FREEBIE FRIDAY: Jesus, Age 12

(Click on image for a larger picture in order to see the detail in his eyes.)

I am giving away a 7.5″x9.5″ (19cm x 24cm) fine art print of this portrait of “Jesus, 12 years“, OR: any print of your choice from my cartoons or from my fine art. Read the instructions on how to win below.

I recently had a dream in which I saw the face of Jesus at 12 years of age. He was standing in sunlight against a white wall. He was tanned with black hair and freckles. His eyes were very peculiar. There was a cross in his eyes. It had to be drawn. It is pen and ink, graphite pencil and charcoal on Strathmore vellum.

Something I learned in the church: organizations and the cross don’t get along. Like the human being, at the core of an organization’s spirit is the overpowering need to survive and not die. The protection of the organism is the primary impulse of the human mind. It is the same with organizations like the church. The cross is antithetical to this. The cross may be hung, adored, preached and heard, but it is rarely taken up.

“As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set his eyes toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).

Luther says the same of Paul: “In every creature Saint Paul, with his sharp, discerning, apostolic eye, perceived the holy and beloved Cross.” What was different about Jesus, however, was that the cross he foresaw shaped his present life. The social philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy wrote: “Man as an animal organism lives forward from birth toward death, but, as a soul who knows beforehand that he will die, he molds his life looking backward from the end.” The gospels indicate that the reality of the cross permeated the life of Jesus from the beginning. And he allowed it.

Singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen said, “Mankind must rediscover the crucifixion as a universal symbol, not just an experiment in sadism or masochism or arrogance. It will have to be rediscovered because that’s where man is at… on the cross!”

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