The Face of Christ vs. Facing Christ

Because this is Passion Week, there have been many televised programs about the life and death of Christ. The one that received the most attention, however, was a documentary that aired on the History Channel. In this program, artists used the Shroud of Turin to calculate a 3-D image of what Christ may have looked like.

Image on the Shroud of Turin

One of the 3-d images based on the image from the Shroud

While I found the program interesting, it is nothing on which I base my faith. At the end of February, I spoke on Isaiah 61 at a women's retreat. During one of the lessons, we compared Isaiah 61 to Isaiah 53. I find it interesting that in chapter 53, Jesus is described as a person that was not what we might consider good-looking.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53:2

(Sorry...I can't seem to get my computer out of the italic mode!!!) I don't know about you, but whenever I think of the face of Jesus, I imagine Him to be most attractive...especially His eyes. Maybe I have been conditioned over time by various pictures I have seen. No where in the New Testament, to my knowledge, does it talk about what Jesus actually looked like. I have come to reason that this is because looks don't matter. The attraction of Jesus, for me, is His heart - His deep compassion for people and His unmistakable love for humanity. I believe God wanted the people attracted to His message rather than to His looks.

I think there is a far more critical question than the one asked by the History Channel in regards to Jesus' face. I believe a much more urgent question that needs to be answered is this: "Am I ready to face Jesus?".

But then, that question doesn't appeal much to our society today, does it?