(The Nationalist, June 2007)
Some years ago a Nicaraguan priest, who was known in his country as an artist, was invited by a rural parish to paint a mural of Jesus Christ in the sanctuary of their church. He took up the offer, asking only that he be given a free hand to work without interruption. It was arranged that daily Mass be said in a local hall while the painting was in progress.
The priest began the work and kept at it steadily until it was complete. Then came the day when the church was re-opened. The whole village came to look at the new mural behind the altar. The priest-artist mingled with the people, dressed in ordinary clothes, and listened to their reactions.
It didn’t take him long to realize that they were disappointed with it, and especially with the figure of Jesus Christ which was central to it. They said that he was too plain looking. In particular, they complained that the figure the artist had painted look too much like one of themselves, like someone you might meet walking down the road. And the men in that part of the world are short, stocky and hairy – in a word, not very handsome.
As the priest listened, he began to realize that their image of what Jesus Christ should look like came from Hollywood rather than Nazareth. It was that of an idealized North American: tall, blond, wearing a long white robe and with blue eyes gazing off into eternity. They felt that Jesus Christ should not be like one of them, because they were not good enough. He should be different, someone clearly an outsider and therefore superior.
Isn’t there something of their attitude in all of us? – something of the idea that we are not good enough for God, that God would not be interested in the likes of us.
Yet the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took place in a stable in a small village in a backward province of the Roman Empire. He came to his own people and they did not receive him. Why? In part it was because they said, ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Where did he get all this knowledge? Aren’t his relatives living here with us?’ In other words, he’s just like one of us – and that isn’t good enough.
The people of Nazareth were like the people in Nicaragua; they could not accept that God would express himself in the ordinary things of life, among ordinary people and in everyday affairs. They felt that God’s presence in the world should be powerful, dramatic and spectacular.
The basic problem many of us have with the Christian faith is not that it’s too demanding but that it seems too good to be true.