The Road To Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)/What Does Jesus Look Like?

Most people have in their minds a preconceived image of Jesus. Typically, it's a Caucasian man with long-ish brown hair, wearing some kind of robe/toga type of clothing. Two truths, however, are that A) we don't really know what Jesus looked like because there are no photos or descriptions of his physical appearance and B) based on the region of the world where he lived, he probably was NOT Caucasian with blue eyes and light hair. (If you google "images of Jesus" as I suggest below, you will see that the vast majority portray him as a fair skinned, blue-eyed, rather svelte man.) 

Like most things, though, children want a picture of Jesus to associate with the man they learn about in bible stories. Often, the image they conjure is either one of a man who looks similar to other men in their lives or an image presented to them by books, television, etc. 

As adults, we are expected to have the answers and can find it hard to let that answer be, "I don't know." When it comes to the question of what Jesus looked like, though, that is precisely the answer we should give because it is the truth.   

The story of the Road to Emmaus is a great reminder of this, I think. In the story, Jesus resurrected walks alongside Cleopas and another man who certainly should have recognized Jesus, but did not. Their lack of recognition is a great segue into disucssing Jesus' appearance to children.

Recently, when I did a children's sermon on this, I "googles" some images of Jesus. Without telling the children who it was, I showed them a few and asked if they recognized the man in the picture. 

I showed the pictures int his order with the LEAST recognizable ones first:

1. Through advances in forensic science, an anthropologist proposed this image as that of a typical Galilean man. 
2. I like to call this one "movie star Jesus"
3. An African American image of Jesus
4. A little closer to the "typical" depiction of Jesus
5. The "status quo" blue-eyed, fair skinned Jesus

When I showed these pictures to the children, a few guessed the next to last was Jesus and they all said the last one was Jesus. However, they did not recognize the others as being Christ and even said the first one (probably the most culturally accurate) looked scary and mean. 

After that, I explained that there is no description of Jesus in the bible, so we really don't know what he looked like. I told them that it's okay to think about what He might have looked like and that we all might see something different in our minds when we think about it. I told them that I like to "see" Jesus in other people by noticing when people are kind or helpful - when people show love the way Jesus did. Even if we don't exactly know what Jesus looked liked, we know what he would have wanted to see in us and we can try to show Jesus to other people through our actions.