When You See Jesus

what do you look like?

Scripture Reading: John 12:12-50

              I don’t know about you but when I look at a photograph in which I am one of the subjects, I generally look at myself first. I suspect I’m not alone in this habit. I wonder how I came out looking. Do I look like a goof? Probably. Is my head held straight? Not likely. Will I like how the picture portrays me? Rarely. Now, imagine you’re the subject of a painting. It’s not just any painting, but it portrays a particular moment in history. The artist has inserted you into this historical moment and given you an expression that he believes accurately portrays your attitude and thoughts toward the main subject and focal center of the scene.

              There exists such a painting. You’re not in it and neither am I, but Robert Haydon did insert various people into the scene and depict how he imagined they might have looked had they been there. The painting is titled “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.” Hayden depicts the scene where Jesus rides the young colt into Jerusalem, surrounded by the throng of people. But in the painting, rather than a historically accurate depiction of the crowd, Hayden inserts people like Voltaire, who he pictures as a grinning scoffer. He includes Sir Isaac Newton and shows him to be a believer. Wordsworth is devout, and Keats is amazed, but Hazlitt is a detached observer.

And of course, the question Hayden intends for us to ask is, not so much how these men looked upon Jesus, but how do we see him? If we were painted into the scene of the Triumphal Entry, what expression would the artist portray us with?