If Jesus found himself listening to how we preach in our churches...
Questa vignetta di Naked Pastor* mostra un pastore che sta predicando davanti alla sua comunità. Tra i banchi i fedeli ascoltano. E in mezzo a loro, seduto con un’aria un po’ perplessa, c’è Gesù.
Il predicatore urla ad alta voce: «Lavatevi nel sangue di Gesù e diventerete bianchi come la neve!»
It is a Biblical image. recall that Passage where god promises that sins, even if red as scarlet, can become “white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). An Ancient image to talk about forgiveness, about new life.
But while the shepherd shouts that phrase without explaining it, almost reduced to a slogan, Jesus listens. And looking at his perplexed face, he almost seems to think that something went a little wrong along the way.
Perché il Vangelo non ha mai chiesto alle persone di diventare bianche, né in senso simbolico né, tanto meno, nel senso letterale. Non ha mai chiesto di somigliare a un ideale uniforme, pulito, perfetto, standardizzato. Semmai ha fatto esattamente il contrario.
Jesus spent time with different, unexpected, out of place people. With those who did not fit the right model of his time. He didn't ask them to become anything other than what they were. Rather, he asked to live, get up, start again.
And then, let's face it... if Jesus really were sitting in the pews of many churches today, someone would probably look at him with curiosity. He wouldn't be the Jesus of the saints: very pale skin, light brown hair, blue eyes and a Northern European look.
He was a Jew from Galilee, a man from the Middle East. Dark skin, dark hair, Semitic features. Closer to the faces we meet today in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon than to the images we have hung above the altars for centuries (JD Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperOne, 1994).
This is why Jesus, sitting at the back of the church, with his dark skin and the crown of thorns on his head, while listening to someone explain that to be saved you must become "white as snow", remains perplexed and seems to think: "But is this really what I said?"
Because sometimes we simply make the Gospel become something else. We take a phrase and use it, forgetting what it really means to tell us. We transform it into a request for uniformity, when in fact it was a promise of freedom.
So yes... perhaps today jesus Would remain sitting in the pews of our churches listening perplexed to certain misogynistic, exclusionary sermons, bearers of prejudices and fears rather than of liberated paths.
And he would look at those who say them with an ironic look. Like when you listen to someone talk a lot... but he hasn't really understood what he proclaims, with such confidence.
* David Hayward, known asNaked Pastor, is a former Canadian pastor who, through simple and ironic cartoons, lays bare (hence the name) the contradictions of churches and human relationships in the light of the Gospel. Discover our comments on his cartoons ongionata.org/tag/nakedpastor/
