“They Shall Look on Him Whom They Pierced”: The Wonder of Scriptural Seeing

Wow, thanks so much to my wonderful friend Jason. That’s so kind of you, Jason.

Okay—well, we’re dimming the lights, art history–style, so you can see the images a little bit better. I’ll give my talk, and then we’ll have time at the end for questions.

Scripture’s Invitation to Look

As an art historian, I spend a lot of time looking—and thinking about the significance of looking. Not surprisingly, my talk today is on the wonder of the scriptural injunction to look.

“Look unto me in every thought,” the Lord pleads. “Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet.” “Cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God.” “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” “They shall look on him whom they pierced.”

God invites us to use our five senses as tools for encountering Him in scripture. “Hear him,” President Nelson memorably counseled us. “O taste and see that the Lord is good,” the Psalmist teaches. And the resurrected Christ extends this invitation: “Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.”

In response to Nephi’s desire to know the interpretation of the tree of life, “an angel said unto him: Look!” and a series of visions—heavenly images—unfolded before his eyes.

Although the standard works are words—letters written in books—part of the wonder of scripture is that scripture itself recommends, even commands us, to employ faculties beyond reading letters on a page. It advises us to touch, hear, taste, and especially see.

When Images Feel Dangerous

The relationship between words and images—between interpreting scripture by text and interpreting scripture by seeing—has at times been fraught. Heretics, antichrists, and false prophets have always found ways to weaponize sight as they rail against truth. Furthermore, one of the besetting biblical sins is idolatry.

The religions that descend from Father Abraham have often feared the potential abuse of images. Many Jews and Muslims to this day avoid visual representations of anything that could become an idol. They lavish their artistry instead on letters: elegant calligraphy with arabesques, geometric embellishments, and ornamentation that is as awe-inspiring as it is safely abstract and non-figural.

It is a feast for the eyes, to be sure. Sometimes these “pictures of letters” become so elaborate that the decoration renders the text illegible. In instances like these, we might be tempted to think images have surpassed words as the primary means of articulating God’s majesty. But Jewish and Muslim prohibitions against embodied depictions of gods, angels, and prophets remind us that for “people of the book,” there is a hierarchy—and the word comes first.

The battle between scripture anchored to letters and scripture embellished by figural images has also affected Christianity. Iconoclasts—“breakers of images,” literally—used the commandment against idolatry as a rationale for destroying sacred art during certain periods in Byzantine history. And during the Protestant Reformation, followers of John Calvin systematically broke, burned, tore, smashed, and looted Catholic churches in a vehement expression of sola scriptura, or “only scripture.”

Why Christianity Welcomes Images

But aside from these iconoclastic blips, Christianity has traditionally been the only Abrahamic faith tradition to welcome images. The reason is theological. Unlike Judaism and Islam, the Christian God is not purely abstract, unseeable, incorporeal, and fundamentally unrepresentable.

For many Muslims and Jews, paintings and sculptures limit and confine the Almighty into a form that insults His grandeur, misrepresents His nature, and thus becomes an idol. But in Christianity, “the Word”—the text, if you will—“that was in the beginning, and that was with God, and that was God; by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing that was made was made”—that preexistent, fathomless Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” God with us. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

In other words, the Christian God became representable—imageable. To quote a beloved Christmas carol:

He came down to earth from heaven
Who is God and Lord of all,
And his shelter was a stable,
And his cradle was a stall.
And our eyes at last shall see him,
Through his own redeeming love,
For that child so dear and gentle
Is our Lord in heav’n above.

So Christian images—lavishly figural in representing Christ, angels, and saints with features and flesh; shading in three dimensions; carved, painted, embroidered, woven, mosaicked, illuminated, assembled from glass, beaten from gold, encrusted with gems—bear witness to a fundamental doctrine of Christianity: to save the world, God took upon Himself flesh and blood, a “tabernacle of clay,” assuming and redeeming the human condition by suffering the pains and sicknesses of His people.

As the apostle Paul wrote, Christ is the “image of the invisible God,” “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” Christ’s tactile, representable flesh and blood—by which He saves the world—is the nucleus around which other visual tropes in Christian scripture rotate.

Scripture’s Visual Tropes

To name a few of these visual tropes, consider Old Testament figures and signs that anticipate the Messiah: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”

The significance of these types and shadows deepens by plumbing their visual potential. Think, for instance, of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, but then offering instead a “ram caught in a thicket by his horns.” Now conjure an image of the Lamb of God who fulfills that type: wearing the purple robe, His head caught not in a thicket but in a tangled crown of thorns.

Jesus’s parables are highly visual constructions. Think of the different qualities of ground into which the sower scatters seed—choked with weeds, scattered with stones, preyed upon by birds.

In fact, speaking of discerning parables, the Lord emphasizes the role of sight: “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not.” “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their eyes they have closed.” “But blessed are your eyes, for they see.”

Watching and observing undergird the call to imitate Christ, patterning words, actions, thoughts, and desires after what you see in Him: “Wherefore, do the things which I have told you I have seen that your Lord and your Redeemer should do; for for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might do the works which ye have seen me do.”

There is also the scriptural injunction for vigilance: “Watch and pray,” Christ says to Peter, James, and John in Gethsemane, “that ye enter not into temptation.”

In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the Lord’s imminent arrival is announced with a call to look: “Behold”—or in some translations, “See”—“the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.”

That word behold occurs constantly in scripture, and we sometimes forget that behold means look: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth.” “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.” “Behold your King.” “Behold how he loved him.” “Behold thy mother.” “Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

The Countenance of Christ

To add one more visual trope to this orbit of scriptural seeing that rotates around the flesh-and-blood Redeemer, consider the significance of Christ’s countenance—His face, His features. From the book of Numbers:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus extends His suffering countenance to humanity at its weakest point, teaching that when we minister to the thirsty, the hungry, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned, we do it unto Him.

In the Book of Mormon, Alma challenges the people of Zarahemla to take stock of their hearts—the good and the bad, vices and virtues—and then asks: “Have ye received his image in your countenances?”

Conversion as Imagemaking in the Heart

Medieval and early modern Christians sometimes envisioned conversion in terms of imagemaking in the heart. As our hearts are “carnal, sensual, and devilish,” to quote the Book of Mormon, coming to Christ can be likened to remaking the heart.

“A contrite heart” is soft. “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you… I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

That softness enables the heart to be molded, tooled, sculpted, painted, and artistically reconfigured into an image of Christ. A series of engravings from the late sixteenth century depict this process.

The believer’s heart is first assailed by figures of pride, vanity, and worldliness. But the Christ child—whose sweetness appeals to the heart’s ability to be moved—conquers us by love. He shoots arrows of charity. He stands at the door and knocks. And such is His relentless pursuit of us— to quote Elder Kearon—that when we do not open for Him, He tries another way.

Inside, He surveys the disconcerting interior of the heart, sweeps out what is unsavory, cleanses it with holy water, and fills it with sacred images of transformative scriptural potential, including the instruments of His passion: the cross, the whip, the spear that pierced His side, and the vinegar-soaked sponge.

As a fountain of living water, His blood streams from His wounds to wash scarlet souls white: “Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Clean and blank like a new canvas, the heart becomes a ground for holy images painted by the Child Himself.

Abiding in our heart, He plays the harp, expounds scriptures, exhorts, and slumbers quietly while wind, waves, and rain roar. “Peace, be still,” He said to the tempest pummeling the Sea of Galilee—and there was a great calm inside, even if not outside, the heart. He decks the heart with a crown and palms of victory, scatters roses, and ultimately reigns as the heart’s luminous King.

The Book of Mormon describes a similar transfer of the light and countenance of Christ:

“And Jesus blessed them as they did pray unto him; and his countenance did smile upon them, and the light of his countenance did shine upon them; and behold they were as white as the countenance and also the garments of Jesus.”

Beholding the Crucifix

Now, for a practical application of these principles, I want us to behold together the most beloved of Christian images—one rooted in scripture and uniquely configured to expound doctrine, move the heart with love, lift the eyes, and unfold the most sacred mysteries of faith.

Perhaps more than any other image, it belongs to the nucleus around which Christian images rotate: the God who “came down from heaven” in flesh and blood in order to be lifted up. “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”

The image of which I am speaking is the crucifix.

“My Father sent me,” Jesus testified in the Book of Mormon, “that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and that after I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me; that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father.”

Lifted up for all to see: “They shall look on him whom they pierced.” “Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and my feet.”

The Atonement Becomes Visible

The agony in Gethsemane had only three witnesses—Peter, James, and John—and they were asleep for much of the time. Christ’s crowning with thorns and scourging—“by whose stripes we are healed”—were witnessed by Pilate’s soldiers, but likely not many others. Christ’s Atonement becomes increasingly public after that.

Pilate presents Him to the crowds, mockingly dressed as a king, and cries, “Behold the man!” Then Jesus stumbles through the city carrying His cross. But it is on Golgotha that the visuals of Atonement reach their peak. Jesus Himself becomes an image—stretched on the beams of the cross, nailed in place, dyed in blood, bruised, and lifted up for our vision.

Common Obstacles to Taking Images Seriously

Before we look more closely, let’s address some common obstacles that get in the way of taking images seriously.

Most of us take for granted that texts are multivalent. There is far more to the book of First Nephi, for instance, than the narrative of a refugee family that bickers, reforms, tries to kill various members, and lives on raw meat in the wilderness. We return to sacred texts again and again because we know the storyline contains morals, doctrines, revelations, patterns, and admonitions—many of which only occur to us after repeated readings or at different stages of our lives.

And yet many people assume that images do little more than illustrate words—often in the blandest and most basic way. From that point of view, a crucifix is merely a corpse hanging from a tree: a snapshot of despair before the Resurrection.

This illustrative assumption can also make some worry about historical accuracy. If an image’s job is simply to show us “what it looked like,” then any artistic license seems like a failure of duty.

But we do not hold texts to that standard. We readily recognize that texts can be poetic and timeless, filled with metaphors, paradoxes, and layers—speaking to ancient history, present sins, near prophecies, and apocalyptic ends, all at once.

Too often, though, we are unwilling to grant images that same latitude. We may admit images can move the heart, but we may not allow for the possibility that God might use images to expound doctrine.

Nephi Learns by Seeing

When Nephi asked the angel of the Lord what the tree of life meant, the answer did not come in words. “The angel said unto me: Look!”

Nephi first sees “a tree… exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.” Then he sees a city, and a virgin who mirrors that tree: “exceedingly fair and white,” “most beautiful and fair above all other virgins.”

“And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look!”

“And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.”

After seeing this image—the mother holding the fruit of her womb—Nephi comes to understand the meaning of the tree and its fruit, “desirable to make one happy.” Empowered by sight, he answers the angel with confidence: “Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men.”

Let’s now grant that kind of authority, timelessness, and interpretive power to the cruciform image Jesus made of Himself when He was lifted up for all to see.

The Cross as Tree

One of the first things we may notice is that the cross is a kind of tree. “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree,” Peter said.

At the climactic conclusion of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, our minds are drawn to another tree: the tree of knowledge of good and evil, beneath which mankind fell from God’s presence.

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired…” But that alluring fruit yielded bitter consequences: pain, sickness, death, broken bodies, and fallen natures.

By contrast, the fruit of the tree of the cross is not beautiful, and what hangs from its bough is distressing:

“From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it;
But wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores:
They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.”

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” And whereas Adam and Eve’s eyes were ensnared by the beauty of the tree of knowledge, “we hid as it were our faces from” the tree of the cross: “he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Paradox: Death Becomes Life

Why should it surprise us that the beautiful tree of knowledge begets death and sin, while the deathly tree of the cross becomes a tree of life? Christianity abounds in such paradoxes:

“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”
“Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister.”
“And whosoever shall humble himself as a little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

In contrast to those who stood guard on Golgotha, the strength to lift the entire world was manifested in Jesus’s trembling limbs and broken body. “He hath shewed strength with his arm”—and that arm is lengthened along the beam of the cross, fastened as “a nail in a sure place.”

His is a thin arm and a gaunt frame—not the build of a warrior—for He has given everything. “Virtue is gone out of him.”

“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint:
my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.”

Suspended in the air, He is our hope—our ensign—lifted up to the nations from afar. “Behold, I am the light which ye shall hold up… therefore hold up your light that it may shine unto the world.” Isaiah “saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.”

Like a double-sided processional cross—jewel-encrusted glory on one side and austere engraving on the other—Calvary’s tree shifts in meaning: defeat becomes victory, death becomes life, the vulnerable becomes invincible.

“All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.” Yet for those who believe, the cross becomes “beauty for ashes.”

Even places that seem unlikely become unexpectedly beautiful: the waters of Mormon and the forest of Mormon, though “infested by wild beasts” and far “in the borders of the land,” are “beautiful to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer.”

Feet, Mother, and Wings

Wounded feet stream blood like a root system watering the ground of that “green hill far away.” “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” Truly “thou shalt bruise his heel,” yet He has bruised the serpent’s head.

In Nephi’s vision, the virgin mother held the fruit of her womb in her arms, as if suspended from the maternal boughs of the tree of life. Now she stands beneath the cross. “(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,)” Simeon told her when she presented the infant Jesus in the temple. “Behold thy mother,” Jesus says shortly before He dies.

Jesus’s outstretched arms recall the wings of the mother hen: “How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings.” “In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge.” “And in the shadow of the branches shall they dwell.”

The Fruit: Flesh and Blood

Concerning the fruit hanging from the cross, Jesus proclaimed:

“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up…”

Of the tree of knowledge, God said: “Thou shalt not eat of it… for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” But speaking of the bread of His flesh and blood, Jesus affirmed: “He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.”

Temple Imagery: The Torn Veil

His arms are open—nailed in an embrace—fastened at a cosmic crossing like the axes of the universe, riveting our attention on His heart.

“Destroy this temple,” Jesus said, “and in three days I will raise it up.” His accusers “understood not that he spake of the temple of his body.”

At the hour of His death, “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom,” tearing open the Holy of Holies. But something else was also rent: “One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.”

That was the veil of Christ’s skin, woven in the womb of His mother—the textile of flesh by which He redeemed the world. Legend says the spear pierced to His heart, so that Paul could later speak of Christ, our “high priest of good things to come,” entering the Holy of Holies not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood—so that we “with boldness” might “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way… through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”

The cross becomes a threshold, and the wound in His side becomes a portal—like Israelite doorposts marked with the blood of the paschal lamb. We take refuge in Christ like the dove in the cleft of the rock: “that they dwell in the rock,” the dove “maketh her nest in the sides of the hole’s mouth.”

Conclusion: The Image of Images

So in conclusion, what do we see when we look with scriptural intent on the image of Him “whom they pierced”?

I hope not merely a dead body on a cross, but rather the “great book of God’s love,” as the Crucifixion has been called—pages in which we can behold the tree of life, the mother hen, living waters, a temple “established in the top of the mountains,” beautiful feet, an eternal embrace, and a precious fruit “sweet above all that is sweet” and “pure above all that is pure.”

Thank you.