The Face of Jesus....

cindijh · **Joined:** Fri May 02, 2008 12:21 am **Posts:** 18

[font=Comic Sans MS]The following is an excerpt from a three part series on the death penalty by Wayne Northerly on the blog CLARION Journal of Spirituality and Justice. Not exactly about the death penalty, although he does tie it in later. The Clarion Journal is a peace church blog with varied writings by assorted authors from a peace church kind of perspective. Many of them are Mennonites. Also...I know I've posted several fairly long articles on this forum this morning. More often than not people do not read long articles...but these came to mind to post.....

An unusual picture was once circulated around our Church when I was a kid. I remember it well. The brief notation below the picture explained that a man had been travelling along the highway after a pristine snowfall sparkled its brightness everywhere under a glorious sun. At one point he stopped, and noticed an unusual play of shadow against the backdrop of the freshly fallen snow. Being an amateur photographer with his own dark room, he took out his camera and snapped a few pictures of the strange phenomenon. He was astounded when, upon developing them, one in particular displayed an amazing likeness to the traditional artists’ depictions of the face of Jesus. We all were invited to see what he saw. What I saw first however, as did most, were dark blotches against a snow-white background. There was no face of any kind to see.

Except there was!

It took some doing, some adjusting, but finally I got it! I saw the face too! Then, what was fascinating after that was, no matter how I looked at the picture, sidewards glance, upside down, back to front even when held against a clear window, I never failed immediately to recognize the face of Jesus in that photo.

We all know this phenomenon. But some never did see the face. Their eyes simply never adjusted. They even doubted that we who saw really “saw”.

Theology means literally, a word, or words about God. What theology really is concerning is creating for us, the believer, an accurate word-picture of God’s face. Now I’m not an artist, unfortunately. Still, my task at the outset is to draw a picture of God’s face for you, to ask if this fits Scripture, tradition, and your experience.

Unfortunately, there are no artists’ drawings of the real face of Jesus that have come down to us. So we have to discover the face of Jesus, and thereby the face of God, we Christians say, somehow in the written word - the Bible. The data of Scripture, in ongoing dialogue with Christians’ interpretations through the ages and our faith community’s understandings today all help us throughout our lives to form an ever sharper image of God.

Once an editor (in his 50’s) of a theological piece I had written and was publishing said to me as the task was completed: “I have never been able to shake a picture of God I have had since my childhood. That picture is one of a God who is stern, harsh, totally demanding, punitive, a ‘Hangin’ Judge’ ready to condemn me severely for anything I do wrong, and likely to relegate me to hellfire should I ever so slightly step out of line.” He was a Christian, to be sure, and a faithful church-goer, he acknowledged, but he wasn’t entirely sure that spending an eternity with such a “god” would not be more like his understanding of hell!

The dilemma we are in can be put as an analogy. The Bible is like a monstrous jigsaw puzzle, with a vast number of individual pieces to it. It’s in fact the Ultimate Cosmic Jigsaw Puzzle, we Christians believe! I have seen once in my life the kind of jigsaw puzzle I am comparing the Bible to: one with identically shaped pieces. In the puzzle I saw, they were all squares. Now, it was a daunting enough task to put the puzzle together that I saw with the original box and the picture on it. Try doing an identically shaped pieces jigsaw puzzle sometime! But what if there were rival box cover pictures, and debate about which was the authentic one?

I am suggesting that the biblical data is precisely like that kind of jigsaw puzzle with identically shaped pieces. I’m suggesting further that we would have no hope of putting it together at all were it not for the face of Jesus we discover in the New Testament revelation, which becomes for us the ultimate picture of the face of God. I am suggesting that all other box covers than that of Jesus as seen in the New Testament revelation, are inadequate or wrong. But I’m suggesting further that it is nonetheless difficult to see the face of Jesus properly. For some they “see”, but all that is seen are dark blotches. And I think that one in that case does not really “see”. Piece together the jigsaw puzzle when one only sees dark blotches, and one’s picture of God will turn out entirely differently from doing it with the face of Jesus seen aright!

What do the biblical texts say:?
I Jn 1:1-7
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
4 We write this to make our joy complete.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (NIV)
The biblical text allows that we may in fact only see dark blotches - “walk in darkness” - even when we profess Christ.
John 1:1-5
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (NIV)
Again, however, we may look, but only see darkness, dark blotches.
.......
John 1:14-18
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’“
16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. (NIV)
Jesus is the face of God to us.
Heb 1:1-3
1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,
2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (NIV)
God spoke in various ways once, but definitively in Jesus.
Heb 12:1-2
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (NIV)

Jesus is the Centre of our faith. No one, nothing, else!

What do all these texts say? A few key points:
1. Faith is all about “seeing” Jesus aright. No dark blotches on white, for we are called out of darkness into the light.
2. The Ultimate Picture of God is none other than the face of Jesus. To fill that out: when Jesus teaches something, exemplifies it in the Gospel texts, then at least one New Testament writer seems to reflect that theological understanding (remember, theology is all about a word-picture of God), we ought to sit up, take notice, and work on living out the truth of it. Now I was raised that way, as were many of you. And I still am trying to live out my Christian life according to that understanding.
3. If Jesus is the final, the ultimate picture of God, we need to be especially attentive to how that picture appears. We also need to be prepared to put the highly complex biblical jigsaw picture together according to the picture of Jesus as he teaches us about the picture of God. For that is what the whole enterprise of Bible interpretation is finally about: seeing the face of God. That’s what we want to see emerge everytime we approach our Bibles. And, (Matt 5:8) “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV)

But what then if we put the pieces together incorrectly? How are we to know? By looking again at the face of Jesus. And what if in our dealing with all the data of the Bible we see at times other pictures of God seemingly in tension, perhaps in contradiction of the picture of God in Jesus, what are we to do? We are to look again at the face of Jesus. And what if, in putting that jigsaw puzzle together, we discover that the image of God emerging challenges our long-held beliefs - even Christian beliefs - about how God is, and how we are to act in light of how we think God is? We are to look again at the face of Jesus, and still follow him, even when no one else will, and we perhaps walk alone.

For we are Christians, not mosaic lawyers. We are Christians of the New Covenant, not God’s people of the Old Covenant. We are Christians, who take our cue from following Jesus when he said repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said... but I say unto you.”, and of whom our text says: “The Law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ (John 1:17)”.

My dad was a lay preacher in our Plymouth Brethren tradition and a longstanding elder in our home assembly. Do you know what his favourite Bible verse was? It was of course in the King James version, and it went like this:

1 Sam 15:22
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. (KJV)
In the New International version, it reads:

1 Sam 15:22
To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (NIV)
Do you know what the context of that favourite verse is? It comes from I Samuel chapter 15. Samuel, the man of God, the prophet of Israel, says to King Saul in verses two and three:
1 Sam 15:2-3
2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. [One could add, several centuries earlier!]
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’“ (NIV)
We have two words for that policy today: “genocide” and “scorched earth”. Now the text throughout I Samuel makes it very clear that Samuel is the prophet of God, and as such, speaks the word of God to the people of Israel. There is no hint in this text that there is any problem with Samuel’s repeated declarations, “This is what the LORD Almighty says:...”
So the text goes on with the story:

1 Sam 15:8-11
8 [Saul] took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.
9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs-- everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel:
11 “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night. (NIV)

Now listen to the dénouement of the rest of the story:
1 Sam 15:13-35
13 When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”
14 But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
15 Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
16 “Stop!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.” “Tell me,” Saul replied.
17 Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel.
18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.’
19 Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?”
20 “But I did obey the LORD,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king.
21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”
22 But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.”
24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the LORD’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the people and so I gave in to them.
25 Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD.”
26 But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”
27 As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore.
28 Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors-- to one better than you.
29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.”
30 Saul replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD your God.”
31 So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the LORD.
32 Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.” Agag came to him confidently, thinking, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”
33 But Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so will your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.
34 Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul.
35 Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the LORD was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel. (NIV)

The NIV text says: “And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.” Those translators were a bit squeamish. The KJV rightly reflects the Hebrew verb used here when it reads: (1 Sam 15:33) “And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.”

So the context for my father’s favourite verse about how important it is to obey the LORD at all costs is a story of genocide, unforgiveness (of Saul and King Agag), pure revenge of the kind Lamech boasted about in Gen. 4 when he said: (Gen 4:23-24): “... listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” (NIV) - all in the name of the LORD, and a savage slaughter of a King, when Samuel, the man of God, hacks Agag into little bits, gloating over him as he does about avenging for all the mothers Agag has rendered childless.

A simple question: Does the picture of God that emerges here or in other parts of the books of Samuel jive with the picture of God in Jesus, who wept over a whole people for their sinning, who said: “Father forgive them” about the people killing him wrongly, who absolutely forbade all revenge, and who healed the ear of a servant helping to arrest and kill him when a sword hacked that body piece off!? So what do you do with this text and many other, what one author dubs “texts of terror”, throughout the Old Testament?
Now I ask: when my father read that favourite verse in context, what kind of scissors-and-paste exercise do you suppose he was going through to square that text with his Christian understanding? For my father was a forgiving, caring, compassionate man, who believed he was that way out of allegiance to Jesus.

I suggest that my father had, all through his life, the right intuitive sense about putting the revelation of Jesus first, while he had an inadequate theology of revelation that treated the Bible as a flat book into which one could dip anywhere, and come up with an accurate picture of God. Whatever else, I suggest to you that the picture of God in I Samuel is a flawed picture, though no less part of God’s revelation. And I suggest that Jesus alone can supply the corrective to all images of God that are incomplete, flawed, or are simply dark blotches against the white of the full revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Cindi.....[/font]

The Face of Jesus....

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