Show Us The Father

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 33: Show Us The Father

Opening Thought: I was recently asked by a congregant what my thoughts were on the issue of the “white” Jesus? This of course referring to the Caucasian image of Jesus that is often depicted particularly throughout the western world. The contention is built upon the notion and assumption that since Jesus was Jewish man living in the Middle East that He would most have been darker skinned than what is often depicted. This question about the appearance of the historical Christ is interesting to me, because the issue of race and/or complexion has come to be a point of concern. My response to this congregant was, ‘I have many thoughts, but why do you ask?’  One of the reasons I spun the question to, why they asked was because, for myself, the issue of what Jesus’ skin looked like was irrelevant to my own spiritual journey. If someone with a time machine took me back in time to see Jesus preaching the sermon on the mount and He was black, white, or whatever between, I would just be excited to see Him at all. However, if the idea of what Jesus looked like is a barrier for you, ask yourself why? Would the truth of the Gospel, the mercy and justice at the cross, and the love of God be any different because of a shade of skin? The answer is no, by the way.

Zacharias notes that the disciples in Jesus’ time were looking to “see” the Father. And Jesus challenges them to realize that by seeing Jesus they also saw that Father, because Jesus and the Father dwelled in each other. Now because we can conclude that God is spaceless, timeless and immaterial, because God created space time and matter, then we can safely assume that Jesus' reference to seeing has less to do with seeing the material composition of Jesus’ skin and more to do with seeing who Christ is. If it were pertinent, we would have gotten at least one detail account of Christ’s physical appearance in one of the gospels, but it is not there.

The devotional begins with: John 14:8-10

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Second Thought: There seems to be this idea that we can come to a finite depiction of an infinite God, and even thought God came to us in the form of Christ Jesus, the word made flesh, does not mean we have an ability to idolize Him. Any depiction of Christ will hold error because our eyes and hearts will deceive us. The only true understanding of Christ that reigns true is that, Christ is He whose life was given for us all, so that we may move beyond the limitations of the material world and live for something so much more than what is just skin deep. If you really want to find a closer connection to Jesus by trying to estimate the most probable hue of his skin, I guess go for it, but there are only so many hours in a day and only so many unknown numbers of days in your life, is that really the issue to spend your limited time on. I wouldn’t, but that’s just me.

Continual Work: Is there any traditional or contemporary claims in religion or in secular society that just rubs you the wrong way? Ask yourself are my objection trivial or not, are their bigger pictures to be focusing on, and do my objections long to serve God, or myself?   

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: Today I am reflecting on ongoing memory both my sister and I share. When I was young everyone through, I had a different ethnic background, as did my sister. Some people thought I was white, others Asian, some Latino, other asked about Mediterranean, and Indigenous. One fellow, even though I am Caucasian in my skin tone, was convinced I had recent African ancestry. In addition to this, almost every day when I would talk with stranger while working in retail, I would be told that I looked familiar, I guess I have one of those faces. Some people would be so convinced that I was one race or another, or that they knew me from somewhere, a few times I just went with it and said, sure. When I was older, we did some family tree building and found out that some of my facial features which lend to this confusion may had been from French origins which had intermingled with Middle Eastern origins way back in history, so with the darker tones of the French and the Middle East, mixed in a cocktail of many other histories, it gave me and my sister a complexion that seem to cause mystery. But no matter what people thought we were, the reality was we were just us, human beings which other found a massive need to label.    

Prayer for your day: Lord help us to see that you are glorious, well beyond the glories of the physical world. Help us move past the instinct to limit things to the foundation of our limited knowledge and rather see all things as beacons directing us to Your ultimate mystery. If we can let go of the self, we will see that Christ made us all brothers and sisters, no matter what our skin or histories would say otherwise. Amen.

Artistic Close: Today I am featuring a painting I made back in my youth. I took the mythos and architypes of the Gospel and applied it to an alien world. I wanted to know if the Shakespearian notion of by any other name would smell as sweet would hold up in the complexity of historical context. Not that I think we can hang the biblical and historical account of Christ, but rather by applying the mythology and architypes to a new skin helps us to understand that the connection between God, Christ and the Holy spirit is phenomenal, and it would being glory in any context.

Man in the Trees by Jacob Shaw 2008