Friday 10 June 2011

The image of Jesus

Of all the enduring images I have of Jesus is that of ‘the laughing Christ’.  It is not the type you normally see in paintings and pictures, which show the seriously pious or the almost sad Jesus. It shows Jesus having a hearty laugh, chin up and shoulders thrown back. I remember it as being refreshingly different when I saw it first, at the residence of our former Achen who had introduced us, as Yuvajana Sakhyam members, to a Jesus we had never known until then.
A few years earlier, a similar picture from the pages of a magazine I was thumbing through had struck me as interesting. It was a still from a movie, Matthew, based on the Gospel and produced by Visual Bible International, a South African company. “This is a Jesus who smiles, laughs and rolls up his sleeves to work and play with those he loves,” says Bruce Marchiano, who plays Jesus in the movie.
It is said that director Reghardt van den Bergh wanted Marchiano to portray Jesus as a joyful person. In his first meeting with the actor he told him, “I have one word for you: joy.” And he quoted what is said in Hebrews 1:9 about Jesus (You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy). Speaking about it later, Marchiano said that the director believed that it was joy that set apart Jesus from others.
The scene in which Peter walks on water is portrayed in such a way that when he starts sinking, Jesus laughs and embraces him. Imagine Jesus laughing with one of his best friends when he begins to sink, and telling him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
A friend tells me that the portrait of the laughing Christ became popular in India, thanks to Rev. M.A. Thomas and the Ecumenical Christian Centre, Whitefield, Bangalore. In the 1960s, Achen chanced upon a sketch in London and bought it from a roadside vendor. It still adorns the chapel of the ECC. The ECC has reproduced the portrait and has it on sale.
The laughing Christ
It is quite likely that Jesus sprinkled his talks with humour. How else would children have come to him? (In today’s world, he would have been listed one of the most powerful public speakers, and his parables would have been a great hit on TED talks or YouTube.) One of my favourite anecdotes is about a child rolling in laughter when his father was reading him the Bible passage about “the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and paying no attention to the plank in your own eye”. If a child in our age could find humour in that, imagine all the young ones who followed Jesus in Galilee.
Jesus expressed other emotions too. Of flesh and blood, Jesus encountered many circumstances in his life that evoked in him the navarasas, or emotions that characterise life: love, laughter, fury, compassion, disgust, horror, wonder, peace, devotion.
Once he was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33). Another time he “marvelled” at the centurion’s words of faith. He was seen by some as a troublemaker because he challenged the way things were done. Others saw him as a peacemaker. He loved the young man who came to ask him about the kingdom of God. But he was angry too and called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers”. He fasted, he feasted.
But just as Jesus’ humour is lost on us, so is the intention of his deeds and the reason behind these emotions.
Jesus was being no uptight conservative when he chased out money-changers from the temple with a whip in hand. I am sure he must have struggled in his mind before doing that. His anger here was as spiritual as could be. He was attacking the visible manifestations of corruption in the temple.
It is as Christ-like an emotion to act against corruption, human rights violations or environmental degradation as it is to pray.
Years ago, I struck up a conversation with a young aspirant for priesthood while on a bus journey to Kozhikode. He had been a close observer of the fishermen’s struggle in which the church had a great role to play.
“The fishermen’s struggle in Kerala was essentially a response of the traditional fishermen to the technological, economic and social changes brought about by the introduction of mechanisation of fisheries since the 1960s.” It ultimately resulted in a ban on trawling and in bringing the social security concerns of fishermen to the fore.
Playing the devil’s advocate, I asked him, “Why don’t you give the fishermen enough capital to buy mechanised boats? The church has lots of money.”
To this he replied calmly: “Christianity is not just an act of charity.”
He made me realise that the Christ with the whip is as relevant as the compassionate Christ. He made me realise that Desmond Tutu or Martin Luther King were as Christian as Mother Teresa or Father Damien.
Martin Luther King saw his civil rights activity as an extension of his ministry. He said: “The Christian gospel is a two-way road. On the one hand, it seeks to change the souls of men, and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand, it seeks to change the environmental conditions of men so the soul will have a chance after it is changed.”