This is just one man’s vision of that time the universe changed forever — or, rather, consummated its revelation of the love that had always abided at its heart. The young woman glances to her left and sees something impossibly wonderful. Italian artist Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, who lived 500 years ago, imagined this moment in the life of Mary Magdalene. Having come to anoint Jesus’s body but finding the tomb empty, she steps outside. Her face and cloak catch light cast by something on Giovanni’s side of the canvass. According to his vision, we are to presume the light is pouring from the face of our risen Lord.Experts see allusions in the painting to mistaken notions about Mary’s vocation. When I saw it during my birthday visit to the Getty with Kathy last weekend, the look in her eye brought me up short. Surprise, but not total. Perhaps she sensed it might happen all along. She evinces the hint of a question about what life will be like now that he is risen. Now that the world is saved. Now that the doings of darkness have been undone in a flash of holy light. Now that the darkness would have billions of light bearers to fear, and the light bearers would need fear not. Now that she realized it was all about love. Now that it has to be all about love, all the time.
Not everyone associates their revelations with Jesus. But they come to us all. I took a photo of Kathy’s face when she saw our first grandchild the day she was born. Kathy is holding her hand to her mouth, just as Mary tries to do in the painting, though her right hand is under her cloak. In “Waitress” (2007), the character played by Keri Russell is transfigured in the light from the face of her newborn daughter. Her features carved into stone by the resolve of parental responsibility, she she says to her abusive husband, who is looming by her hospital bed, that she wants a divorce and he is never to come near them again.
It can’t always be that way. The truth usually grows on us more slowly. The abuser just takes his victims home from the hospital. Or it is a dark epiphany such as a terrible diagnosis, bad news about an accident, or the loss of a child. Nobody should idealize such losses. People of faith believe that hope is eternal. But the person receiving bad news won’t hear it and shouldn’t have to. To help them get through, they just need to keep seeing the light in our faces. That’s what light bearers do. Most people have trouble dealing with others’ inconsolable grief. So they don’t call or text, claiming that they don’t want to bother the sufferer. The sufferer is dwelling in darkness. Light bearers always show up.
This, it seems to me, is the principal question for Christian disciples in the age of Trump. It is one thing to promise by rote to respect the dignity of every human being, each made in the image of God. And yet it is still hard to find consensus for the proposition that the church has an obligation to be unflinching about standing up for this baptismal value. Many in the church have remained silent about Haitians libeled during the campaign, asylees, including children and infants, stranded at the border, refugees of color sent to the back of the Airbus in favor of whites, trans and non-binary people denied their personhood, immigrant workers hunted down and mistreated, and South Americans killed on the high seas without due process.
The heretical nationalists have no trouble with these outrages. They follow their fake warrior Christ who, they preposterously assert, warrants them. What should concerns us is the equivocal reaction of mainstream denominationalists. We can’t hurt Trump’s feelings complaining about his cruelties. He’s proud of them all. But we do hurt Jesus’s feelings when we don’t speak up.
Some worry about politics in church. A greater concern is the church sanctioning violence against God’s children by our silence. Our Lord may be more comfortable than some of us think with debates about the best policies to follow. Grace abounds for anyone left, right, or center who leads with love. But our binary politics seem to foreclose it. I have friends who want a closed border. I have friends who want open borders. At no point during the Trump roundups have I heard anyone say that while the roundups were in their view legitimate, those in federal custody should be treated humanely at all times, with plenty of good food, clean water, and a shower a day.
If taking a tough line on policy requires me to acquiesce in someone’s mistreatment or dehumanization, maybe the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me something. When power is cruel to God’s children on purpose, when the cruelty seems to make them and others feel good, it is time for the light bearers to show up with all the authority of the risen Christ. This has been our work ever since Mary saw Jesus in the garden and went to tell the world that God had scandalously and peremptorily undone the darkest deed. Whenever dark deeds are done in our name, we must not keep our light under a bushel.