And then that same body, in all its particularity, ascended to the right hand of God the Father: middle-eastern, Jewish, male. And then that same body, in all its particularity, was nailed to the cross, died, and rose again: middle-eastern, Jewish, male. “The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us” (John 1:14): middle-eastern, Jewish, male. The mystery and indeed the scandal of the Incarnation, the subject of Christmas and also Easter and Ascension Day, is that God took on flesh in space and time. These are touching attempts to challenge us of course, but let’s flesh this out (pun intended).
We simply can’t see the truth under the skin. In a similar way, the country singer Collin Rae has a song “What if Jesus comes back like that,” and there he waxes about Jesus possibly returning as a rail-riding hobo, a poor man without a home and in deep distress and once more unrecognized. The assumption is that there is some inner spirit or true self and the body is secondary, a shell that can be discarded or, in the case of this characterization of Jesus, exchanged. The other characters in the story could not see past his “externals” (for lack of a better word) to see the truth that lay underneath his skin. The whole film hinges on no one recognizing him for who he really is. Murray Abraham (who for me will always be the Dominican Bernardo Gui from The Name of the Rose) and it’s about a stranger who wanders into a community, causes an equal balance of miracles and tensions, and turns out to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. A film was recommended to me the other day.
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