There once was
a sculpture exhibited in the Cathedral of
St. John the Divine, New York, which depicts
Jesus, naked, on the cross. Not terribly original,
except for the fact that Jesus is here portrayed
as a woman.
This work of art has been labelled both pornographic
and b.shtmlhemous, a desecration to the image
of Christ. It is a shocking piece of art,
there is no question, and offensive to many.
Oddly enough, when one first comes across
this image it takes a while to notice that
Christ is not male. Perhaps it is because
we have become accustomed to seeing Christ
in a certain way, and so our minds automatically
cast Jesus as a man.
That is historically accurate, of course.
Jesus was, according to all accounts, male.
But some of the other ways we are accustomed
to seeing Jesus are not so historically accurate.
For example, Jesus was not a white Anglo-Saxon,
no matter how it appears in the paintings
that hang in the Church foyer. In fact, a
recent study was done on skeletons collected
from Palestine that date back to the time
of Jesus. Based on the structure of the facial
bones recovered, scientists were able to reconstruct
what a typical man’s face might look
like from that time period. The result was
a rough approximation of course, but it was
startling none the less. It is not possible
to effectively convey what the face looked
like in words, but it can be said that this
potential image of Jesus did not remotely
resemble the popular conception.
We can also find paintings depicting Jesus
as a black man, as an Asian, as a Native American,
and as any other number of races and body
types. We generally do not find those images
to be b.shtmlhemous, but rather representative
of the fact that Christ identifies with all
people at all times. But Christ as a woman?
For many this seems a step too far.
Is sculpting Jesus as a woman simply an extremist
feminist statement? Possibly. But there may
be other ways to look at it. The birth, life,
and death of Jesus should be seen in the light
of God’s radical and total identification
with humanity. All of humanity. Jesus does
not belong exclusively to any particular sub-section
of the human race.
So perhaps this artist was merely taking seriously
the claim that 'in Christ there is neither
Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor
free.' Perhaps she was trying to wake people
up to the fact that Christ’s identification
with humanity - women included - should very
much impact the way women are viewed and treated
in the world today. When God took on human
flesh it made false for all time the idea
that the human body should be despised, used,
abused, or objectified. This is an idea the
world has certainly yet to fully embrace,
and in much of the world today women still
face desperate oppression, violence and victimization.
The artist herself points to this, saying
that 'Christa represents the oppressed and
devoured women of our jails and prisons, any
woman forgotten, hidden, abused, or thrown
away, the suffering woman in all of us.'
One can still choose to be offended and angered
by this sculpture, and there may well be valid
theological reasons for doing so. But it may
also be that such a reaction causes us to
miss the power in the presentation of Christ
in the female form. Maybe there is a time
for us to set aside our calls of heresy, and
for us to pick up instead the utter beauty
and true scandal of God’s complete identification
with his beloved creation.
