUTH about Jesus? Does truth matter, when truth is unknown and we settle into "likely truth" or "true for us"? Robert Jenson, my theology professor at seminary, told the class that we must never think of or say that the Christian story is "true for us" - - that it's either true or it's not true; and that IT'S TRUE - -
- - which may be unwaffling, uncompromisingly sincere, but fails the test of Hebrews 11:1, that faith is hope and confidence; not certitude.
Rats, I'm wandering again, sorry, it's what I do; which, among other reasons, is why I never preach without notes or a manuscript.
More wandering. Where was I? Oh, portraits, how I see Jesus, manger scene, Advent, our blended story for the Christmas pageant.
Does it matter how we imagine Him? The politically correct movement is out to abolish Sallman's image as racist and incorrect. How do I feel about that? IDK, when I was a boy, I loved it, it helped me. You can say for yourself and others. At extreme old age, I'm okay with putting Sallman aside in favor of an image I really appreciate, said to be either by Richard Neave or computer generated from researched input:
handsome, pleasant, and confident, though somehow it doesn't seem as earnest and innocent as the portrait above it.
At the top, the African art imagines Jesus as Black. So do other imaginings
Christian imagination from the Orient imagines Jesus as oriental, Asian. Bill Weeks, my high school history teacher, told us never to use the word Asiatic because it's taken as demeaning, so Asian, and here's a series of imaginings from Japanese artists
