Welcome Home

Rembrandt (1606-1669), Return of the Prodigal

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Fourth Sunday in Lent/ 10^th March 2013

Do you have a life verse?  Do you have a favorite verse of the Bible?  One that you turn to for inspiration, affirmation, comfort, strength?  Is there one text or one story that sums up what it means to be a child of faith, a follower of Christ, alive in the Spirit? For some, it’s John 3:16 and 17.  A dear friend from New Jersey often signs her cards and letters with Matthew 5:16: “…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Growing up, especially during my teenage and college years, Proverbs 3:5, 6, was one of mine:  “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  Acknowledge him in all your ways and he shall direct your paths.”  

            As an adult, there’s one verse that probably sums up the gospel for me, that captures the heart of my faith and ministry. It’s 2 Corinthians 5:17-19, particularly verse 19. I think this is the core of the gospel:  “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

            Why these verses?  Paul goes right to the heart of what he experienced in his own life.  Paul’s epistles are written with a pastor’s heart. And while we might not agree with everything he says, he’s strongest when he’s writing from the heart of his experience: when he speaks movingly about who Christ is to him, when he speaks eloquently of the new man he had become through this same Christ, sharing his strong conviction that God had accomplished something new for him and for the world through the cross, of the transformation that took place in his own life, being the former persecutor of Christians, and thus holding out for us the same experience: to become new people in this new age of resurrection.

            When Paul talks about being a new creation in Christ, he’s not talking hypothetically from a vacuum, he’s not offering a religious idea and asking us to just believe it or accept, and he’s not making a philosophical argument. Instead, he’s talking about what he knows to be true, and he’s trying to be faithful to it with every ounce of his being, every bone in his body, and with every intellectual means possible, to serve this new creation with all his strength. He knows – he doesn’t have to struggle with belief or unbelief – he knows it, in his heart, in his spirit, in his gut, in his blood, sweat and tears.  He knows that when you get mixed up with Jesus of Nazareth you’re changed, you’re never the same. In fact, you feel like you’re someone new, or different, that something new and different has occurred deep within your soul that’s you, yet not you, but Christ (see Galatians 2:10-20). And because of this “something,” this shift, this re-creation within, you find that your perspective has changed. You’re outlook has changed. You no longer see the world the same way, you can’t. We no longer see issues – especially social and political issues –the same way. And you no longer see your sister or brother the same way. Your feelings have changed. Your thoughts have changed. Everything that appeared old and stale and empty of life now appears new and fresh and full of vitality.

            This is what Paul is getting at – it’s his experience of transformation at the heart of the Christian experience. It’s not dissimilar to what Jesus said to Nicodemus when he said, “You must be born again” or literally, in the Greek, “You must be born from above” (John 3:3).  “To be born from above” speaks to the other thing that Paul knew – this new life, this new creation, this new world he discovered in Christ had nothing to do with Paul, it had nothing to do with what Paul could confess or believe, it did not come from living a good life or trying to be a good person or trying to follow the Ten Commandments or the Law. The new life broke into his life the moment Christ blinded Paul with the truth that threw him to the ground on the Damascus Road – his life would never be the same again (Acts 9:1-19a). He didn’t go looking for this new life; he didn’t expect it. Much of his life was in open rebellion against God. But God made the first move, reached across the void of Paul’s separation and alienation from God, in order to set right a life set off on the wrong course: to heal a broken fellowship with God.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – reaching across our alienation from God to bring us home, prodigals all that we are.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – putting right a life full of wrong so that the wrong can never again hinder our connection with God.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – reconciling the world to Godself and not counting – not counting! – our trespasses, our debts against us.

            That’s what Paul discovered was in the heart of God, and he saw into the heart of God through the face of Jesus Christ, the same Jesus who says that God is like a parent who welcomes a wayward child home (Luke 15).

            This was an exceptionally rich week for me.  On Monday and Tuesday I was with 650 other Presbyterians in Charlotte, NC, attending the NEXT Church Conference, with Presbyterians trying to figure out what God is up to in the world and trying to discern what’s coming NEXT for the PC (USA).  It was an invigorating experience.  It became clear that what we’re looking for, what the world is really looking forward to is reconciliation.  To know that one is reconciled to God, God to humanity – humanity to God, and an experience of reconciliation with our sisters and brothers.

            Yesterday, we hosted the Covenant Network of Presbyterian Baltimore/DC Regional Conference around the theme of hospitality.  Henry Brinton, pastor at the Fairfax Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA, was our keynote speaker.  He stressed the fact that one of the fruits of the Christian life, one of the fruits of embodying the gift of hospitality, of welcome, is the experience of reconciliation.  It stands at the heart of the gospel.[1]

            We are reconciled to God – all debts paid, all delinquent accounts settled.  We are reconciled to God – we didn’t do it, it’s been done for us; we didn’t earn it, it’s merely ours to receive; it’s ultimately not about us, but about this new act of God raising Christ from the grave, inaugurating a triumph over everything that hinders us from God, everything that alienates us from what our hearts long for more than anything else – to be close to God, to be at peace with God, to be at home with God, to be whole and wholly in God.

            This might appear too good to be true, too simple. There’s something within us, maybe as Westerners, as Americans, that feels that we have to work hard and earn this reconciliation, that we have to prove that we are worthy of such a welcome. Lots of people believe this, even folks who have been in the church all their lives believe this way. They might sing “Amazing Grace,” but they don’t really believe it.  We assume we have work for and earn our welcome – this is just rubbish.  Yes, God’s grace might sound too good to be true, but maybe it’s too good not to be true?

            The gospel has power, above all other philosophies and probably most other religions, because it speaks to the plight of the human condition. The gospel offers good news to humanity lost in a swirl of bad news. It provides a way of healing for the broken, alienated heart, a healing that can’t come from within the human condition.  It can’t come from within the human condition, but must come from beyond it, outside it, from God. That’s why reconciliation cannot come from within us, within our alienation from God, each other, and our alienation with ourselves. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), many existentialist philosophers and theologians have taught us this. We’re too broken for that, all of us.  We are too trapped in ourselves, caught in our circumstances to heal ourselves, to save ourselves. That’s why it has to come from outside us.

            One of the wisest philosophical minds of the last century got right to the heart of the matter, to the heart of Paul, to the heart of the human condition. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) said, “Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean a theory about what has happened or will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.”[2] And that something is reconciliation, transformation, redemption, salvation – call it what you will. It all speaks to the healing of the human heart that every heart is crying out for. It’s about God making broken people whole.

            Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) once told a story to illustrate the popularity of the Spanish name Paco and in doing so showed something else. “A father journeyed to Madrid to put an ad in the local paper that read: PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON WEDNESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA. The next day the authorities had to muster a squadron of the Civilian Guard to disperse the mob of 800 young men who massed on the street in front of the inn.”[3]

            We’re all Pacos, hungry for forgiveness, hungry to be reconciled to God, to others, to the past, to ourselves, hungry for that welcome.  Peace with God and with others and ourselves. This is the ministry entrusted to the church. This is why we exist. If this has been your experience, then you’re called to be its witness, you’re called to be its servant, wherever you live and work. Restoring broken fellowship wherever you find it, restoring broken communities, here we witness the presence of Christ here with us. Into a world such as ours, when we open our eyes and see the ruin of broken lives strewn everywhere, especially in war and terror, brutality and violence – into this world, we have been entrusted with this hope, this experience. This is what we are called to do. This is God’s good news. Amazing, indeed.

---

[1] Brinton's keynote is based on his recently released book:  The Welcoming Congregation:  Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012).

[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1977), cited in Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1989), 182.

[3] Cited in Donald W. McCullough, The Trivialization of God:  The Dangerous Illusion of a Manageable Deity (Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1995), 100.

Food for the Journey

El Camino de Santiago de Compostella (The Way of St. James)

Isaiah 55:1-9

Third Sunday in Lent/3^rd March 2013

Isaiah wastes no time. He gets right to the point.  How did your perspective get so skewed? he says.  How did your values become so misplaced? How did your attitudes become so twisted, distorted, warped? How? Or, deeper, why?

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?  Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?  Why do you invest your life in that which does not feed your life?  Why do you exert energy and waste your time on that which does not bring life, satisfy your soul? 

            Isaiah is calling Israel­­ – calling us – to a time of honest soul-searching.  It’s time to take stock of what matters and what doesn’t; time to reevaluate the way we live our lives, invest and spend resources; time to question our values, what we hold dear to our hearts.  It’s a time to listen to our hearts, be attentive to the soul, give up a superficial life on the surface and go deep.  Now is the time. That’s what Lent is for.

            Isaiah is calling them to conduct a moral examen, self-examination, calling Israel to take stock of their lives.  And in love, with grace, he asks them: Why are you sabotaging yourselves?  Why are you undermining yourselves, saying that you want one thing, but going after another?  Why are you looking for love in all the wrong places, as it were? Why are you striving after that which in the end will only leave you disappointed? Their moral compass is broken.

            Isaiah’s questions are all rhetorical.  He’s not asking because he doesn’t know the answer.  He’s posing the questions, an effective tool of rhetoric, to move the argument forward, to make a point, to cause the listener to stop and consider. He’s not waiting for Israel to answer.

            He offers the answer; it’s contained in the question. Israel’s search for and striving after something, expending a lot of money and time and effort in the process, suggests that Israel really lacks something at its core.  There’s a desire and hunger at work here that cannot be satisfied, gratified, fulfilled.  It’s that hunger and desire that Isaiah wants them to be attentive to.  He wants them to feel the depth of their hunger, to feel the depth of their desire, the desire of their hearts.  For what do you really hunger?  What do you really desire? These are critical questions because our hungers and desires inevitably push, move, direct us down either one road or the other, one way or the other.   In this sense, Isaiah is calling them to evaluate what’s really driving their lives, what’s shaping their desires, what are they really hungry for?  What’s really driving you? If you compass is broken, who knows where you’ll end up?

            What’s ultimately missing, the hunger they crave (or maybe afraid to acknowledge) is their hunger for God; one need they lack (or a need they won’t acknowledge) is a need for God and for the kind of life, purpose and meaning that come with a life rooted and grounded in God.

            Isaiah cries to them, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters,” extending the invitation to us all.  The invitation stands: the water of life is there. But do you thirst for it?  Or do you have other thirsts?  For what are you thirsty? Are your thirsty for this water?  Desire it? Long for it? Dream about it? 

It’s important to remember this bit of wisdom running through scripture:  need, want, lack are all required in the life of faith.  If you think you’re self-sufficient, need nothing, want for nothing, lack nothing, then don’t be surprised if God seems absent or unnecessary.  There’s a direct correlation between wealth and self-sufficiency and the decline of faith, particularly North America and Western Europe.  There is a direct correlation between the rise of secularism and the growth of enormous wealth in the West.

            What Isaiah is offering God’s people doesn’t come through us or within us, it doesn’t come from what we can buy or because we’ve earned it; we don’t own it.  What we’re really looking for, hungry for, and need, cannot be found or fed or met within ourselves or what we have. We have to acknowledge that we are poor, because what God gives cannot be bought.  You don’t need money for this.  We don’t have the “currency” to obtain this.  What you need is your poverty, to confess what you lack.   Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). In Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).  Isaiah says, “You that have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” 

            And so Isaiah calls them to acknowledge their impoverishment, their need for God; he reminds them of God’s covenant with them, and he invites them back.  “Seek the LORD while he may be found…let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy…” (Is. 55:6-7). Seek and return.

            In many ways these two words – seek and return – in their ebb and flow, sum up the life of faith.  Seek and return and seek and return and seek and return…here we discover the rhythm of the Christian life.  It’s not surprising that our life as Christians has been described as a high adventure, a journey, a quest, a pilgrimage; then disciples become pilgrims, explorers, travelers on the road, on a mission, an expedition. 

            It all begins with a desire to seek, to search after God.  St. Augustine (354-430) said, "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement."  On order to find God one must desire God.  And for some, for most, the desire doesn’t emerge until we begin the journey, go after God, leave home, and venture forth toward unknown territory.  The inward search for God was, and is, often matched by the outer journey. The outer journey helps to clarify what is going on inwardly, clarifying the desire. Sometimes you have to just set off on the journey and along the way discover what you’re looking for, discover your true compass, discover the One who is seeking after you. This is why pilgrimage became so important early in the Christian experience, particularly in Europe.  Medieval Europe was covered with pilgrimage routes to shrines and cathedrals.

            I was very conscious of this living in St. Andrews, Scotland, with its ancient cathedral dedicated to St. Andrew, once the destination for pilgrims who arrived from all over Europe to worship near the relic of Andrew.  Many ancient pilgrimage routes are being restored for modern-day pilgrims; there’s talk of building one from Iona in the west of Scotland to St. Andrews in the east.  Actually, it’s happening all over Europe, the rediscovery of pilgrimage.  The most famous route is the one that stretches from France, down across northern Spain to the Cathedral of St. James in Compostella. El Camino de Santiago de Compostella  (The Way of St. James), crossing hundreds of miles, is gaining in popularity, with more than 180,000 pilgrims receiving their Compostella, the certificate awarded to those who have traveled 62 miles on foot or 124 miles on bicycle on consecutive days and who are prepared to testify that they made the journey for religious, spiritual, or religious-cultural reasons.[1] One day I, too, hope to walk the camino.  It’s on my bucket list.

            There’s a good movie about the camino that came out several years ago with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, called The Way (2012).  Martin Sheen plays an American doctor from California who heads overseas to recover the body of his estranged son who died in a storm in the Pyreness while traversing the camino.  When the father arrives in France, he decides to take the pilgrimage himself, although he really doesn’t understand the point of it all. As he walks he soon discovers that he’s not alone, there are others like him on the journey, people grieving, people searching for meaning, for healing, for purpose, for God.  The journey helps the father break free from what he calls his “California bubble life,” and he begins to fathom something his son said to him, the last thing he ever heard from his son, he said there’s a difference between “the life we live and the life we choose.”  What we choose.  And so we’re back to hunger and desire.  What informs our choosing?   Sometimes it takes the journey to discover what we’re really searching for, what matters most in life.

            The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) expressed the central purpose of pilgrimage this way: 

                        The point of traveling is not/ to arrive but to return home

                        Laden with pollen, you shall work up

                        Into honey the mind feeds on.[2]  

The purpose of the journey is to return, to arrive home a changed person.  T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) said something similar:                                    

We shall not cease from exploration,

                        and the end of all of our exploring

                        will be to arrive where we started

                        and know the place for the first time.[3]

            My good friend, Ian Bradley, who teaches at St. Andrews and has written extensively on pilgrimage.  (Ian will be visiting with us in early May.) Ian makes the point that the goal of pilgrimage, of the journey, is not necessarily a cathedral or shrine, or a particular destination; it’s the journey itself, because in the walking, in the searching itself we are changed.  Pilgrims who attempt the camino often describe the final arrival in Santiago and the return home this way; “el regreso es la salida (the return is the departure), in other words, “the Camino, the way, begins in Santiago.” That’s where the real journey begins.  “As one pilgrim put it, ‘You are not the same when you return as when you started out.  Your very soul is on the move’…  The physical journey concludes in Santiago where the real spiritual journey begins.’”[4]

            Seek and return.  We don’t have to travel to Spain or France. There are other routes to take, other ways to be on that journey. What matters most is that we see the life of faith as a journey. We’re on a road and the Spirit is trying to take us somewhere.  It’s our task to engage in the search, to seek after God – the God who is always elusive – and so we search and in searching arrive, returning home, home to God’s mercy and goodness and grace.  This is the real “currency,” grace, goodness, mercy, that allows us to buy and eat food that nourishes, bread that feeds and satisfies us, drink that revives us.

            And so Jesus gives us this table, with bread and wine, to remind of us of God’s sheer grace, free grace;

here is food for our journey toward him,

 food for our journey in him,

food for our journey for him. 

For if we seek him we shall most certainly find and in finding him know we are home.

           

---

[1] Ian Bradley, Pilgrimage:  A Spiritual and Cultural Journey (Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson, 2009), 99.

[2] Cited in Bradley, 22.

[3] T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets.

[4] Nancy Fey, Pilgrim Stories On and Off the Road to Santiago (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998), 4, cited in Bradley, 110.

The Face That Won't Turn Away

Psalm 27

Second Sunday in Lent/24^th February 2013

The psalter reading, Psalm 27, holds up for us two different, but related images: a movement of the heart and a turning of the face.  Heart and face.    

“My heart shall not fear,” the psalmist says (Ps 27:3). Throughout scripture we see that the heart was viewed as something more than simply an organ pumping blood.  It was the center of one’s personality, the core of one’s being. The heart symbolizes one’s sense of self and a healthy heart is essential to the life of faith.  If your heart is not right with God, then something is wrong.  If our hearts are devoted to others gods, instead of the Living God, then our hearts have betrayed us; then the heart is broken, fragmented, alienated, cut off from its deepest desires.  God wants our hearts and wants our hearts to desire after God.  To say that God wants our hearts means that God wants more than part of our lives – more than empty religiosity or piety when it’s convenient or simply good behavior – God desires the heart of our lives, the center of who we are, all that we are.

This idea has always been at the center of Christian discipleship.  When John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, was converted in Oxford, he said that his “heart was strangely warmed.”  And even our own beloved John Calvin (1509-1564) had a heart – which might come as a surprise to many!  We usually don’t think of Calvin as having one, being the brainiac that he was, but he did.  Calvin’s conversion was very similar to Wesley’s.  In fact, the depth of Calvin’s conversion is beautifully symbolized by the logo he created for himself.  It was the image of a heart resting on an upturned open-faced palm.  He gave the passion of his heart, a heart set on fire, the core of his being, to God. The image of the heart on fire was joined with his personal motto: prompte et sincere in opere domini.  Prompt and sincere in the work of the Lord.

Both Wesley and Calvin’s experiences are rooted in the Biblical understanding that the desire to seek after God is first an experience of the heart.  Not an intellectual exercise; it comes from the heart. It comes from the center of who we are.  God wants our hearts.  That’s why the prophet Joel could say, “Rend your hearts, not your clothing.  Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful” (Joel 2:13).  Joel’s invitation here is to return to the Lord, to enter into relationship with God – heart to heart.  This is what life is about.  This is why we were created: to be in communion with God and with one another.  Heart-to-heart.

The heart isn’t the only image that captures the importance of relationships.  There’s another image that runs through the pages of the Bible; it’s the image of the face.  Psalm 27 beautifully holds them together.  “Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!  ‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’  Your face, LORD, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me” (vs. 8). The psalmist makes this extraordinary claim: not only does God want our hearts, but the heart also wants God. St. Augustine’s (354-430) well-known prayer captures this best when he confessed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O Lord.”[1] And the deepest desire of the human heart is to see the face of God, to find ourselves in a face-to-face relationship with the Living God.

Why is this so critical?  To look at another and to be seen by another creates a tight bond, a connection, a communion. Imagine God looking at you:  God looking at you, looking straight at you, staring at you in the eyes.  In that look you discover that God is looking at you with delight, with the eyes of love, with a look that pierces the defenses of your heart, that connects with your heart of hearts, a look that draws you into communion with him, a look that tells you that you belong to him.  We find this understanding all over the psalms.  In fact, the worst possible judgment of God is not some tragic event, but the withdrawal of God’s gracious glance.[2]  To not be seen by God is the worst possible judgment.  Why?  Without the look of God we are lost.  It’s only when their image is mirrored back from the face of God that the psalmist and Israel know who they are.  The price of sin is the face of God veiled, covered from God’s people. Psalm 88 says, “O LORD, why do you cast me off?  Why do you hide your face from me?” (vs. 14).  The sign of redemption, of forgiveness, is the turning of God’s face towards us with the open look of love, with an unveiled face.  In Psalm 80 we hear, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved” (vs. 3).

We’re all searching for a face.  Child psychologists have shown us that an infant finds his or her place in the world through the orienting face of a parent.  In his classic work, The First Year of Life, psychologist René Spitz (1877-1974) demonstrated that the facial mirroring between parent and child is the primary means through which a person is shaped.  By three months an infant seeks and responds to a particular face for security and identity.  The infant seeks that face and smiles. When that face isn’t there, when it turns away, panic, anxiety, and fear set in.  Psychologists D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) and Erik Erikson (1902-1994) have both identified the need for the face and the enormous power of this drive to find a face.[3]  It’s especially strong from twelve to eighteen months.  The look of that face tells the child who he or she is.  “The face, then, is the personal center that is innately sought by a child and the focus of the earliest sense of one’s humanity.”[4]  Through the relationship, through the face-to-face interaction, a child finds a place in the world and is confirmed as a self.  The round shape of the face is a symbol of wholeness; it’s a deep archetype of wholeness.  It is round and it bears the imprint of the cross - the vertical line of nose and mouth, the horizontal line of our eyes forming four quadrants.  Justin Martyr (c.100-165) writing from the second century said, “The Cross is imprinted upon man, even upon his face.”[5] 

But as we grow up the face that grants us our identity and place in the world starts to turn away. Instead of one or two faces centering our lives, we encounter many.  We see other faces, children or adults, some that smile and accept us, others that look at us with anger and rejection; some that love us and like us, other faces that tell us that we look ugly or that we’re stupid, or poor, the wrong color, the wrong race, the wrong orientation, the wrong gender.  We see harsh faces, judging faces.  We discover faces that won’t look at us or won’t notice us. The need for the face, though, is still there; we’re all searching for that face that will tell us who we are.  We’re looking for the face that will look upon us directly in the eye and see us for who we really are, will really see us and not look through us or past us.

Several years ago I was wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and stumbled upon the work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976). In an exhibition of Strand’s work there was one photo, one image that struck me and continues to haunt me.  It has the title “Sandwich Man.”  It’s a black and white photo of a man holding two billboards, one in front of him and one behind him, held together with straps that reach across his shoulders.  People who carried billboards like this, a common sighting during the Great Depression, were known as “sandwich men,” men “sandwiched” between billboards that advertised sales at area department stores. (Not unlike what one often sees along Route 40 in Catonsville.)  The man in the image is very poor.  His face is worn and beaten.  But it’s the way Strand composed or framed the photo that’s most arresting.  He’s standing in front of a building, but over his left shoulder you can see the concrete exterior of a building on which was painted this message:  POST NO BILLS.  

Paul Strand, "Sandwich Man."

The message is clear:  It’s okay to advertise on this man, but not on the building.  The building is more important than the person.  Strand’s photographs are biting social commentaries, critical attacks upon commercial and industrial America.  There’s one other thing about this photo, your eye focuses on the billboard so that the man holding the billboard becomes invisible, becoming one who is seen through. The man is unimportant.  It’s a profound statement of the way in which so much in our society – even today – dehumanizes.

We’re all looking for the face that will re-humanize us, the face that will look at us and in whose eyes we will find unconditional love and acceptance.  We’re searching for a face that will look at us and see us and not turn away in shame or embarrassment or fear.  And we’re looking for a face that we can look upon, without turning away our heads in shame or guilt.  The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) said that if you want to see the power of sin in the world then look at the city street and all the people who are afraid to look at each another. You don’t have to go to a city street to observe this, just go to the mall. 

We all desire face-to-face interaction.  And yet, because we have all been hurt, we find it extremely difficult to look into another’s eye without turning our heads.  Yet, “The longing of the face that will not go away persists” throughout our lives.  Practical theologian James Loder (1931-2001) put it so well when he said that we are all looking for that experience, for that face, in whose eyes “one is given a place in the cosmos, confirmed as a self, and addressed by the presence of a loving other.”[6]

A loving other can be your friend, your spouse or partner, your girlfriend or boyfriend, your “soul friend” (as the Celtic Christians used to say).  But even the best marriages, the best friendships and relationships, the best soul friends cannot fill this void; they cannot meet this most basic human need because it puts too much strain on the relationship.  The deepest desire of the human heart – we ache and long for this, cry and pray and hope for this – is to be addressed by the presence of a loving other, a Wholly Other, Who is God.  Like Moses and the psalmist, we long to see God face-to-face, to know the face of the One Who is love, the one in whose eyes we are given life, given a purpose in life, confirmed for who we are, addressed by the very Spirit of God!

For me, the place where all of these images of heart and face come together wonderfully is in Paul’s second letter to Corinth.  It’s one of my favorite verses of scripture.  “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” Why? Because “…we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord . . . .  For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ who has shone” [Where?] “in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” [where?] “in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4: 1, 5-6).

Jesus Christ is the face of God.  When we look at him, we see God.  And when Christ looks at us, it is with the face of God.  It is the face of the One for whom we pine all our lives.  It is the face of mercy and grace.  The longing for the face that will not go away is satisfied finally in Jesus Christ.  When we look to him, we find the true desire of our hearts.  T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) knew this so well when he wrote:

 No place of grace for those who avoid the face.

 No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice.[7]

And what does Christ tell us?  What do we read and reflect in his face?  In him we find the only One who can really tell us who we are.  He looks upon us and sees us, looks us in the eye and sees us – really sees us.  He doesn’t look through us or around us or beyond us or down on us.  We’re not invisible to him.  He looks at us, not with eyes of shame or scorn, but in love.  When we turn toward the face of Christ and see him, face-to-face, we will encounter the meaning of grace, and we will know, our heart of hearts will know, that we have come home, that in him is the source of our joy. As Augustine knew, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.”

---

[1]From Augustine’s, Confessions.

[2]See Paul S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989).

[3]See James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment, Second Edition (Colorado Springs, CO:  Helmers & Howard, 1989).

[4]Loder, p. 163.

[5]From Justin’s Apologia, cited by J. Jacobi, Complex, Archetype, Symbol (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), quoted in Loder.

[6]Loder, p. 165, 166.  On the centrality of facial mirroring in Loder’s theology see, Kenneth E. Kovacs, The Relational Theology of James E. Loder:  Encounter and Conviction (New York:  Peter Lang, 2011), 91-94, 122-123.

[6]T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” (1930) The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), p. 65.