My mom emailed me these pencil sketches today. No, she did not draw them.
I know these drawing are hard to see b/c they are small. I really didn't feel like going to Photoshop and fiddling with it. And, then it struck me, there is a metaphor here. We often miss the joy, and yes laughter, of Jesus. True, He was the "man of sorrows." Yet, he had joy and happiness, too. He was like us.
The divine personality of Jesus can feel many paradoxical emotions at once; we get all jumbled up, we laugh at tragedy, cry over spilled milk, and more often don't feel at all. We need to magnify the "good" side of the Good News. Too many Christians are negative and cynical. I don't think we can even call that attitude Christian...it is sub-Christian.
When I was about 14, my mom was dating some guy who rented a shore house down in New Jersey. We kids got folded into the invite and spent a couple of days down there. The guy had a daughter probably in her early 20's who was seeing a young man who had a 68 Camaro convertible SS. Early on a Sunday morning, my brother Steve and I, with these two--and a large white German Shepherd--buzzed around town enjoying the ride. It must have been and odd site with my brother and I sitting in the back seat with the dog in the middle.
After hitting the highway for a spell and going about 80, we pulled back into town and passed a church just letting out. I distinctly remember some joyless and older lady parishioner scowling at us as we drove by.
Dour and seething...non-verbally communicating something like "Sinnnnnners."
I thought to myself, "Who the hell are you and why should I care what you think you old bag?" I resented her judgmental condemnation. She didn't have to say a word, her face said it all. Sadly, her face became the face of Christians to me for many years. I still see her now in my mind's eye. I want to be fair to her and at least acknowledge that maybe she was having a bad day or a bad life. But, she clearly was not happy and it became clear to me that somehow we figured into her feelings calculation. Maybe she was secretly envious and wished she could be in the car too...and her external expression was self-righteous hypocrisy or envy.
What face do you show the world Christian?
The drawings reminded me of this G.K. Chesterton quote that ended his book Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith:
"Joy, which was the small publicity of the Pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume [Orthodoxy], I open again the strange small book from which all
Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation.
"This tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall.
"His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud, proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on
His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something . .
"Solemn Supermen and Imperial Diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down from the steps of the Temple
and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something . . .
"I say it with reverence — there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.
"There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray.
"There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.
"There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”
My mom emailed me these pencil sketches today. No, she did not draw them.
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