Yesterday afternoon I was driving home from doing a service with
the little congregation of faithful Anglicans in Georgetown PEI and was able to
listen to CBC Tapestry. This is a
wonderful CBC program on religion and spirituality which I don’t listen to
often enough—basically because I am not mindful enough about it.
Yesterday’s program didn’t disappoint me. It was on the subject of the “Beast Jesus”. If you aren’t aware of this phenomenon, as I
wasn’t, it involves an early 20th century fresco in a church in
Borja Spain. An attempt to restore the
painting in 2012 by, an 83-year-old widow and amateur painter Cecilia Giménez had
disastrous results—at least that was the initial assessment of the work. The well-intentioned effort turned out to be
less than intended and the result was, shall we say, interesting. The restored face of Jesus has a definite
animal or bestial appearance. I have copied
a before and after picture of the fresco from the Tapestry website.
The “restoration” was halted when the church officials saw what
was happening to the work. However, as
you may have guessed that is not the end of the story. The fresco has become something of a sensation
and has attracted many curious people.
It has apparently become a significant tourist attraction and has
revitalized the economy of the small town of Borja, Spain.
The subject of the work is Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), a depiction
of the Jesus presented to the crowd by
Pontius Pilate after the scourging (John 19:5) shortly before his crucifixion. It is
an interesting case of intentional fallacy—the literary criticism which addresses
the issue that often the intention of the author or artist is not the most
important meaning. In this case the
intention of the restorer was to restore the work to its original glory. However, something unintended was created
with unintended results. The results are
interesting in a number of ways. First
the popularity has had apparently positive economic results for the town. In addition, a comic opera is in the works,
which was the subject of the Tapestry program. The intention is to have the
world premiere in Borja and an annual performance thereafter which will help
the positive impact on the town to continue.
There is also another unintended consequence which I find as
interesting. As pointed out in the CBC
program the impact of the new image of Jesus is more dramatic than the
original. As can be seen in the pictures
below, the original face of Jesus has the eyes looking up to heaven. The new face of Jesus is looking at the
viewer with the eyes engaging the viewer eyes.
In the view of the interviewee on Tapestry, the librettists of the opera,
the eyes on Jesus seem to be asking, “What is it that you are doing in world”. To that I could add, “What are you doing to
follow me”.
That is where the subject connected to me yesterday. My sermon took the passage from Luke 7: 11-17
in which Jesus raises the widow’s son from the dead in the town of Nain (a copy
is attached). I compare this to the miracle
he performs and casts out the unclean spirit “Legion” in the country of the Gerasenes
(Luke: 26-38). In the case of both
miracles the reaction of the crowd is to be afraid; however their response in
very different. In the case of the people
in Nain, they praise God for sending them a great prophet. In the case of the Gerasenes, they, in effect,
run him out of town on a rail. They were
afraid because the people knew that Jesus could change their lives in radical
ways—a valuable herd of swine were destroyed in the town of the Gerasenes. If we take Jesus seriously we are going to be
faced with Jesus asking us what are we doing in the world? Are we going to run him out of town or are we
going to rejoice that God has sent us a Saviour and Messiah. If take Jesus seriously our lives will be
changed radically and we know what happens to radicals in our society; It is often
not pleasant.
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