Encounter
Portland Magazine
October 21, 2020
By SimonMary A. Aihiokhai
Icon by Mary Katsilometes-Reinbold
Photo by Bob Kerns
When I look at the new icon of the Martyrs of Uganda in the Shipstad Chapel, I immediately notice that the figures of Christ and the 22 Catholic martyrs are represented as Black persons. For those familiar with seeing the image of Christ represented as a white man, this image may be unsettling.
But icons are meant to unsettle and surprise us. They are meant to mediate encounters between the viewer and the divine.
Allow me to share an example from my own experience of an icon that unsettled me and pushed me to new understanding.
Growing up in Nigeria, I never saw an image of Christ that spoke to Blackness. I never even knew I had internalized a Christianity that could not help me to appreciate my identity as a Black person until an experience I had in 2004. I have called this experience my graced-gift of rebirth.
The Los Angeles parish where I was working that year wanted to commemorate Thanksgiving Day by celebrating a liturgy that affirmed the different cultural realities of the parish community—68 countries in total, including my home country Nigeria. Through music and ritual symbols, we were going to be intentionally pluralistic.
As we processed into the church, my pastor informed me that he had placed an icon of a Black Christ on the altar to celebrate the few Black members in the parish.
Looking up at the altar and seeing the icon, I immediately uttered the words that came from my subconscious: “That is not Jesus. Jesus is not Black.”
I then realized that my microphone was on.
Members of the community heard me, a Black person, uttering these alienating words. Did I really mean that I couldn’t see myself, my Black identity, in Christ? Hadn’t I instructed people entering the Catholic Church for 19 years that we are all made in the image and likeness of God? Why couldn’t I see my Blackness in Him?
At that moment—my graced-gift of rebirth moment—I realized a hard truth: I had been colonized and not Christianized. My understanding of God prior to that moment was self-alienating. It never was able to make space for my very existence as a Black man rooted in concrete socio-cultural and political contexts.
I came away from this moment with new questions: What images do we have of God in our minds, and how do these images speak to us in the concreteness of our existence as creatures of history, context, and culture? I bring this question to my students all the time. I ask them: Who do your images of God include? Who do they exclude? And why?
The Ugandan Martyrs did not encounter a white God. Rather, they encountered a God who had become human like them in the very embodiment of their being as Black Africans living at a very precarious time in their collective history. Depicting the Ugandan Martyrs surrounding a Black Christ speaks of a Christ who finds Blackness as a worthy embodiment of the divine. For me, encountering this new icon, I am reminded that God identifies with all that it means to be Black in our world—then and now. This artistic representation of Christ as Black is most relevant for our times as our world grapples with systemic racism and how it has defined our collective imagination in ways that deny the innate human dignities of Black persons.
Jesus Christ, as a historical figure, lived in Judea during the imperial domination of the region by the Persians, the Greeks, and eventually, the Romans. He had to navigate the realities that defined his society.
But to Christians, Jesus Christ also means more than the historical figure. Jesus is the gift for the possibility of new imaginations on how and what it means to be fully human in God’s world. To Christians, Jesus Christ, as enfleshed divinity, is an icon of God for all times. What God has become in the humanity of Jesus Christ is always revealing new ways of God’s interactions with creation. The humanity of God in Jesus Christ is an invitation to a new kind of encounter, one where we, too, are both sign and symbol of God, where we can embrace a new way of living in God’s world.
As I reflect on my microphone moment, I realize that this context was lacking in the way I was evangelized into the Christian faith. European and American missionaries, who evangelized many parts of sub-Saharan Africa during the era of colonial rule by the European colonial powers of the 19th century, had given me a rigid representation of Christ.
Though icons speak to us in our particularities, they also transcend them. In this transcendence lies the possibility for new imaginations and new encounters. While the icon of the Ugandan Martyrs showcases a Black Christ surrounded by Black persons, it cannot speak only to Black people. Anyone who encounters this icon is invited to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world.
As we encounter this icon, let us be intentional in seeing how it invites us to open up ourselves to new horizons for inclusivity. As we celebrate our diversity, may we not also forget our one-ness—
Ut unum sint (“That they may be one”—John 17:21).
SimonMary A. Aihiokhai is an assistant professor of theology (systematics) at University of Portland. His research explores religion and identity; African philosophies, cultures, and theologies; religion and violence; comparative theology; and interfaith studies.
