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Overshadowing Jesus: Living true leadership

By Nissa Basbaum

Published: May 2007

It had taken a full year for the stained-glass windows to wend their way to their new location, refurbished, encased and backlit. On Christmas Eve, 2005, they lit up the wall behind the altar. The windows were a visible sign of the amalgamation in January of that same year between Church of the Transfiguration and Christ Anglican Church, St. Catharines.

Parishioners from the "old" Transfiguration and the former Christ Church all thought the windows were magnificent and looked incredible in their new location. Some of the parishioners from Christ Church even went so far as to suggest that they looked better at Transfiguration than they had at Christ Church if, for no other reason, than they formerly had been on a side wall and, therefore, were not particularly visible to anyone but the priest who sat in the sanctuary space facing them. Nonetheless, in the early days of the windows' arrival at Transfiguration, there still were one or two concerns expressed about their placement.

These concerns were related to the wood-framed plain glass cross already suspended on the wall behind the altar. When the stained-glass windows representing each of the four biblical evangelists were hung, they were placed surrounding the cross, positioned higher and shining brighter than the cross itself. While not everyone voiced it, there were numerous suggestions that the cross needed to be moved up, and then somehow lit in order that it not be overshadowed by the stained-glass.

As priests in the parish, Robin and I exerted some liturgical authority by suggesting that nothing would be done about the location of the cross until we had had some time to live with the new windows, and accustom ourselves to the change in the liturgical space. That was a little over a year ago.

On a recent Sunday, while Robin was leading the service, I sat in a back pew and focused on the four stained-glass windows and the one plain-glass cross--the four evangelists and Jesus, among them, so to speak--and realized that, at least for me, it had been the right decision not to move the cross higher or, for that matter, to light it. As I gazed at the wall, I came to the conclusion that the present position of the cross and its lack of illumination probably is the strongest statement that we as a church could make about the ministry of Jesus. Even more to the point, I think it's a clear statement of how Jesus, himself, would have understood his own ministry.

The present position of the cross, considerably below the surrounding stained-glass windows, says much about the kind of leadership he would have wanted to convey. At the same time, the desire that many of us have to "move Jesus up" says a great deal about our inability to get our heads around this particular kind of leadership. The way in which the four evangelists "overshadow" Jesus says much about his presence as a servant among them rather than a monarch above them.

Over time, as I have carefully considered the position of the cross on the wall behind the altar, I have come to appreciate the powerful message this picture transmits. It is a picture that paints Jesus in the midst of his disciples, playing an intimate role in the community of his followers. It's certainly true that if the cross were to be moved above the windows or even to the same height as the highest of these, the image this would create would fit better with how the church has historically described Jesus to us. Yet, would it fit quite as well with the image that he, himself, would have hoped to describe?

Unfortunately, when it comes to our understanding of Jesus' ministry, the images held by the leaders of the church and by Jesus have never seemed to be too terribly in harmony with one another. How the church historically came to understand Jesus, and how those of us in the church today have inherited and, quite frankly, lapped up this understanding is, I think, a far cry from Jesus' own understanding of who he desired to be for those who followed him.

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