Saturday, April 03, 2010

Painful or delightful realities

Still in Allergy Mode, still with a swollen head, still housebound enough to grind my life to halt. Still in a lousy mood.

So we're watching The History Channel yesterday and a promo comes on for their Face of Jesus (or something like that) show. It's a search through the art images through the ages, and some kind of attempt to determine what He really looked like. Easter weekend is full of Bible history shows and some of them are interesting and informative, blah-diddy-blah, but this one....

Maybe I react because Jesus's appearance is a perfectly fine matter of curiosity, but some people think it's terribly important. Maybe I react because they're going on about that ridiculous Shroud of Tooraloo, I mean, it's from, like, the year 1300, so why are we still on about that thing? Whenever they drag out the Shroud, I turn off.

I am, as my regular readers have heard ad nauseum, a professed Christian and I really have no problem with curiosity about what Jesus's face actually looked like, but, I don't know, blame my mood.

I groused, "I wish we could find out what Jesus looked like, and that he'd turn out to look like Wally Cox."

Really, I'm so sick of Noble, Craggy, Melancholy, Weight Of The World depictions -- and of Noble Shakespearean Actor voices speaking His words too. I mean, what if He looked like Mr. Peepers? Would people be horrified by a countenance with less theatrical pizazz? Would Christianity take a Chicxulub meteor hit?

But Larry had a better idea.

He said, "No, Jimmy Durante."


Perfect.

Think about it. What would people do? What would *I* do? An endearing, approachable, funny face?

I love the idea. I hope people in general would love it too. Love a Jesus who looked like Jimmy Durante. Take his teachings seriously.

Happy Easter, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

2 comments:

Catherine said...

I love the idea of Jesus having a warm, welcoming and funny face! Great post!

Hope you feel better soon.

Mike Peterson said...

He changed the mood of the Bible from concentrating on all the Inka-dinka-don'ts to emphasize the Inka-dinka-doos.