By Matt Friedeman
July 21, 2005

(AgapePress) - I remember filling in occasionally at a funeral home during my graduate days at the University of Kansas. We were told to lug a casket up a staircase and past "that picture" into the sanctuary.

The staircase was steep and the task onerous enough that I had plenty of time to slowly peruse the painting on the wall -- "that picture."

It was a rendition of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. I smiled smugly to myself -- the people of this African-American church obviously had a funny bias in their art. Jesus, you see, was black with an afro. John, too. Same for the crowd around them.

"Laughably wrong," I whispered to myself. But, in the next few moments, I had to wonder whether I had it wrong in my culturally-bound perspective.

It reminded me of E. Stanley Jones who, years ago, recalled a preacher friend who suggested that Christ was probably not white. A lady came up at the close of the meeting, pale and trembling with emotion. Her Jesus wasn't white? She detected that her spiritual world was crumbling around her.

Jones decided to try that "Jesus was probably not white" statement before a group of ministers, and from the lips of one of them came the pronouncement, "That's a lie." But, says Jones, it is probably the truth. To see the agrarian Jew of 2,000 years ago we must see, said Jones, the modern nomad Arab. The Roman officer took Paul for an Egyptian. "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem," said an ancient Jewish biblical writer.

Some might want to argue all this. But the point would lie further on than their argument. The case that needs to be made is this: Jesus wasn't homogenous. Joanne Pepper in Current Thoughts recently quoted a Sri Lankan theologian who said that the imagery of Christ created and celebrated in the West would not be acceptable to the thinking in many nonwestern settings. She brings this broader perspective:

• Latin American images of Christ range from "dark, earthy, and intensely engaged .... His cross is rough-hewn ...." He is portrayed variously as "a peasant ... homeless evangelist ... and revolutionary warrior. But always, He is a man of the people ...."
• African representations of Christ vary from one locale to another. Africans show Christ as sovereign ruler, calm and controlled in all circumstances. He is shown as black, and as the "source of safety, wellbeing, healing, provision, and knowledge" for all in the kingdom.
• Native Americans often show Christ as "suffering ... defending ... in spiritual distress or spiritual ecstasy."
• Asians may depict Christ as exemplary, dutiful, benevolent, obedient, and actively contributing to the good of His society. "He is the cosmic totality of all."
• Eastern Orthodox peoples show Christ as approachable, relational, and as the "mediator of God's Word to man."

The portrait of Jesus is, in other words, varied, multi-sized, multi-colored; and Scripture is not the only thing that tells us that. So does reason, experience and tradition seen through the authority of the Bible as read in other cultures.

If the West, especially America, wants to play a major role in the massive expansion of the gospel across the globe in the decades to come, we will need to shuck the homogeneity that bedevils our conception of Christ and begin to grow in our thinking. Many missionaries have done just that through the centuries of Christianity's push across the nations. Others of us have some growth ahead.

My point of growth can be illustrated from my trek through a black church over 20 years ago: Instead of smirking at something like the baptism of a black Jesus, I have tried to learn to enjoy it for what it is worth in the church's role of taking seriously the Great Commission to all people groups.