Faith Resources and More

Last evening I began a new book… one that I was particularly excited to start. Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (c2008, Beacon Press) is a hefty tome, but from it’s prologue, I can see this is a promising read. The authors employ the imagery of early Christianity to reevaluate the understanding of paradise that we have inherited.

I will more thoroughly review the book at a future date but briefly here I would like to highlight an example of an early Christian theme rarely seen today. Catacomb and sarcophagus artists of this early period loved the story of the Three Hebrews. Thomas Mathews, in his book The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (c1993, Princeton University Press), provides several excellent examples and a more thorough explanation than I can give here. Briefly, the story of the Three Hebrews from the book of Daniel (Daniel 3:1-18) became a bridge story, relating the Hebrew scriptures to the Gospels. These three young men in their distinctive Persian attire are seen rejecting the worship of an idol of King Nebuccadnezzar (portrayed as a Roman emperor) , for which they were sentenced to perish in the fiery furnace. God saved them and their survival was understood by the Christians to prefigure Christ’s resurrection. Even more startling, these images are paired with imagery of the adoration of the Magi, who are identified as the same three young men who endured the fiery furnace. (Sarcophagus lid relief, at left above, depicting the 3 Hebrews rejecting the idol & in the broken portion of the lid on the right the same 3 men taking their gifts to the baby Jesus.)  I invite you to explore these ancient images and discover all the nuances of meaning in their visual storytelling.

I have over the last few months immersed myself in the writings of some of the finest thinkers at the vanguard of the emerging church movement. The journey has been a compelling one that will inform much of my thinking on congregational development into the future. My most recent encounter is the book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher (InterVarsity Press, 2009). I will review Dr Belcher’s book in a future blog, but for the time being, I wanted simply to digress a little into the world of imagining and imaging Jesus.

One of the little-known videos at the IRC is titled Picture Perfect Jesus and tells the story of Warner Sallman, an otherwise undistinguished artist who made a career of depicting the head of Jesus. You know the painting, it is probably imbedded in your psyche. After initially creating the image, Sallman traveled the country giving lectures and reproducing the image in charcoal before audiences in mostly rural venues. Sallman’s Jesus is heir to the Victorian Jesus of Carl Heinrich Bloch and Ford Madox Brown. These are the images of Jesus that found their way ubiquitously into stained glass windows and Sunday school classrooms. In these images, Jesus is physically beautiful, benign, and gentle.

Yet the gospels reveal a man of compassion but also a man of fearlessness known for his challenging, counter-culture thinking and a spiritualism that is far from other-worldly. For me, none of those Victorian and post-Victorian images resonate.

While the dome mosaic pictured at left of Christ Pantokrator (All-Ruler) at the Katholikon in Daphni near Athens (c1100) may provide an image that is, in contrast, too extreme in the opposite direction, I find the comparison genuinely compelling. In fact so compelling that many who attend my lectures on early Christian art react very negatively to the image. Stylistically this Christ is related to many other Pantokrator images throughout the area, including that at Osios Loukas (St. Luke) also in Greece. What draws me to the dome mosaic at Daphni is the power of the image. This is not a benign, beautiful or gentle image. Christ here is clearly Mediterranean in ethnicity, and older beyond his 33 years. As with any Pantokrator image, it is intended to portray the majesty and power of a God to whom all knees must bow. For me, it also portrays the enormous weight of his charge of assuming the sins of the world and the strength of character that could stand against the power of the Roman military and political structure. As you exercise your devotional life this Lent, I invite you to challenge your vision of Jesus the Christ by meditating on this more provocative image of great wisdom.