The Monstrosity of Christ

I had a moment today when I walked by a homeless man who was, so to say, unpleasant.  In both odor and appearance he was haggard, unbathed, unbalanced; he had a weatherworn beard and skin like some flayed, cracked leather that had long existed in surrender under the heel of the sun.

He was missing most of his teeth except for a few, so worn from malnourishment and a hard life, little broken gravestones.

And he stank as if he had never heard of water.

And he heaved and moaned, shriveled over as he walked, like a plant born from dry ground.

And my first reaction was a strange mixture of pity and revulsion. And I remembered that verse that says what you do unto the least of these, you do unto Christ Himself.

Christ Himself.

And then in horror and as a reflex, a sense of my own superiority over this man, no matter how I tried to forget it, to banish it like an unwanted ghost, fell upon me.

And I remembered Isaiah, where he said the Christ had no beauty or majesty to attract us, and I thought to myself

Self, I said, what if this was in fact Christ?  And I met his harrowed, yellow eyes.

What if Christ looked like this, no elegance, no form of beauty.

Would you have believed in Him?

And what would you have said, what would you have done lingering before his monstrous form upon the cross, I said to myself.

I would have yelled at him to come down, to be the god I would want myself to be.

The man whom I, a good citizen, thought was executed as a criminal outside the city gates, discarded like refuse, would I have believed if someone told me He was God?

God came in sweat and puss, in frailty from the dark corners of forgotten swaths of earth, and I would not have believed.

I stood stunned.

I had approached the vagrant like a mountain piteous of the valleys below, offering to them shade, strength. But now he loomed before me like the very scandal of Christ.

And his frailty unhinged my heart.