By Isaiah Hobus
Japanese mosaic of Madonna and Child, Church of the Annunciation, Nazareth.
"J
esus isn’t white!?”
I will never forget the look on my college classmate’s face. I thought she was joking, but her face betrayed no hints of sarcasm. I suppose there was a point where I too had to learn that Jesus wasn’t white, despite my childhood self growing up thinking he was. I have spent much time reflecting on this comment since. I am drawn to how many people, including my friend, have encountered a Jesus who only vaguely resembles the Jesus of the Gospels. A Jesus who is often domesticated in the mediums of white depictions that are so apparent during the Advent season. Christology is at the forefront of the Advent season through the multitude of mediums we encounter–artistic depictions of Jesus, language conveying the real meaning of Christmas is Jesus, and practices centering on the worship of Jesus. The Advent season beckons us, asking: “Who is Jesus Christ to you?” Over the course of a year seeing many difficult and pain-filled circumstances, I can not help but ask this Christmas: “Does the Jesus of Advent mean anything to those who deeply experience the suffering of our world?” For Asian Americans, this includes a variety of experiences within the diaspora–perpetual foreignhood, the model minority myth, racism, sexism, tokenism, mental health, and etc. Who is the Jesus of Advent to us?
Jesus is always interpreted through mediums–the witness and depictions of people. Thus, we each can possess different versions of Jesus. Take the Jesus of the old age colonizers of Europe. The colonizer who killed in the name of Jesus and I can both affirm the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives, however we possess radically different visions of who Jesus is. In other words, we hold a radically different Christology. Christology is a branch of theology that simply answers Jesus' infamous question: “Who do you say that I am (Mark 8:29)?” Theologian K.K. Yeo beautifully articulates, “Jesus is singular but Christology is plural.” There is one Christ, one Lord, and one Savior–Jesus of Nazareth. However, the universality of Jesus’ Lordship to all tribes, nations, peoples, and languages (Rev 7:9) affirms a plurality in the expression of Jesus’ Lordship among people. He, as the community of Samaritans once cried, is the savior of the world (John 4:42). The Christological danger becomes the universalization of one contextual expression of Christ–making him Christ for some and not others.
Historically, this is the legacy of European Christendom–universalizing the whiteness of Jesus through conquest and imperialism. Evidence of the legacy of European Christendom in our land is how a homeless, brown-skinned Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, is commercialized and plastered throughout church and retail context during the Advent season as a white man. This Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection is systematized into a particular Christology, making him Christ for some and marginalizing others. This Jesus, the Jesus of European Christendom, has nothing to say to a first generation immigrant, to an adoptee, to people brutalized and killed for a virus they are scapegoated for, to women hypersexualized and fetishized for their complexion, and for those struggling with mental health stemming from their difference. I believe many Asian Americans and others resonate with the plea of Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, “I longed to meet the Jesus the Gospel writers speak about. I wanted to meet the one who embodies the Christ, who practices the ethics of love and compassion, and who provokes women to be with their inner power to rise up and resist patriarchy.” The Jesus of European Christendom in my experience can only say to the sufferings of people, “I forgive your sins.” But what sins need to be forgiven for those abused by sin and the sufferings of the world?
In his Christology lectures, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between seeing the advent of Christ as the actual happening of God’s revelation versus an abstract idea of God. Advent is not a proposition about God, rather, it is the very uncovering of the fullness of who God is in Jesus Christ. God is identical with a child of poverty and displacement who is born in a barn in a literal feeding trough for animals (Luke 2:1-20). This is not an abstract idea to be debated, this is the very act and being of God. The God of Advent is not a God of wealth, privilege, or status. The God of Advent is lowly–identifying with a forsaken place of our world. This is God’s omnipotence uncovered for all to see. The God of Advent is a God who, as Andrew Sung Park and other Koreans believe, identifies with han. (Koreans began to use this word following Japanese colonization–describing Korean suffering in our land and people. Han is an all encompassing trauma that lives in the hearts of people). According to the Gospels, suffering is what defines the life of Jesus all the way to his crucifixion.
When I reflect on my Christology, I see Christ mediums that determined my view of Jesus. I see white pastors of my youth I tried to imitate who bought expensive houses, wore expensive clothing, used private jets, hid in their “greenroom,” and who chased platforms of celebrity and relevance. I see white images of Jesus plastered throughout commercialization, history, and church iconography that hid the beautiful marginality and the powerful weakness of God in Jesus Christ. I see Jesus becoming a distorted idea to fit into systems and constructs of privilege and power while simultaneously being marginalized out of the suffering of the world.
If Jesus is solely an idea, he can be changed. I saw this as I began to study theology and the Gospels, I found a Jesus who was nothing like the Christ mediums I encountered in my youth. There was dissonance between these mediums and the witness of the Gospel narratives. This Jesus of the Gospels identified with the han of people…he, by the Spirit, brought good news to the poor, he proclaimed release to the captives, he recovered the sight of the blind, and he to proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor [Jubilee] (Luke 4:17-18). This Jesus in his final healing in Matthew’s Gospel flipped tables in the temple prophetically rejecting the greed and oppression of the religious leaders and the religious system of his day. This led those excluded from the temple–the lame and blind–to come into the temple with Jesus and Jesus heals them (Matt 21:12-16). It is in this Jesus that there is life and this life is the light of all peoples (John 1:4).
I further the infamous question Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed from his prison cell, “who is Jesus Christ for us today?” Who is the Jesus of the Gospels and what does he mean to you during this Advent season? I see Immanuel who through the incarnate being and life of God identifies with the han and suffering of our world that many experience this Christmas season. Like the tragic stories of the births of adoptees, Jesus is not born in a home but a barn. (Luke 2:1-20). Like Asian American immigrants, Jesus is out of place and rejected in his hometown upon return, after leaving his hometown for new opportunity (Mark 6:1-6). Like Asian Americans with COVID-19, Jesus was also scapegoated and killed. Like Asian Americans, Jesus is mocked as a foreigner among people he calls his own (Jn 8:48). Jesus–rather than objectifying, fetishizing, and sexualizing women–saw, healed, and empowered a woman within a mass of people with a terminal illness cast out to the very margins of society (Mark 5:24-34). I love this Jesus dearly and if you look closely enough, you may see this Jesus in the face next to you.
Photo by Joshua Huver
Isaiah Hobus is a recent graduate of Bethel University with a degree in biblical and theological studies, and currently a Master’s of Divinity student with an emphasis in Christian community development at Northern Seminary. He is also a youth outreach associate at a nonprofit ministry for teens, Treehouse Hope in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where he mentors teenagers. In his spare time, he enjoys reliving his days as a college athlete in cross country and track through runs, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.