Looking for the Dawn from on High
Luke 1:78-79 & 23:33-43
November 24, 2013[1]
What do you see when you try to
picture Jesus? Do you have a visual
image that comes to mind? Who is Jesus
for you?
Of course, we have no
photographs of Jesus, and no contemporary artist captured the face of Jesus on
canvas. So we are left to our
imaginations. In using our imaginations,
we tend to create Jesus in our own image.
So often, artists raised in the Western culture pictured Jesus as a
handsome young man with white skin and long, flowing brown hair. The portrait of Jesus hanging in our Narthex
shows Jesus in this way. This portrait
was painted in 1941 by an artist named Walter Sallman. The original of this painting hangs in a
gallery at Anderson University in Indiana.
I read that more than 500 million copies of this painting have been
sold, helping to form the image of Jesus in the minds of people all around the
world, especially those raised in more evangelical traditions.[2] I suspect that if you had been raised in
“turn of the millennium” ancient Palestine, you would have found this image to
be quite disturbing and not at all accurate.
If you were raised as a Roman
Catholic, perhaps you were exposed more to images of Jesus that superimpose a
picture of his sacred heart that you can see outside his body. This image is intended to inspire devotion to
the love that Jesus poured out for you and for me on the cross as well as in
His everyday life. This image becomes a
focal point for the life of love to which Jesus calls His followers.[3] Protestants may not be familiar with such
disciplines of devotion—but to Roman Catholics, devotion to the Sacred Heart is
nothing less than full devotion to Jesus Himself.
For many, our image of Jesus is
reflected in the windows that adorn this sanctuary. I have spent countless hours gazing at these
windows. —especially the one directly
over my head—the window depicting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I often will sit in the quiet of this room
and meditate on this window, wondering at the wondrous love that compelled
Jesus to suffer for us, for me. The face
depicted by the artist may not be the actual face of Jesus, but the agony
depicted there is real enough for me.
I mentioned last week the huge
statue of Jesus in the central Philippines, a statue that the winds of the
typhoon that leveled everything near it.
You can almost hear Jesus saying those words, “peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). That statue has brought inspiration and hope
to many as they seek to survive this catastrophe. Perhaps that is your image of Jesus.
During our Bible Study this past
Monday, I showed to those who were present a picture of Jesus as “Christ in
Judgment.” This piece of art was created
in the year 1300 and adorns the ceiling of an old church in Florence,
Italy. It depicts Jesus seated on the
throne of judgment with arms outstretched.
Nail prints mark his hands and his feet as he pronounces judgment over
those in hell below and on those to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Our Scripture Lessons this morning
offer us several pictures of Jesus for us to consider on this Sunday when we
focus on “Christ the King.”
Jeremiah offers the image of the
“righteous branch” who will reign as king (Jeremiah
23:5). This portrait of the Messiah
emphasizes a reversal of the evil of the royal houses of Kings Jehoiakim and
Zedekiah. They will be called to account
as the “shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture” (v. 1). In the writings of ancient Israel, the word
“righteous” wasn’t just a legal concept; righteousness had to be viewed in the
context of the covenant, with its twin imperatives to love God and love
neighbor. From these two greatest
commandments came an understanding that the righteous person cared for the
community, especially for the poor and the needy.[4] As early Christians read the prophets through
the lens of their experience with Jesus, they identified the One who said
“blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew
5:3) with this righteous branch.
“The days are surely coming,” wrote Jeremiah thousands of years
ago. We continue in the hope that the
days are surely coming when righteousness shall prevail. For many, that Kingdom of love and mercy and
justice surround their image of Jesus.
The words of Zechariah offer us
another image: “a mighty savior” (Luke 1:69) by whose hand the people
would be “saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” (Luke 1:71). Zechariah’s image of Messiah seems to be more
political, with a measure of military might, as well. I will give Zechariah the benefit of the
doubt to say that those political and militaristic hopes were combined with
spiritual hopes, as well. The point of
being rescued from the enemy—whether from Rome or from others who would hold us
in oppression—is that we “might serve him [the LORD God of Israel] without
fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1:74-75). “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn
from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). Although this passage may not give us a
physical image to picture, the poetry of the “dawn from on high” depicts a
kingdom of light and love and hope.
But the third image we find in
our Scripture Lessons this morning stands in sharp contrast. It is the image of Jesus on the cross.
A few weeks ago, I was working
in my office at home and Ethan, our three year-old grandson, was playing in the
room. He began looking at the various
things that I have in the office and he saw an image of Jesus on the
cross. He asked me who the man was. When I told him it was Jesus, Ethan was
dumbfounded—he couldn’t understand that Jesus, who fed the hungry and beckoned
the children to come and sit on his lap would be treated this way. I have a hard time imagining that, as
well. In this image of Jesus, we see
darkness and death. We do not see the
military triumph of the King of Kings; we see a man mocked as “King of the
Jews.” We don’t see the vengeance of One
who would save us from our enemies; we see the compassion of One who, from the
cross, says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). But if we look carefully, we can see streaks
of light breaking through the dark sky.
We see hope, hope that is offered to a dying thief, to whom Jesus speaks
the words of promise, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”
(Luke 23:43). Paradise—not a land of fantasy, but God’s
garden, the relationship with God for which we were created.
This is the great reversal that
Luke shows to us over and over again.
Through Christ, God’s “light shines in the darkness and the darkness
[cannot] overcome it” (John 1:5).
So many images of Jesus. So many different perceptions of Jesus. Who is Jesus to you?
In the 19th and 20th
Centuries, Biblical scholars spent a great deal of time trying to separate what
they saw as the Christ of Faith and the Christ of History, looking as
detectives might look for evidence to support their understandings of who Jesus
was. Albert Schweitzer, the great
theologian and physician, saw the folly of this task. In one of his landmark works, Schweitzer
wrote that
Jesus comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old,
by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks
which He has to fulfill for our time. He
commands. And to those who obey Him,
whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts,
the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an
ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.[5]
Perhaps you see Jesus this
morning as triumphing over the wind and waves.
Perhaps you see a fearsome Jesus, presiding over the judgment of sinners
and righteous. Perhaps you see Jesus of
the windows, feeding the five thousand, or praying in the Garden.
Perhaps you see a branch of
righteousness, or the dawn of the morning sky, or perhaps you see a suffering
figure on a cross, offering words of hope to a dying thief.
Our King of Kings appears to us
in many different ways and places. Yet
he speaks to all of us—Follow me. His
words are not so much a command as they are an invitation—an invitation to join
in the Kingdom that is to come, and already has started. Christ the King invites you to live
abundantly, in relationship with God the Father of us all. If we keep looking for the dawn, if we
listen, and if we follow, we shall surely see Him, not just an image as through
a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12). We “shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
Thanks be to God!
Copyright © 2013 by Thomas E.
Frost. All rights reserved.
[1] Preached at Cunningham
United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia on Christ the King Sunday.
[2] See “The Warner Sallman Collection,”
viewed on the internet on November 24, 2013 at http://www.warnersallman.com/collection/images/head-of-christ/.
[3] “Devotion to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus” in New Advent, viewed
on the internet on November 24, 2013 at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07163a.htm.
[4] See Walter Bruggeman, Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament
Themes (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2002), 177.
[5] Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus
(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.,
2005), 401.
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