The Many Faces Of God
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Think of all the faces we show the world every day. We scrub up every morning and put our game face on. We never show our real face except to those who know us best, the ones who see through the game face to the real you and me. But with everyone else we change our faces.
The doorbell rings. You're working on something, so you grimace over the interruption. Watch the contours of your face change, depending on who's at the door. Perhaps it's a door-to-door salesman and now you're stuck listening to his pitch through a cracked door. Or, it's a pesky neighbor who is always coming over to complain about something. Watch your face tighten until she tells you her husband just died and she didn't know who else to turn to. How does your face look now? Or, it's FedEx or UPS and you're perturbed by the inconvenience until you see that the package is from your son or daughter or the love of your life and you can hardly open it fast enough.
Look at the many faces we show the world, the different faces we human beings make depending on our conclusions about things. One Sunday, just before I walked in for worship at a church where I was preaching, I saw two of the greeters wearing "Ask Me" buttons, and I said, "I've got a question for you: What happened to the home team last night?" The husband frowned and said, "Yeah, it's awful, isn't it?" However, his wife broke into a huge smile and said, "Oh, Dr. Carl, I told my husband last night, we won it last year; it's someone else's turn. After all, we ought to share, shouldn't we?" I wish you could have seen the look on her husband's face when she said that! We show different faces to the world depending on what we're thinking or feeling. God does, too, but not anthropomorphically. After all, God is God, and God does what God wants to do. God is never a pale projection of the human condition the way some people think.
If you read the Bible carefully you will see that God shows more than one face to the world, which is in part what the odd doctrine of the Trinity is all about. Same God, people, different faces, different essences, but one. Go figure. Look at God in this Isaiah text and you will see God manifested in at least three faces that roughly approximate Father, Son, Spirit or creator, redeemer, sender -- three faces and three ways to look at God.
The first is the hidden face of God, which Isaiah seems to have glimpsed in the temple one morning. The scripture says, "In the year King Uzziah died" (v. 1), which tells us Isaiah may have been attending a funeral. Picture a youthful Isaiah joining a throng of Judeans passing through the palace to gaze upon the body of the deceased monarch lying in state the way they used to lay out Russian leaders. From there Isaiah passes into the temple, where, in a moving and heart-searching spiritual experience, he has a vision of the living king who never dies.
Ever had an experience where you see something so penetrating and moving that everything else seems to vanish into a haze? I remember one morning riding the bus in Pittsburgh and noticing a large, elderly, white woman looking down and seeing her shoe was untied; she strained to tie it but couldn't reach it. Across from her sat a young, black man with wild hair with an iPod playing so loudly the whole bus could hear it and tattoos on his arms. He watched the woman struggling for her shoestring then moved from his seat and knelt before her. I watched him tie her shoes gently in a nice, neat knot then grin at her. She patted him on the head and nodded with a smile. No words were spoken. The scene glowed before me like a bright painting that blocked out everything else happening on the bus. When the spell broke I looked around and saw everyone on the bus beaming with joy. It's a cameo spot I will never forget. What is it for you? Riding through the mist at the bottom of Niagara Falls? The memory of a rescue on a battlefield?
Isaiah couldn't see anything else going on that day except this luminous vision of God. Oh, he saw the smoke from the incense, smoke that gets in your eyes and changes your view of things. I remember worshiping at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, that dark, mysterious place, a gilded hall crisscrossed with shafts of light as bearded Greek Orthodox priests chanted ancient tunes while smoky incense swung back and forth like a pendulum and shrouded the entire room.
The hidden God comes to us in glances and whispers. God is the one who dwells in obscurity. The cloud around this God is thick and any Israelite to who dares to come near will die. We're much too chatty in church. As a result we lose all sense of the holiness of God. Once a pastor wanted to teach some young children about worship and stopped at the door of the sanctuary before entering. He stood silently before them until they quieted down. Speaking in little more than a whisper he said, "We're going into a very special room. You must be completely quiet. I don't want to hear a sound as we walk into that room for God is there." As they walked in and sat down, you could have heard a pin drop. They all sucked air as they glanced at the huge dome high above them. There was a holy hush in the room.
I wonder what Isaiah really saw that day. Scripture tells us he saw seraphim, which means fire-spirits. In Isaiah's day, a seraph was an effigy for a foreign god, something like a Sphinx, part-human, part-animal with six wings. Judah wasn't an independent country, and Uzziah was a practical king. He paid tribute to Assyria by allowing the Assyrians to set up seraphim in the temple courts as a reminder of who was really in charge. Though, with his human eye, Isaiah had often seen these ugly monstrosities, with his eye of devotion he perceived them to be around the throne of God, covering their faces and serving the living God. Imagine our gods today -- beautiful cars, houses, stock options, trophies -- all crammed up under a cross in your church. See the cross as more important than they are and you'll get a glimpse of what Isaiah saw that day.
The hidden God is also the Savior God and the sender God as we discover on Trinity Sunday, which takes us to the second face, the human face of God. In traditional theology we call the human face of God the Christ. But here we get a glimpse of him in Isaiah's vision. Look how God uses even these human-made forms to bring about redemption. So, God takes on human form and shows the divine face to every one of us. All we have to have is the eyes to see it.
First we have to recognize our own sin, which Isaiah sees by simply being in the presence of the Holy One. Think about being around someone who is as purely good as you can imagine. No one is perfect, of course, but some certainly approach it. You feel guilty just being in that person's presence. "Woe is me" (v. 5), says Isaiah. Buechner says, "You catch sight of your face in the mirror when you are brushing your teeth in the morning or combing your hair, and often you say, in effect, 'Well, there it is again, the same old washed and slept-on thing I saw yesterday and will see again tomorrow -- no better, no worse.' "1 Sometimes you wonder if it's really you and ask, "Am I my face?" The answer is "Yes" and "No" because we are our faces and we are not. That's how confusing it all is. "Beneath the face there are many layers of self and the deepest layers are for the most part hidden from us." There is that inner voice, which knows the game faces we put on at work and at home aren't the real you or me that has sometimes done some pretty awful things.
But, "fathoms down into the mystery of yourself you go," says Buechner, "into the darkness of guilt ... into the darkness of need ... Deeper and deeper you go until at last the darkness begins to be tinged with gold, which as the poem says, is the gold of light. And in that light you begin to see, as in a dream at first, your own true face ... It's the face of love, because it's a face like Christ's."2 "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, dwelling in a people of unclean lips." The seraphim fly to him and touch his lips and the sting of forgiveness opens for him the human face of the God who loves and redeems, the God who will never let us go, no matter how bad we have been, the God who will give up everything to save even one of us. Of course, this godly human face is the one we Christians call the Christ.
Which brings us to the final face of God, the heavenly face that oddly enough is only seen, from our perspective, here on earth. We see the heavenly face of God in the faces of those who have caught the contagion that Isaiah is spreading. It's the power of the gospel that, once it gets hold of you, cannot let you go. We see the heavenly face in the hurting world, the hungry, the sick, the naked, and the sad, empty faces of dying children who have no food. The face of the poor is the face of God reaching out to us for help. The next time someone in need is a nuisance to you, remember that you may be looking into the very face of God. "Inasmuch as we do it unto the least of these ..." and all that.
The heavenly face is also the one for whom the gospel has taken hold and the Spirit has inspired. "Whom shall I send?" says the Lord. And Isaiah, who before wouldn't sign up for anything at church, raises his hand and says, "Here am I, send me!" (v. 8). One heads off to seminary. Another one suddenly begins raising money for children who don't have much and need an education. Another one signs up to serve stew at the local soup kitchen. You can tell by the glow on their faces. Light a candle in broad daylight and you hardly see it, but light a candle in a cave and it brightens the whole room. Just as a light is muted in the sunshine, but magnified in the dark, so the heavenly face of God stands out in the world. Who is it that illumines our faces in this way? It is the very Spirit of God, the one who fills us our lives with faith, hope, and love. You can tell with people who have the Spirit. They are "in-spired" (in + spirare = to breathe into or blow upon, to have an animating effect) and "en-thusiastic" (en + theos, that is, filled with God's breath and moved to new action).
What am I talking about? I'm talking about people who have the gift of encouragement. Someone once identified three kinds of elders: "yes" elders, "maybe" elders, and "no" elders. The person making the distinction was talking about a man who had just died who was a "yes" elder: agreeable, interested, ready to try things and never slamming the door shut the way "no" elders do. "Yes" elders are encouragers and inspirers. You can tell by the glow on their faces. You've seen that glow. It's the same one people have when they talk about their grandchildren. They say, "Have I told you about my grandchildren?" and the reply is, "Not in the last five minutes. Got any pictures?" "Thought you'd never ask!" I remember talking with a man who was proud of his grandson who played on his college baseball team. "He has the most runs on the team and is just a freshman!" said the grandfather with great excitement. When I asked what his grandson was majoring in, there was a long pause then this response, "I'm not sure. Baseball, I guess. I'll have to find out." But his face was aglow with joy.
That glow on that grandfather's face is what Isaiah must have had that day. It's the heavenly glow of the saints whom we see, not just in stained-glass windows but in real life, the ones through whom the light of Christ shines -- like Stephen. They said of him that day that his face shone like the face of an angel.
What about you? I wonder what others see in your face. In worship, we see the hidden face of God, who creates and provides. In Christ, we see the human face of God, who saves and redeems. The only way for the world to see the heavenly face of God is to look at you and at me.
I wonder what the world sees in your face and mine. Amen.
____________
1. Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 19.
2. Ibid, p. 22.
The doorbell rings. You're working on something, so you grimace over the interruption. Watch the contours of your face change, depending on who's at the door. Perhaps it's a door-to-door salesman and now you're stuck listening to his pitch through a cracked door. Or, it's a pesky neighbor who is always coming over to complain about something. Watch your face tighten until she tells you her husband just died and she didn't know who else to turn to. How does your face look now? Or, it's FedEx or UPS and you're perturbed by the inconvenience until you see that the package is from your son or daughter or the love of your life and you can hardly open it fast enough.
Look at the many faces we show the world, the different faces we human beings make depending on our conclusions about things. One Sunday, just before I walked in for worship at a church where I was preaching, I saw two of the greeters wearing "Ask Me" buttons, and I said, "I've got a question for you: What happened to the home team last night?" The husband frowned and said, "Yeah, it's awful, isn't it?" However, his wife broke into a huge smile and said, "Oh, Dr. Carl, I told my husband last night, we won it last year; it's someone else's turn. After all, we ought to share, shouldn't we?" I wish you could have seen the look on her husband's face when she said that! We show different faces to the world depending on what we're thinking or feeling. God does, too, but not anthropomorphically. After all, God is God, and God does what God wants to do. God is never a pale projection of the human condition the way some people think.
If you read the Bible carefully you will see that God shows more than one face to the world, which is in part what the odd doctrine of the Trinity is all about. Same God, people, different faces, different essences, but one. Go figure. Look at God in this Isaiah text and you will see God manifested in at least three faces that roughly approximate Father, Son, Spirit or creator, redeemer, sender -- three faces and three ways to look at God.
The first is the hidden face of God, which Isaiah seems to have glimpsed in the temple one morning. The scripture says, "In the year King Uzziah died" (v. 1), which tells us Isaiah may have been attending a funeral. Picture a youthful Isaiah joining a throng of Judeans passing through the palace to gaze upon the body of the deceased monarch lying in state the way they used to lay out Russian leaders. From there Isaiah passes into the temple, where, in a moving and heart-searching spiritual experience, he has a vision of the living king who never dies.
Ever had an experience where you see something so penetrating and moving that everything else seems to vanish into a haze? I remember one morning riding the bus in Pittsburgh and noticing a large, elderly, white woman looking down and seeing her shoe was untied; she strained to tie it but couldn't reach it. Across from her sat a young, black man with wild hair with an iPod playing so loudly the whole bus could hear it and tattoos on his arms. He watched the woman struggling for her shoestring then moved from his seat and knelt before her. I watched him tie her shoes gently in a nice, neat knot then grin at her. She patted him on the head and nodded with a smile. No words were spoken. The scene glowed before me like a bright painting that blocked out everything else happening on the bus. When the spell broke I looked around and saw everyone on the bus beaming with joy. It's a cameo spot I will never forget. What is it for you? Riding through the mist at the bottom of Niagara Falls? The memory of a rescue on a battlefield?
Isaiah couldn't see anything else going on that day except this luminous vision of God. Oh, he saw the smoke from the incense, smoke that gets in your eyes and changes your view of things. I remember worshiping at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, that dark, mysterious place, a gilded hall crisscrossed with shafts of light as bearded Greek Orthodox priests chanted ancient tunes while smoky incense swung back and forth like a pendulum and shrouded the entire room.
The hidden God comes to us in glances and whispers. God is the one who dwells in obscurity. The cloud around this God is thick and any Israelite to who dares to come near will die. We're much too chatty in church. As a result we lose all sense of the holiness of God. Once a pastor wanted to teach some young children about worship and stopped at the door of the sanctuary before entering. He stood silently before them until they quieted down. Speaking in little more than a whisper he said, "We're going into a very special room. You must be completely quiet. I don't want to hear a sound as we walk into that room for God is there." As they walked in and sat down, you could have heard a pin drop. They all sucked air as they glanced at the huge dome high above them. There was a holy hush in the room.
I wonder what Isaiah really saw that day. Scripture tells us he saw seraphim, which means fire-spirits. In Isaiah's day, a seraph was an effigy for a foreign god, something like a Sphinx, part-human, part-animal with six wings. Judah wasn't an independent country, and Uzziah was a practical king. He paid tribute to Assyria by allowing the Assyrians to set up seraphim in the temple courts as a reminder of who was really in charge. Though, with his human eye, Isaiah had often seen these ugly monstrosities, with his eye of devotion he perceived them to be around the throne of God, covering their faces and serving the living God. Imagine our gods today -- beautiful cars, houses, stock options, trophies -- all crammed up under a cross in your church. See the cross as more important than they are and you'll get a glimpse of what Isaiah saw that day.
The hidden God is also the Savior God and the sender God as we discover on Trinity Sunday, which takes us to the second face, the human face of God. In traditional theology we call the human face of God the Christ. But here we get a glimpse of him in Isaiah's vision. Look how God uses even these human-made forms to bring about redemption. So, God takes on human form and shows the divine face to every one of us. All we have to have is the eyes to see it.
First we have to recognize our own sin, which Isaiah sees by simply being in the presence of the Holy One. Think about being around someone who is as purely good as you can imagine. No one is perfect, of course, but some certainly approach it. You feel guilty just being in that person's presence. "Woe is me" (v. 5), says Isaiah. Buechner says, "You catch sight of your face in the mirror when you are brushing your teeth in the morning or combing your hair, and often you say, in effect, 'Well, there it is again, the same old washed and slept-on thing I saw yesterday and will see again tomorrow -- no better, no worse.' "1 Sometimes you wonder if it's really you and ask, "Am I my face?" The answer is "Yes" and "No" because we are our faces and we are not. That's how confusing it all is. "Beneath the face there are many layers of self and the deepest layers are for the most part hidden from us." There is that inner voice, which knows the game faces we put on at work and at home aren't the real you or me that has sometimes done some pretty awful things.
But, "fathoms down into the mystery of yourself you go," says Buechner, "into the darkness of guilt ... into the darkness of need ... Deeper and deeper you go until at last the darkness begins to be tinged with gold, which as the poem says, is the gold of light. And in that light you begin to see, as in a dream at first, your own true face ... It's the face of love, because it's a face like Christ's."2 "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, dwelling in a people of unclean lips." The seraphim fly to him and touch his lips and the sting of forgiveness opens for him the human face of the God who loves and redeems, the God who will never let us go, no matter how bad we have been, the God who will give up everything to save even one of us. Of course, this godly human face is the one we Christians call the Christ.
Which brings us to the final face of God, the heavenly face that oddly enough is only seen, from our perspective, here on earth. We see the heavenly face of God in the faces of those who have caught the contagion that Isaiah is spreading. It's the power of the gospel that, once it gets hold of you, cannot let you go. We see the heavenly face in the hurting world, the hungry, the sick, the naked, and the sad, empty faces of dying children who have no food. The face of the poor is the face of God reaching out to us for help. The next time someone in need is a nuisance to you, remember that you may be looking into the very face of God. "Inasmuch as we do it unto the least of these ..." and all that.
The heavenly face is also the one for whom the gospel has taken hold and the Spirit has inspired. "Whom shall I send?" says the Lord. And Isaiah, who before wouldn't sign up for anything at church, raises his hand and says, "Here am I, send me!" (v. 8). One heads off to seminary. Another one suddenly begins raising money for children who don't have much and need an education. Another one signs up to serve stew at the local soup kitchen. You can tell by the glow on their faces. Light a candle in broad daylight and you hardly see it, but light a candle in a cave and it brightens the whole room. Just as a light is muted in the sunshine, but magnified in the dark, so the heavenly face of God stands out in the world. Who is it that illumines our faces in this way? It is the very Spirit of God, the one who fills us our lives with faith, hope, and love. You can tell with people who have the Spirit. They are "in-spired" (in + spirare = to breathe into or blow upon, to have an animating effect) and "en-thusiastic" (en + theos, that is, filled with God's breath and moved to new action).
What am I talking about? I'm talking about people who have the gift of encouragement. Someone once identified three kinds of elders: "yes" elders, "maybe" elders, and "no" elders. The person making the distinction was talking about a man who had just died who was a "yes" elder: agreeable, interested, ready to try things and never slamming the door shut the way "no" elders do. "Yes" elders are encouragers and inspirers. You can tell by the glow on their faces. You've seen that glow. It's the same one people have when they talk about their grandchildren. They say, "Have I told you about my grandchildren?" and the reply is, "Not in the last five minutes. Got any pictures?" "Thought you'd never ask!" I remember talking with a man who was proud of his grandson who played on his college baseball team. "He has the most runs on the team and is just a freshman!" said the grandfather with great excitement. When I asked what his grandson was majoring in, there was a long pause then this response, "I'm not sure. Baseball, I guess. I'll have to find out." But his face was aglow with joy.
That glow on that grandfather's face is what Isaiah must have had that day. It's the heavenly glow of the saints whom we see, not just in stained-glass windows but in real life, the ones through whom the light of Christ shines -- like Stephen. They said of him that day that his face shone like the face of an angel.
What about you? I wonder what others see in your face. In worship, we see the hidden face of God, who creates and provides. In Christ, we see the human face of God, who saves and redeems. The only way for the world to see the heavenly face of God is to look at you and at me.
I wonder what the world sees in your face and mine. Amen.
____________
1. Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 19.
2. Ibid, p. 22.
