Upgrading Jesus

Seven centuries ago the Flemish brothers Jan and Hubert Van Eyck painted the Ghent Altar Piece, a twelve-panel polyptych masterpiece, twenty-four individual paintings in all, one of the first to use oil paints on such a large scale. The center piece, "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb," shows a varied congregation as they worship Christ, who appears here as a white lamb on an altar, pumping blood from his wounded breast.

A team of experts is currently at work to restore the painting to its pristine brilliance. They gained permission to peel off added coats of varnish and pigment after scientists used the latest radar imaging to prove that the buried original far outshines the subsequent accretions. Evidence reveals that two layers of overpainting separate the viewer from the original painting. Later (and lesser) artists, it seems, attempted to "improve" the piece.

Restorers testify without hesitation that these efforts, however well-intentioned, only obscured the work's original beauty. Now a gang of restorers from the Belgian Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, backed by an international cabal of experts, is spending several years and upwards of a million dollars to undo the damage. The work involves softening and then lifting the intruding pigment using cotton swabs. In some cases, restorers wield scalpels to lift individual flakes and uncover the masters' brilliant brush-strokes.

One of the portions the interlopers messed with was that image of the sacrificial Christ. Hélène Dubois, the project's ramrod, says flatly: “The white lamb in the middle. . .I can assure you, is overpainted.”

Funny: They tried to improve Jesus but only obscured his beauty.

I sometimes wonder if our image of Jesus suffers from overpainting by generations of good-hearted theologians and pastors.

"He has no stately form or majesty," warns Isaiah 53.2, "that we should look upon him, no appearance that we should be attracted to him."

He was a man of color, a middle-eastern Jew, yet we have slathered white pigment over his olive skin and lightened his dark-tinted hair.

He flayed the greed of the rich but we have made him the ikon of capitalism.

He withered fig trees and thundered out woes and talked a lot about Hell, but we have soft-filtered his rugged teaching and transformed the Son of Man into the Son of Bland.

He demanded turned cheeks and second miles as the green card of the Kingdom of Heaven, but we have offered our world the concealed-carry Christ of the castle doctrine.

He performed miracles at the request of his oppressors and healed the children of foreigners, but we have made him a hard-core nationalist and border guard who turns away pilgrims.

He appears in eternity as a slain lamb who bears his scars as a reminder of the risky price of the project of peace, but we imprint those images only on pricey t-shirts which we remove at will.

Maybe the time has come for a costly, careful, time-consuming restoration. Perhaps we should, not recklessly, but righteously, X-ray our imaginings. Possibly we need to swipe a cleansing cloth over the accretions of our acculturated Christology. We might do well to take a spiritual solvent to our varnished ideas and a surgeon's scalpel to the bastardized blandishments of our beliefs.

I pray that no one ever leaves after sitting under our preaching and before our pulpits, only to murmur softly, "“The white lamb in the middle, I can assure you, is overpainted.”

For more details on this story, see "A Master Work, the Ghent Altarpiece, Reawakens Stroke by Stroke" By MILAN SCHREUER

For more on Jesus as a man of color, see Crystal Valentine's powerful poem.

Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days of Potential

 Paul went on also to Derbe and to Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. 

He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium. 

Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. - Acts 16.1-3

In David Foster Wallace's massive and bewildering novel Infinite Jest, one character - a failed tennis prodigy, failed actor, and accomplished drunk - tells his son, "I'm afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN."

As fears go, that's a pretty good one.

New Year's Day falls on a Sunday this year, a more or less random result of the Julian calendar imposed by Caesar a half-century or so before the birth of Christ. The Roman emperor chose it as the feast day of Janus, a two-faced god whose habit of looking backward and forward at the same time seemed to lend itself to the idea of taking stock and making plans. It has no biblical significance; still, it does provide us with an opportunity to recognize some place of ending one lap and beginning another as we loop the unceasing cycle of time.

It's an invitation, in other words, to ponder what our tombstone might read while we still have time to re-write it. 

When he and Paul first met, Timothy was a promising young man. His potential got Paul's attention, then it immediately got Paul's direction. Timothy had to do some things: accompany Paul, and submit to a painful ritual which the Apostle himself knew to be optional. The best way to avoid unused promise later, Paul seems to think, was to act on it in the present. 

The best way not to die a promising old man is to do something with that promise while we are young. And even if we are no longer young, we are at least as young as we're likely to get.

It's worth noting that Timothy acted on his promise by doing something with his body: He had to move it from one place to another (accompany Paul), and to have a little less of it to move (circumcision). During the civil rights movement in the '50's and '60's, young black activists had a question designed to gauge one's commitment to the cause: "Where is your body?" Was it sitting at a segregated lunch counter? Riding a restricted bus? Sitting in a jail cell? Doctrinal or intellectual assent made a promise, but only action kept that promise. 

New Year's Day is a good day to ask, "Where is my body?" If we don't want our personal epitaph for 2017 to read, "Here lies a promising Christian, one year older," perhaps we should begin by pondering the places God calls our bodies to go and the sacrifices God calls our bodies to make right here and now. 

Where was my body on January 1? Was it in bed, recovering from a night's revels? In the living room, watching an athletic contest? Or was it, my body, found among the assembled bodies of fellow-believers? In other words, did my body begin the year with the Body of Christ? Where was my body throughout the year? Was it sitting at ease among bodies that looked like mine? Or was it, my body, found among very different bodies in terms of color, culture, clothing? Was it, perhaps, my body, found among hungry, unclothed, ill, or imprisoned bodies, which Jesus said are His body?

What will the epitaph read for my personal 2017? It all depends what I carve on it in the three hundred and sixty-five days between now and then.

Step Outside

Malcolm McLean did not set out to revolutionize global trade. He just wanted to get home for Thanksgiving.

In 1937 McLean trucked a load of goods up to a shipping dock and settled into the queue of vehicles. It would be hours before brawny gangs of longshoremen manhandled all that cargo and stowed it on the freighter. He'd never make it home in time for the turkey and stuffing. With nothing to do but wait, McClean began speculating: Wouldn't it be more efficient if they could somehow heft his entire consignment at once and slide it onto the boat, rather than toting each item individually?

Before he was through, McLean had invented the shipping container - those massive steel oblongs that allow you to buy oranges in December, a cell phone from China, or a t-shirt made in Bangladesh. The standard wisdom in the industry said that the key to efficiency was to build faster ships. McLean had a different take: the key was to build faster docks.

Funny thing is, the inventing was the easy part. Convincing industry insiders took longer - a lot longer. In the end, McLean had to buy and refit his own vessels, purchase a dock, and put his ideas into practice himself. But he sunk loading costs from nearly six bucks a ton to sixteen cents, and revolutionized, not only an industry, but the global economy.

The trucker saw what the titans missed. The outsider had a fresh perspective unavailable to the experts. Sometimes the best way to see what's going on all around you is to step outside of it.

The wise men saw the star. Why didn't anyone else? Presumably it was right up there in the sky, which is open-source software, available to anybody. The wise men understood the star. Why didn't anybody else? The relevant text of Scripture, presumably Numbers 24.17, was right there in the Bible for anyone to read. These guys weren't Jews; they were basically a bunch of Zoroastrian soothsayers who bought into astrology. Well, that was just it: as outsiders, they saw what the theologians missed.

And, of course, nobody listened. One might think that the religious experts, once the magi gave them the tip, would have loaded their stuff into the nearest shipping container, settled it between the humps of a gassed-up camel, and roared off to Bethlehem. Instead, they sort of shrugged and went back to working for Herod, another outsider who did, in fact, listen to this new take on things.

What are we missing at this Christmas season? How can we adopt an outsider perspective that might reveal Christ to us in ways our accustomed and conditioned hearts and minds miss? The next time you're stuck in a checkout line at Walmart, only wanting to get home at a decent hour, let your mind - and even your soul - drift for a minute. See the star. Read the text. If all the wonders of the Incarnation were written down, not even the sum total of all the shipping containers on the whole planet could haul the books that would be written.

There's always more to see for those who keep looking.

When and Where is the Kingdom of God?

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." - Mark 1.15

In the fast-paced Gospel of Mark, Jesus returns from the wilderness to roar forth a revolutionary message: "The kingdom of God has come near." This is Mark's version of Matthew's phrase, "the kingdom of heaven." The phrase constitutes Mark's single-sentence summary of Jesus' entire message. If the disciples had ordered red baseball caps to hand out at the feeding of the five thousand, they would have emblazoned this slogan on them.

But what does it mean? For many modern believers, the "kingdom of heaven" is where our souls go when we die. For those of a more dispensational bent, it may mean the thousand year reign of peace sandwiched between the Great Tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon.

But Jesus' rhetoric rules these readings out of order. The words "has come near" translate a single Greek verb which Our Lord places in the perfect tense, a grammatical construction which refers to a thing already done and never to be undone. The New American Standard's "at hand" renders it nicely.

When Jesus finds his disciples hitting the snooze alarm for the third time in the garden of Gethsemane, he uses the same word to arouse them with the warning cry, "See, my betrayer is at hand." He does not mean, "My betrayer will arrive after you have died and gone to Heaven." He does not mean, "My betrayer will arrive at some unknown hour of debatable eschatological fulfillment." He means that he can already hear the Judas' scaly belly slithering through the dead leaves beneath the olive trees that surround them.

And Jesus declares that, since the moment of his own arrival in Israel, fresh from the triumph of his baptism and his decisive KO of Satan in a three-round cage match, God's way of living has been available as a present reality in which we can choose to live each moment - or choose not to do so.

Dallas Willard likens this to the arrival of electricity in the rural Missouri farm country of his childhood:

"When those lines came by our farm, a very different way of living presented itself. Our relationships to fundamental aspects of life - daylight and dark, hot and cold, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving it - could be vastly changed for the better. But we still had to believe in the electricity and its arrangements, understand them, and take the practical steps involved in relying on it."

This gets at the second part of Jesus' mini-manifesto: "Repent, and believe in the good news."

Around AD 60, Josephus journeyed from Jerusalem to Galilee to negotiate with a freedom fighter who also went by the name of Jesus. He offered himself to Israel as a savior who would defeat the Roman empire through military might. Josephus, as the voice of the establishment, thought this a disastrous course of action and wanted the fellow to suspend his suicidal campaign. He told the man to "show repentance and prove his loyalty to me." A more faithful translation of Josephus' Greek would be, "repent, and believe in me." He did not mean, "Have an emotional experience followed by a mystical awareness of my indwelling presence." He meant, "Admit that your way of seeking life does not work, and promise to try mine instead."

Two lessons follow: Jesus does not so much demand tears as a change of strategy, and He wants action more than emotion. When is the Kingdom? Now. Where is the Kingdom? Here. Our Savior calls us to enter the Kingdom of God by deciding, even while surrounded with the earthly empire of self, wealth, and weapons, to act as if He really knows what He's talking about in terms of the daily actions that truly lead to a better life.

Jesus stands ready to electrify your life. Flip the switch.

Small Sins

The death last week of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro reminded me of a story Armando Valladares tells in Against All Hope, a memoir of his time in one of Castro’s political prisons. A guard boasted that no prisoner could sneak any contraband past him. His comrade replied, “Why, if you’re not careful, these men will drag a sack of fertilizer in right under your nose and you’ll never know it.” The prisoners overheard the exchange and took it as a challenge. One week later, a routine search turned up that exact item. . .inside the prison.

Valladares explains how the miracle came about: The men emptied a fertilizer sack by unstitching the top seam a bare few inches, then dropped the empty container next to the prison door, where a cleaning crew stashed it among their rags and snuck it in. Then, each inmate muled in a handful or so of fertilizer each day in a pocket or matchbook. They refilled the bag bit by bit, sewed up the tiny aperture, and waited.  The stunned garrison never learned how this massive security breach occurred.

Conclusion: A little manure every day poses a greater threat than a lot in one place.

C. S. Lewis has his arch-tempter Screwtape impart a similar lesson to his bumbling protegé Wormwood. He advises the rookie to produce a series of pecadillos that fly beneath the “patient’s” radar, then adds:

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. . . .It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.

A few trinkets from the spoils of Jericho sent all Israel down to defeat at Ai. David’s career as an adulterer and murderer began with a single admiring gaze at Bathsheba. Our Lord warned that a flinty word of contempt provides sufficient friction to strike the match that kindles hell-fire for our souls. Peter never meant to betray his Lord, just to warm his hands on a cold night.

Scripture insists, and experience confirms, that Satan seldom starts with the hundred-pound payload of a massive and mighty fall from grace. Our Enemy prefers handfuls of habitual compromise repeated daily. As Screwtape concludes in his lecture on small sins: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”