I ran across a sign on a yard in Oakland that said, “Keep Jesus Brown.” I haven’t been able to let go of it.
When I was a kid, I just knew that Jesus was white and looked like me: fair skin, light brown hair, blue eyes. The reason I knew this was because there was a photograph of him in my room. It was the one where his piercing blue eyes followed you no matter where you were in the room.
Many decades later when I was traveling in Kenya and Tanzania, I met black Jesus in paintings and in statutes. I thought it was great that they were making Jesus look like them, but I did not stop to think that I was doing exactly the same thing, and that my image of the white Jesus was less historically accurate than theirs. It wasn’t until I studied theology that I learned about the historical, political and social context that Jesus was born into. (See Jesus Before Christianity.) It surprised me how little had I learned growing up that Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew; and that he looked like a Jew. He was brown. I grew up thinking he was white and Catholic.
So when Jesus posed the question to disciples (and to all us), “who do you say that I am,” I am still left wondering and confused. What does Jesus look like to me?
I get the tendency to want to make Jesus look like me. When he is like me, he’s more relatable and more comfortable. But that’s the problem. Idolatry may be the primary sin. We want to re-created God in our own and image likeness. We want to control and box God in; rather than letting God disturb us by being who God is.
Whitewashing Jesus is problematic on many levels. It tames him from being a radical Jew concerned with those on the margins and instead reduces him to an overly nice and conforming person. But it also associates him with oppression, colonization, slavery, genocide that white people have inflicted on people of color. White Jesus during slavery told slaves to be obedient to their masters. White Jesus, brought to the Americas during colonial times, said it was okay to kill indigenous people and take their land. And it continues today. People re-image Jesus to their liking to justify and support their cultural biases and political agendas. Protests, mainly by Christians, at LGBTQ pride events have increased dramatically this year.
Where I once found comfort in the white images of Jesus, now I recoil. It forces me to take a hard look at what it means to be white at this point in time. It challenges me to examine my white privilege. It makes me question the more oppressive nature of religion to control, rather than to liberate.
Maybe it’s time to revisit the practice of the early Christian communities to not create images of Jesus; or at least remember his real historical context.
Keep Jesus Brown. A good reminder to let God be God.
