For Wilshire Baptist Church
While at Baylor University last week on business, I turned a corner and saw a familiar sight: a statue of Jesus kneeling. When I was a student there in the late ’70s the statue was in a small courtyard in the center of the old campus. In 2004 it was moved to the base of the bell tower at the new buildings of Truett Seminary. It’s a logical location at the entrance to a center of theological studies, but I liked it better when it could be seen by the everyday crowd.
As kids in Sunday school we learned that the shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept.” It’s a great trivia question, especially if you can recite it’s location: John 11:35. And sometime later we learned its importance as it described a moment when Christ’s humanity and compassion were in full display as he learned that his friend Lazarus has died.
While there isn’t a two-word verse that states, “Jesus knelt,” that is what the statue at Baylor depicts. Titled “Kneeling Christ,” it was created in 1973 by Texas sculptor Charles Umlauf. It portrays Christ on his knees, arms stretched out at his sides with palms turned upward, his head lifted toward heaven, eyes wide open and lips parted.
While I can’t find details about the inspiration for the statue, it’s easy to assume it depicts Christ’s agonizing prayers at Gethsemane just before his arrest, trial and all that followed. But I wonder, too, if the statue might depict the countless private moments never documented in the scriptures when Jesus might have gone to his knees, turned his head toward heaven and asked the same questions we ask every day: Who am I? Why am I here? Why is this happening? Where do I go now? What do I do next?
This is all just speculation by me, but it seems reasonable that a messiah that was as fully human as we would have such wonderings and worries. While I worship the Christ who wept for Lazarus and then with all the power of God brought him back to life, I can more readily relate to a man who knelt and asked the same questions that trouble me but then trusted God with the answers.
It was a bright sunny day last week when I saw Christ kneeling. But I have a vivid memory of seeing him on a gloomy day years ago, down on his knees, his head turned upward, the rain running down his cheeks like tears.
Jesus knelt and wept both.