Would the real Jesus please stand up?

            The strategy goes something like this:  proclaim to the world that if Jesus were to come back “today” – whichever time period is up for discussion – He would be…(just fill in the blank), and then demand that the Church conform to this subjective and personalized image of the Savior.  The most obvious weakness of this tactic is that the image of Jesus presented to us, in different times and places, keeps changing, and often is even contradictory to other such images offered contemporaneously.  Thus, back in the 1980s Christ was either a Reaganite anticommunist or, if one prefers, a Sandidista.  In the 60s and 70s He was a hippie or, depending on one’s politics or ideology, an icon of the Establishment.  He’s been a Gandhi and a Marxist guerilla warrior.  He’s appeared as the all-American salesman as well as the purveyor of self-help techniques.  To quote St. Paul very much out of context, He’s been all things to all men.  To move even further into the ridiculous, in the rather recent film The Last Temptation of Christ, our Lord was falsely presented as so truly modern that He was obsessed with sex. 

            It is discomfiting to me to even write such things, but the sin of blasphemy falls on the heads of those who would manipulate the image of Jesus of Nazareth in order to further a mere personal, ideological agenda.  In a much milder form, I discovered this very thing when I went seminary, where I was greeted at our first retreat with the seriously proffered question:  “Ray, what is your personal image of Jesus?”  I answered honestly, “I don’t have one.”  The wince of impatient “toleration” on the face of our group facilitator made me want to explain myself:  “I really am not interested in such a personal image of Jesus; I do, however, want to know the real one.”

            But the strategic success of “reincarnating” Jesus seems to be never lacking, at least in the short run.  Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea, Ph.D., a psychologist, has taken recourse to it in her attempt to set straight Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston.  Seems he did something that did not meet with her approval, and in a letter to him and all the pastors of the archdiocese (made public on the web), she first lashes out with insult and hysterical vitriol.  Then she begins to instruct the archbishop concerning the true nature of Christianity, and her first step is to introduce her personal image of Jesus with a kind of presumptive confidence that says, “Surely, no one will disagree with me on this.”  (I do.)  And once she’s placed before us the “true” image of Jesus for our time, something she treats as an irrefutable premise, she goes on to attack the hierarchical nature of the Church in the light of this “authentic” manifestation of Christ (even though it’s simply a gross, unfounded, and bizarre conjecture on her part). 

            Here’s Frawley-O’Dea’s “revelation” to the archbishop (and to us): 

“Almost surely, if Jesus returned today to St. Peter’s Square (or Holy Cross Cathedral), he would do so as a tattooed, multiply pierced individual wearing jeans and an old camouflage jacket. He (or she) would dine with gays and lesbians, bless the children born in test tubes [I think she means here in vitro fertilization; babies aren’t born in test tubes], and gather unto him the sea of sexual abuse victims. He would, as he did, spend his time lifting the marginalized and powerless of today’s world while taking down the arrogant who teach with forked tongues. He (or she) would remind the modern day Pharisees - you and too, too many of your episcopal brethren - that people are more important than rules or accoutrements of power. As before, almost surely, the Swiss Guards would call the Romans to remove the disruptive truth teller from the temple. Sound familiar?”

            Frawley-O’Dea’s half-truths – that is, her fanciful references to Gospels – are her means of lending credibility to this caricature (her image of Jesus), who in his present-day “incarnation” is a member of some goth club, who’s ready and willing to do exactly what Frawley-O’Dea deems needful.  He’s a rebel who rails against the Successors of Peter and the Apostles, just like Frawley-O’Dea wants to do, but her words and actions would carry so much more weight if she can just get this new “Jesus” to say and do what she wants said and done.  The Archbishop of Boston exercised his episcopal authority in a way displeasing to her majesty, and therefore his action must be a “power-grab,” and she’ll have “Jesus” (her image of Jesus) tell him so. 

            Besides being the fruit of an over-wrought imagination, this new image of “Jesus” is, well, simply put, dishonest and unnecessary.   Dishonest, because he is simply a puppet, mouthing what Frawley-O’Dea wants declaimed without any really thoughtful connections made to the real, historical Christ of the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church.  And unnecessary, because the real Christ, the Son of God, incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, will, at His glorious appearing on the Last Day, justly judge the living and dead – bishops, priests, laity… everyone, even Dr. Frawley-O’Dea. 

            Meanwhile, we do not invent new images of Christ to serve our own purposes.  We continually refer back to the holy Scriptures, the Tradition of the Church, our participation in the Sacraments of Christ’s Body, the Church, our fellowship together as Christians, sinners redeemed by the one, efficacious Sacrifice of Christ the Lord who entered into our world, “in the fullness of time,” to redeem us from our sins.  He is, then, the Judge, the only One capable of judging.  We do not put words in His mouth; we do not ascribe to Him the actions we, especially in our anger, want carried out.  We follow Him in the Church He founded and leave it to Him, the real Christ, the only Savior, to do as He wills and always accomplish the perfect will of God, which will be made manifest fully only at the end of time.  Made-up “Jesuses” will not do; we’ll face the real one on judgment day.  Therefore, it’s far wiser, infinitely better, to get to know Him now, instead of making up our own images of Him.