Incarnation Disclosed

Paintings of Jesus are often painful to look at. Either painfully idealized or obviously ethnocentric, they betray all of our own projections and reveal very little of the truth of who this God-become-man could have been and continues to be.

Lately, my faith stumbles over the Incarnation. A human being who is at once God... it has seemed ludicrous in the extreme. My belief in such a thing embarrassed me.



In searching for the above painting, called "The Contemplator" by Kramskoy, that Dostoevsky mentions in "The Brothers Karamazov," I stumbled upon this painting of Christ in the wilderness.



He is bathed in light, but he willing hunches into His own shadow. His beard is dirty and maybe a little matted. His bare feet touch the earth He created unceremoniously. His hands are clenched so tightly his tendons stand out. His eyes are elsewhere, with a hint of lament. Still, His forehead seems creased with resolution

This is a powerful aspect of Jesus glimpsed through art. It is the concordance of discordance in Christ. It is precisely His Godly humanity. It enlivens my faith in Incarnation, at least for as long as my fickle heart can grasp its Truth.

Godspeed.