I confess: this article is less about Yoko Ono than about the idea of a mystique that certain people—or groups of people—are said to have. My online dictionary (the one that came with my MacBook Pro) defines mystique as “a fascinating aura of mystery, awe, and power surrounding someone or something.” In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, kicking off the so-called second wave of feminism. Then 1969 brought us The Jewish Mystique by psychoanalyst Ernest van den Haag. Around the same time, one of my high school classmates mistook mystique for another word and averred that a certain U.S. president “had Congress mystified.”

Which brings me to Yoko Ono, the conceptual artist whose art was overshadowed by her relationship with John Lennon and, arguably, by her controversial (to understate things) way of singing. It was 1971, the year of Yoko’s first public exhibition at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, and I was a student at nearby Syracuse University. I found her artwork fascinating, with, yes, “a fascinating aura of mystery” surrounding it, possibly because I didn’t really understand it. But it seemed to my 19-year-old self to presage another world, a place where art could be mysterious, challenging, and even mind-bending.

During her exhibition, I volunteered to be a “field marshal,” as the exhibitors called it. As I recall, I was supposed to stand guard over the exhibits to ensure that no one touched anything. I did my job for a while; then, with the crowds thinning out at one point, I decided to have a seat on one of the ledges which housed some of the art pieces. Not close to them, mind you. At the other end. But, hey, I was getting tired of standing.

That did it. Someone discovered me, not that I was hiding out of sight, and summarily fired me. I went back to my dorm, unemployed, as it were, but still taken in by the mystique of Yoko Ono’s artwork.

And the mystique of Yoko herself. Back in the ’90s, there was a show called Mad About You, starring Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt. Improbably, Yoko Ono shows up and Reiser is taken in by her … mystique. His constant refrain to Hunt becomes, “Yoko says to do this, Yoko says this about that,” on and on. Hunt finally says to him, “If Yoko told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it?” After a moment of thought, Reiser responds, “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

How many other people, I wonder, have a sense of mystique surrounding someone or something? Women, possibly, from the title of Betty Friedan’s book. The Jews, I imagine, from van den Haag’s. Some politicians have a mystique, for better or worse. I might put Teddy Roosevelt in that category, John F. Kennedy certainly, Donald Trump possibly.

What about world-famous religious figures? Did Mother Teresa have a mystique about her? Buddha? Confucius? St. Patrick? Jesus? The thing about a mystique is that, when it’s removed—when the mystery is explained, when the awe vanishes, when the power dissipates—do we then have an emperor with no clothes? Or maybe just an ordinary person doing ordinary things?

I think about Jesus. There was some mystery about him; we can check off that box:

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” (Matthew 21:10)

And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27)

Some people responded to him with awe—check!

And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.” (Luke 5:26)

They took note of the power that surrounded him—check off box three.

And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (Luke 4:36)

And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. (Luke 6:19)

Has the mystery been explained, now 2,000 years out from his time? Some have tried to do just that; one author, John Allegro, famously wrote that Jesus was a mushroom. Well, that people imbibed a certain mushroom that gave them hallucinations that they called “Jesus.”

Has the awe vanished? I don’t see that. Jewish writers as diverse as Martin Buber and Sholem Asch have written about him admiringly, always trying to see where he fits into the world as someone who is Jewish. Marc Chagall painted him, and placed him in Chagall’s own world, where Jesus became a symbol for Jewish martyrs everywhere and in all times.

Did the power dissipate? Jesus no longer walks among us, healing people and doing other miracles. Yet ask enough people, and there will be those who say he has healed them; he has given them meaning; he has brought reconciliation between hostile groups of people.

The mystique of Jesus is not like the mystique of Yoko Ono. Yoko is now 93 years old, no longer granting interviews. We don’t know how many years she has left, but there will be a time when she is no longer with us. Jesus—some say, and I say—rose from the dead to be evermore alive. Mystiques come and go, and some, like Jesus’ mystique, will remain forever.