Man of Sorrows: Good Friday Reflections
How do you imagine Jesus? If you grew up in the West it is likely that your image of Christ will be one of a European male with white skin, blue eyes and long flowing hair and beard. This is the image that has been propagated in the West since the 6th century, appearing in religious paintings and reproductions up until the present day. But of course, this is not what Jesus actually looked like.
A few years ago, I was invited to engage in Encounter Prayer; a form of prayer developed by the Christian Healing Mission which creates ‘a space to meet with the living God for relationship, healing and transformation’. The process began with praying to ‘Abba’ father and then I was asked where Jesus was for me at that moment.
Now I must admit I have I have always found it very hard to visualise; whenever I’ve engaged in those kind of relaxation exercises when you are invited to imagine yourself on a beach or by a waterfall, all I ever saw was the inside of my eyelids. But on this occasion, a face appeared vividly in my mind’s eye — however, it wasn’t a face that I recognised. The person I saw in my mind’s eye was rather plain with dark skin, a large nose, coarse dark hair and a stubbly beard. It was not an overly attractive face and very far from the ethereal European image of Christ with that I had grown up with — but I knew that it was him.
Months later, I happened to pick up a copy of National Geographic in a doctor’s surgery, which contained a feature about a facial reconstruction artist who had modelled the face of Christ based on available anthropological information. As I turned the page, I nearly dropped the magazine. Staring out at me was the face that I had seen in my rather unnerving encounter with Christ, down to the last detail, including stubby beard and large nose.
The whole experience reminded of an amazing messianic passage from Isaiah which describes Jesus in the following way:
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot
And like a root out of dry ground
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him
Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him
He was despised and rejected by men,
A man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
He was despised and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:1-3 NIV).
I have always loved this scripture, largely because it is challenging in how it speaks about Jesus. The Israelites were waiting for a majestic and revolutionary king but the messiah who came was so humble and ordinary – a ‘tender shoot’ born into a working family in an occupied country. ‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him’ He doesn’t appear to have stood out physically, but that is the point. He wasn’t super human, he was looked just like everyone else because he was just like everyone else.
He full inhabited the human condition. He grew hungry and tired, sad and disappointed and eventually suffered the pain of death. He was ‘a man of sorrows – familiar with suffering’. A saviour who was despised and rejected, who had nowhere to lay his head even from birth, whose own family initially thought he was insane and who was hounded by the authorities of the day, and made an object of scorn as he died a terrible death on the cross.
It is one of the most powerful and extraordinary aspects of Christian belief that, in Jesus, - Emmanual – God with us - we have a creator God who knows pain of his creation. He has been through every type of suffering imaginable; betrayal, rejection, fear, despair, the agonies of the cross and even death. So, when we look at Jesus, we can see someone like us; who can sympathise with us.
Someone we can talk to about our own pain; who because of his mortal experiences, he is able to meet us in our suffering.
And because of Jesus, the man of sorrows, none of us ever have to suffer alone.
Kate Nicholas is a preacher, Christian author, broadcaster and consultant. Visit Kate’s website www.katenicholas.co.uk to find out more about her books, TV show, online courses and blog Faith, Life and Cancer.