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Six a.m. can be such a beautiful time of the
morning—so still and peaceful. It had been a rough
night with Ryan, our new little baby girl, and I had
taken her down to the rocking chair in our living room
to try to rock her back to sleep so that Yvette could get
some rest. The sun had just come up and was making
everything glow this beautiful muted orange. Zanzibar,
our golden retriever, was curled up at my feet and I
was trying to get Ryan to see a young doe that was
walking across our front lawn. The doe was right there
but she couldn’t see it. You never would have known
how fussy she had been all night by the way she was
acting. She was sitting contently on my lap, cooing
and gurgling, bobbing and weaving her head the way
she does, with that glazed over, far away look in her
eyes. All of a sudden, it happened. Her eyes were
casually floating past my face when, all of a sudden, it
was as if she had been splashed in the face with a glass
of cold water. She gasped, drew back and her whole
face came alive as her eyes locked onto mine. I could
actually see the little muscles of her irises twist and
lock into focus like the aperture on my telephoto lens.
She was frozen, mesmerized with her mouth gaping
wide open; and then, this peacefulness and a little
smile. She had kind of looked at me before, but this
was the first time I knew that she was really seeing me;
and not just seeing me but seeing into me—real
recognition. In that moment, I could not have been
more in love with another human being.
Connecting with another face is one of the most
powerful forces in the human experience. In fact, the
experts tell us that along with food, water and touch, a
baby needs the attentive gaze of a human face in order
to survive. John Ortberg writes, “A baby lies in its crib
and smiles, ‘the face’ smiles back, and immediately the
baby realizes that someone is watching and
responding… that what the baby does counts. The
baby shows expressions of joy, anger, sorrow… and
they see it reflected back in the face of another. The
psychologists refer to this phenomenon as
“attunement”… the process by which a baby begins to
realize that it’s possible to somehow be connected or
“in tune” with another human being. If the face scowls
and disappears, the baby tries to figure out what they
did and how they can bring it back. The baby needs
the face. The face is what tells the baby that it
matters.”
It is not just babies, is it? Look at me! Each and
every one of us needs the attentive gaze of another’s
face in order to survive; to survive and thrive. I don’t
know if you have ever stopped to think about what a
remarkable creation your face is. There is nothing else
like it in the entire animal kingdom. Our face defines
our identity. It expresses our attitudes, our opinions and
moods and shows how we relate to others. I read
somewhere that there is nothing in our body, apart
from our brain, that is anywhere near as complex as the
human face. There are literally hundreds upon
hundreds of muscles capable of creating the most
subtle and inexplicable nuances of human expression.
The experts have known for a long time that one small
facial expression is capable of communicating
countless words and that, if you know how to read
someone’s face, you basically know how to read his or
her mind. The face can tell you things that the person
himself would never be capable of telling you, or want
to tell you. Yvette and I were watching the movie
“Breach” the other night. It is the true story of Robert
Hannsen, the greatest traitor in FBI history. I found it
fascinating the way he was able to tell what was going
on in someone’s head just by looking at him or her. If
someone was lying, he knew it, just by looking at the
face; the slightest movement of an eyes, the tenseness
in a jaw or a quiver of a cheek. There is an entire
science dedicated to the things that we can learn from
the human face. A good athlete can tell what his or her
opponent is going to do next just by looking into his or
her eyes. Harvard Business School counsels its MBAs
not to be afraid to invest large amounts of time and
money traveling so that business meetings can be
conducted face to face. In fact, in many cultures
throughout history the human face has been regarded
with such awe and reverence and mystique that to draw
a picture of a person or to take a photograph of his/her
face has been equated with stealing or capturing that
person’s soul.
Something is going on here. Have you ever noticed
how often the Bible talks about faces? They are
everywhere, all throughout this book. You can hardly
turn the page without seeing the way the scriptures
emphasize the importance of the face; God’s face, our
face. We see God turning His face toward us, hiding
His face from us. It talks about us seeking God’s face,
delighting in His face, finding His face, meeting Him
face to face, turning our faces away, having our faces
glow, reflecting God’s glory in our faces, laying
ourselves prostrate with our faces to the ground. Every
Sunday at the close of our worship service, I send us
off into the world for our common ministry by saying
what? “And now may the Lord bless you and keep
you. May the Lord be gracious unto you. May the
Lord lift up the light of His…” What? His
countenance. His face upon you. There is something
deeply spiritual and ultimately important to God about
this one particular piece of our anatomy.
Have you ever wondered, when they say that we are
created in the image of God, exactly what that means?
Does it mean that God has fingers and toes, wrists and
elbows like us? I wonder. Does God have a liver or a
uvula? Why did God create the uvula? Is He going
bald like me or has He my in-grown toenail. Is He
beginning to get hair on his back? Or could it be that
when the Bible talks about us being made in God’s
image, in some unprecedented way, this (motion to
face) is what He is talking about, that somehow it is
our face that most closely reflects God’s holy image in
us.
Tony Campolo, whom a bunch of us are going to
see down in Ocean Grove tonight, got himself into a
heap of trouble a couple of years ago by suggesting, in
one of his books, that we can see God’s image and
come to understand God better by looking into the face
of any of His children, whether they are Christians or
not. Immediately, he came under an avalanche of
accusations from conservative authors and preachers
who insisted that God’s presence cannot possibly live
inside those who have not accepted him. But Tony
refused to back down. Soon, hundreds of Christian
leaders from all over the country came to his defense
arguing that as Christians it is our fundamental
conviction, whether or not everyone realizes it or
accepts it, that we believe we are all dearly loved,
preciously created children of God; that regardless of
our degree of spiritual awareness or lack thereof, we
believe that we have all been carefully crafted inside of
our mother’s womb by the same creator and given the
same divine spark and reflection of God’s glory and
image.
What if we have not only been given this divine
image, but this face of ours has been given to us as the
most powerful tool we will ever own to conduct God’s
ministry through our bodies on this earth; that the gift
of our face and the attention we give with it really is
the greatest gift we have to offer in this world; created
as the piece de resistance of God’s most spectacular
work of art so that we could bring healing and hope,
purpose and compassion, understanding and
acceptance, so that we could let people know that they
matter. They matter to God. They matter to us.
I know what you are thinking and, frankly, I am right
there with you! Most mornings when I wake up and
look in the mirror, “holy” and “divine” are not the
words that I would use to describe the face that I see.
Could it be that when we are looking into one another’s
faces, we are, in some uncanny way, looking at the tool
God has given us to peer through a portal between this
world and the next; to see the very reflection of the
face of God Himself?
If it is, then just like all of the most precious gifts in
our life, we are taking this one woefully for granted.
Why do you think so many people willingly shell out
$150 bucks for a 50-minute hour with their therapist
and keep coming back, week after week after week? It
is because $150 bucks is a bargain! I bet people would
happily pay five times that for almost a full hour of
someone’s undivided attention, to fulfill their longing
for the simple pleasure and need to connect with
someone’s face.
Jesus, of course, was the all-time master at this. He
was constantly using His face and His attention to give
life to the people around Him; turning His face toward
those who were ignored by society; looking deep into
the eyes of people who, everywhere else, were all but
invisible. Whether it was the woman touching the hem
of His garment or a blind beggar on the side of the
road, the paralytic at the gates of Bethsaida, a leper, a
tax collector up in a sycamore tree or an adulterous
woman cowering on the floor of the Temple; every
time Jesus stops and turns His face toward someone we
come away with this nagging uncertainty whether the
real healing was through His miracles, His forgiveness
or simply His willingness to actually see those that no
one else ever looked at; to give the gift of His attention,
His undivided attention, to those who were starved for
the face.
Can I ask you a strange question? Not just a strange
question but an incredibly personal one? How are you
using your face? What are you doing with the most
divine, the most powerful gift God has given you? I
told you it would be a little strange. Is this a new
question for you? Are you even aware? Are you using
your face, your attention to bring healing and hope and
life? Who are the invisible people in your life? Who
needs the gift of your attention, of your face? Could it
be the day laborers—those people who gather every
day on the most prominent corner of our town, and yet,
are never really seen? Could it be Mary Ann as she
walks down the street, invisible, not because of the
mud as she might imagine, but because those who
walk by her literally avert their gaze as she
approaches? Maybe it is your own children, or a
spouse, a colleague or a friend; perhaps it is a checkout
clerk at your grocery store or a waiter or waitress
in your favorite restaurant? To turn you face toward
someone is to give them your whole-hearted,
undivided attention, even if only for a few moments.
It is not the casual listening of preoccupied minds but
stopping what we are doing and engaging our faces,
our bodies, our minds and our attentions on the
persons in front of us. It is saying, “I have nothing
else to do, right now, nowhere else I would rather be.”
It is the kind of life-changing attention that God gives
us. It is the kind that these faces were created to lavish
on each other.
It is not easy. In fact, it is amazingly difficult. I am
not sure what it is; our business, our franticness, our
fear of really connecting with people on such a deep,
almost spiritual level, or our basic insecurity that we
are not worthy of having that kind of connection.
Whatever it is, it is hard to give people our attention,
even when we want to. President Roosevelt tells about
a time when he had to stand in a long receiving line at
a large gala at the White House; shaking hands,
flashing his famous smile, making all the small talk
that the president is expected to make. At one point
even he became so convinced that no one was really
listening to him that he began to greet each person by
saying, “Welcome! You know I murdered my
grandmother this morning.” He wasn’t the least bit
surprised that everyone responded by saying things
like, “Wonderful!” “How lovely!” “Keep up the good
work!” In fact, the only thing that did surprise him
was when one diplomat finally leaned toward him and
whispered in his ear, “I’m sure the old bat had it
coming to her!”
To be a Christian is to be given a new pair of eyes, to
see the world the way God sees it, to look not just at
but into people the way Jesus did; to understand the
value of this gift we have been given and to want to
use it to make a difference in this world. There is
something about these faces of ours. Something that
can bring healing and hope and compassion and
understanding, that can bring love and joy and
acceptance and connection and life; that can carry us
into God’s divine presence like nothing else created in
this world. So I challenge you to think about it even if
it is a little odd. How are you using your face? AMEN
