in the image of God
What did Saint Paul look like? There are suppositions about his homely face and gnarled limbs,
but we really have no idea.
How about David, King David? From the Old Testament passage that was our First Lesson last Sunday morning, we're told something of what David looked like, "he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome" - - interesting that the writer of the Books of Samuel finds David's looks remarkable, considering that in the same lesson he'd had Samuel say that the Lord only looks on the inside - -
I call baloney on that, considering that God's selection and Samuel's anointing of King Saul before David also involved a remarkably tall, handsome young man. Further, the story of Mephibosheth, a son of David's friend Jonathan and the grandson of King Saul, Israel's first king. When Saul and his sons died in battle at Mount Gilboa, Mephibosheth was only five years old. His nurse picked him up and was fleeing, but in her haste she dropped him, injuring both his feet and making him lame for life. The story that David adopted him and he lived in the royal court and ate at King David's table is not the sweet sentimentality that we imagine: the reason that could happen, that Mephibosheth could be accepted and it appear to be David's graciousness, was not David's love for his friend Jonathan, but that, being a cripple, Mephibosheth was not a candidate, had no possibility of claiming the throne. Like the lamb for sacrifice that must be without blemish, a king had to be perfect in every way, no cripples. Mephibosheth was not a threat to David's claim to the throne.
But this is about Jesus, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face: what did Jesus look like? I warrant, he did not look at all like the images I always saw in the Sunday school spaces at East Hill Baptist Church,
where as a boy I went with my grandfather Gentry and Gentry cousins when we were in Pensacola on Sundays. That triggers long, happy memories that I'll try not to digress into this morning.
It's way too bad that we don't have a portrait or sketch of Jesus, at least one taken of him as the roving pastor that he was as an adult. And, yes, the little White boy with long blond curls lying in the manger of the stained glass window behind the altar at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church totally jerks my chain, gets my goat - - it ain't no way, nomesane, it only reveals that we do indeed create God in our image.
So, what did Jesus look like? From online, here's a realistic guess: "As a Jewish man from first-century Galilee, he would have had dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and, likely, a shortish beard. Jesus's brown skin should not come as a surprise. It should be a commonly recognized fact." Found online a few years ago, the top image above is my favorite visualization of Jesus' face. At the front of our church, the stained glass windows facing Bonita Avenue, there's a much more likely rendition of the infant Jesus.
Why does it matter? It doesn't matter how he actually looked, what is, to use my word again, remarkable, is that instead of fashioning ourselves in Jesus' image, in the image of God, we fashion Jesus in our image, after our likeness; just as we do God the Father. Our image of Jesus, indeed of the Father, reflects the best that humans can imagine of ourselves - - all powerful and all good.
And then like idiots we puzzle over the Theodicy Question,
the question of theodicy, "If God is all powerful and all good, why is there so much suffering in the world?" The answer to the theodicy question is, "Well, duh!" but we don't get it.
The question is the problem.
The author of Daniel 7 has an idea, a vision,
"9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. 10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened."
What is God like? Our visualizations are humanoid, anthropomorphic, literally in human form, because, supposedly, it's our only anchor. But that's not necessarily so, in C S Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," the self-sacrificing and saving Christ figure is not anthropomorphic at all, but Aslan, a Lion, the King of Beasts. Who, indeed, assures Jill in "The Magician's Nephew," when, fearing turning her back on him to get a drink of water from the stream, she says, "I'm afraid you'll eat me," Aslan says, "I have eaten many children," and when Jill presses him to promise that he will not eat her, Aslan says, "I will make no promises."
C S Lewis may have had the best of all images of God the Father in his book "The Great Divorce" where saved souls in Heaven are always journeying on and on into the distant mountains in the hope and expectation of eventually seeing God face to face. Somewhat, although not quite precisely, as our Christian faith claim from our translation of Job 19,
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.
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What does the Redeemer look like? We have an idea, but it's an image of ourselves, in our own likeness. However, if Revelation John saw correctly, He doesn't resemble us in the slightest,
Revelation 5:6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes ...
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and so I ramble in spite of myself
RSF&PTL
T88&c