The Jesus of many faces transcends culture and region

By Jenna Smith and ChristianWeek | May 8, 2009

In 1643 Jean de Brébeuf wrote Canada's oldest Christmas carol in order for the Huron people to learn about the birth of Christ. "'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime," otherwise known as the Huron Carol, tells the story of a First Nations Jesus born on a cold night in Quebec. His mother wraps him in rabbit skin, not swaddling clothes. Instead of the magi bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, Brébeuf describes chiefs from afar bringing Him gifts of fox and beaver pelts. God is renamed the mighty Gitchi Manitou, a traditional Algonquin name for deity.

The Huron Carol may be one of the earlier examples of a culturally translated Jesus story. Artists, songwriters, poets and storytellers are the ancient masters of this cultural translation. There are countless works of art in which Jesus is portrayed as non-European, even non-Semitic. In fact, many of them are historically impossible.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, there is a Roman Catholic parish in which the mural behind the altar portrays a crucifixion scene of Christ and His disciples, all of whom are Haitian. A black Mary Magdalene cries under a palm tree.

A Chinese parish in Montreal has a series of beautiful frescoes in which all the biblical characters are Asian. John the Baptist wears a lovely long black pointy moustache and a Chinese sun hat.

A black Jesus, anyone?

How about Jesus of Shanghai?

If you surf the Internet or flip through any anthropological art book, you'll find a myriad of images, both old and new, which portray Jesus as member of the artist's cultural community. Some are hauntingly beautiful. Others are shocking. Jesus is Aboriginal, African, contemporary, ancient.

What these artists are telling us is that Jesus is every person; He is every people group; He understands and transcends all cultures and regions. He is white and black and old and young—all of these and yet none of these all at the same time. Artists are wonderfully good at this; they seek to expand imagination and destroy stereotypes. Western Christians cannot easily part from their traditional idea of Jesus. We have 2,000 years' worth of images depicting a pale figure sculpted like a Greek god and draped in Renaissance fashion. Never mind the fact that for centuries the notion of a non-European Jesus was unimaginable.

These works of art are crucially important for us, not only from an "all are equal" perspective. They are not solely important because the gospel message should be contextualized and molded to fit each tribe, nation and people group; they are important because they remind us of what the incarnation really means. If Christ was one of us, then, well, he was one of us. And even if the historical Jesus didn't walk St. Lawrence River with the Huron people, the incarnation entails that he could have.

And even if African, Polynesian and Aboriginal Christian sacred art served no other purpose (not that these works need to serve another purpose; they stand on their own by their beauty) than that of remembering this very important element of word-made-flesh, then I say, "Bring it on."