Sunday 28th July - Church
The
chairman of Friends of the Street Children kindly invited me to join him at
church today, so I came along to the Church of Jesus of the Sacred Heart in
central Kitwe. It seemed pretty much in line with what I might expect from a Catholic church service, but one thing
struck me – the church was adorned with lots of images of Jesus just like the ones back home in Europe; in particular he was white.
Here’s what
the BBC news website has to say about Jesus’s skin colour:
“there seem to be only two things about the debate that can be said
with any degree of certainty.
First - if the past 2,000 years of Western art were the judge,
Jesus would be white, handsome, probably with long hair and an ethereal glow.
Second - it can almost certainly be said that Jesus would not have
been white. His hair was also probably cut short.”
I would
have been happy to have seen a black Jesus depicted in that church, but I decided not to suggest
it to the priest!
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, which means he probably looked similar to modern-day Israelis. However, because Jesus’ mission was to the whole world, different peoples are free to create images of him that show him to be one of their own people. That is why you will sometimes see statues or icons of a "Caucasian Jesus" or an "African Jesus" or a "Native American Jesus" or an "Oriental Jesus." Such images demonstrate the universality of the Incarnation.
ReplyDeleteHowever Mary she may be Eastern European because she had blue eyes and blond hair, and was quiet often seen by the people in Europe.