Tebow's Viral Prayer

Tim Tebow "tebowing"

te-bow-ing v. To get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone around you is doing something completely different.

Our latest word, already included in two dictionaries, originated from National Football League quarterback Tim Tebow’s practice of going to one knee and giving thanks to God. He’s always done this, but his string of improbable last-minute heroics for the Denver Broncos has put the spotlight on “tebowing.”

Tim was born into a missionary family in the Philippines, where his mother suffered a life-threatening condition while pregnant with him. She refused an abortion and gave birth to a healthy child. Mom homeschooled Tim and his siblings even after they moved to Florida, where homeschooled kids can play on high school teams.

At the University of Florida he won two national championships, received the Davey O’Brien Award for being the nation’s best quarterback and was the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy, which goes to the best football player in the country.

Sometimes great college quarterbacks don’t make it in the NFL and Tebow was tagged as one of them. According to Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal, he “runs, but he doesn’t run gracefully. He runs upright and frantic, like he’s stealing a toaster from a mall.” It’s said “he cannot throw a proper pass. He cannot stand still in the pocket” where he’d be protected and “he can’t run a conventional offense,” which reduces his team’s options and exposes himself to dangerous hits.

Another thing he can’t do is “get through an interview without mentioning his faith. Or giving credit to his teammates. Tim Tebow never sounds like he’s full of Tim Tebow."

"He doesn’t even get mad when people say nasty things about him. When people say Tim Tebow needs to improve, Tim Tebow says he needs to improve. Who does that?”  “Nothing seems to rattle him. He smiles and doesn’t sulk.”

There’s a website where people post pictures of themselves “tebowing” all over the world in all kinds of places. It’s had over 14,000 photo submissions and 12 million hits.  No doubt most of these are just people aping the latest fad, but it doesn’t seem anyone is putting down Tim’s faith by doing it. Is it possible his modest Christian straightness is so refreshing it’s become cool?

The politically correct mob has been so overwhelmed by the explosion of people performing a prayer-based act they’ve been dumbstruck. They know they look foolish denigrating Tebow for now, but they won’t stay in the shadows for long. Daniel Engber in Slate.com summed up the attitude when he said he wants Tebow to cut it out because it’s “making me question my atheism.”

“Tebowing” will probably disappear as fast as it arose. But while it’s popular, participants must at least momentarily consider what the gesture means. Some may open their minds to Christ, and maybe that’s the purpose.

Since Tim Tebow doesn’t think God cares who wins football games, he probably believes exactly that.

To visit the “tebowing” website please go to  http://tebowing.com/

Face of Jesus

Rembrandt's "Head of Christ"

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was the location of a famous scene in the movie Rocky. It’s where Sylvester Stallone, working out in a gray cotton sweat suit and black knit cap, sprinted up its 72 stone steps, turned around and triumphantly raised his arms as he looked down over the City of Brotherly Love. Museum staff members will tell you nary a day goes by without some tourist standing on the spot and re-enacting the scene.

The museum hosted an extraordinary exhibition from the Louvre in Paris featuring Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn’s revolutionary paintings of Jesus.

Up until Rembrandt, artists restricted their representations of Jesus to ancient prototypes that portrayed Christ as unemotional, fair-skinned, chestnut-haired, thin-faced and glorified by a halo or other symbols. The traditional image was rigidly followed by artists to avoid accusations of transgressing the Second Commandment injunction against idolatry.

But Rembrandt considered this image to be unlikely for an itinerant Semite preaching in the desert and he challenged it. Historians believe he chose a local working class Jewish man as the model for Jesus. This was likely because many Sephardic Jews had settled in his Amsterdam neighborhood after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.

Aside from representing Jesus as the Jew he was, the paintings evoke a down to earth demeanor. He’s presented as empathetic, thoughtful, meditative, approachable and…human! No halos here.

God sent His Son to us in a stroke of genius that enabled mankind to relate to him in a personal way. Rembrandt shows us an understanding, compassionate person we can relate to. When we talk to him – or at least when I talk to him - this is the sort of image of Jesus I see myself talking to.

Like many artists, Rembrandt had financial problems and faced bankruptcy in 1656. His large house was overstuffed with hoarded items that were meticulously catalogued in an inventory made for his nervous creditors. The contents were sold to satisfy his debts.

One of the items was a painting listed as “Head of Christ, done from life,” which was found hanging in Rembrandt’s bedroom. Since the artist obviously couldn’t have painted a living Jesus, the title referred to his use of a model. It was shortened to “Head of Christ” in the 19th century to remove any confusion.

Ariella Burdick, writing for the Financial Times, contrasted the paintings with another Rembrandt piece, “The Supper at Emmaus” that depicts “a transfigured being – benign and beatific, irradiated by the light of revelation and glowing in the vast darkness all around. He doesn’t experience doubt, he banishes it.”

Burdick compares Rembrandt’s depiction of the risen savior with his painting of a pre-crucifixion Christ who “fills the canvas with the mournful intensity of a man wrestling with loneliness and doubt.” Jesus is seen struggling with his human condition and demonstrating his sympathy for us.

It showed us a Jesus who was absent from art for over a thousand years. It made him more real – and accessible - than ever.