Relatable Jesus

On Friday September 20, 2019 I went on a class trip to visit historical Canadian Pentecostal sites around Toronto. It was a great trip of learning about my Pentecostal history and commemorating those who blazed the trail for the Pentecostals of 2019. The reason why I am sharing this is because one of the stops on the trip was at St. John the Compassionate Mission Orthodox Church. It was a stop because when the church was first built it was actually used as the first Pentecostal church in Canada. I knew that I would find some images of Jesus in the church because of the Orthodox tradition of having icons all throughout their places of worship and I was right. Right when you walk into the church, there is a picture in the hallway of Mary holding Jesus as an infant (see below). This is the image of Jesus that I would like to focus on in this blog post.


This picture of Jesus is unique in the sense that in it, he is an infant. There are not very many stories in the Bible of Jesus as a child therefore there are not often too many pictures of Jesus in that way. Yet here, right near the front of the Orthodox Church was this picture. The main message that I felt an image like this was expressing was that at one point Jesus was a child just like we were once children ourselves. 

As a Pentecostal believer, I believe in the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ which is a big, fancy term that means that in coming down to Earth, Jesus was both truly man and truly God. Since he is God and our saviour, there is a lot of talk about Jesus' divinity, but this pictures really shows Jesus' humanity. Jesus was a baby. He was born like any of us were born (besides the virgin birth and the manger), and though we do not have much detail on his childhood, we do now that Jesus was truly human and therefore would have had some very human experiences as a child and throughout his life. 

I believe that an image and message like this is so important because it reminds both believers and non-believers that though we are not God we can relate to Jesus in our own lives (to a degree) and he relates to us. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." (ESV). Jesus, without sinning, went through what we have gone through. The reason why this is so important to understand is because there are some people today who feel like because they have so much pain in their lives that God could never understand their situation, that he is so far away that they could never go to him. Jesus is not some lofty being up in the sky who needs binoculars to see our situations. We need to know that Jesus wants us to live in righteousness but that he also understands us, loves us, and wants relationship with us.

One last thing that I thought was interesting about this image was its placement in the church itself. St. John the Compassionate Mission Orthodox Church is also used as a soup kitchen in their community. The moment anyone walks into that church, they can see this picture of Jesus. The way that I see it is that it was put there so that as people walked by who may be hungry, tired, and even sad, they would see this picture of an infant Jesus looking back at them saying, "I get it, I have felt your pain, your hunger your grief. Come. Come into my house and find rest, strength and peace. You are home."

I hope this is the message that it sends to those people and all those who actually take the time to think about a picture like this and the concept of an infant Jesus. So what do you think? Is this the message you got from this picture? Do you believe that Jesus is a god people can relate to and who relates back to us? Let me know what you think.










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