The Face of God

The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on Sunday, January 22, 2023.

The Face of God

by Ernest Boyer

You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek my face,’ it says in today’s psalm, “Your face, Lord, will I seek.” In other words, the writer of the psalm wants to see the face of God. Whoever wrote this psalm was a brave man — or brave woman — because as God tells Moses in Exodus 33:20 “no one can see my face and live.” And yet this is exactly what the psalmist wants.

It sounds crazy, but I think I understand why the person who wrote that would want it — why he or she would want to see God’s face, despite the risks. I think I may have already told you the story about, how when I was two years old, I began to tell my parents that I wanted to see God. It’s true. I don’t remember any to this, but I’ve heard my mother tell the story many of times. According to her, when I was just a little guy, I started refusing to go to sleep at night. I would just sit there in bed with my arms crossed in determination and say over and over again, “I’m not going to sleep until you show me God.…I’m not going to sleep until you show me God.” My mother would try everything, but nothing could make me stop. In the end, she’d just turn off the light and leave me sitting there, only to check on me an hour later and find me still at it, still sitting up wide awake. Seeing the door open a crack, I’d start my chant once more, “I’m not going to sleep until you show me God.…I’m not going to sleep until you show me God.”     

As my mother put it, I was quite a handful in those days. She was convinced that I was not quite like other kids — and not in a good way, either. It was over forty years later that she told me this, though. I suspect that the reason she told me was that still she thought I was wasn’t quite like most others. And she must have been right, because, like the psalmist, I still want to see the face of God. 

Is that really so strange? How about the rest of you? Wouldn’t you jump at the chance too — the chance to get a glimpse of God? It would only need to be the tiniest peek — just a quick peep, the briefest vision? Don’t you think that this would be absolutely amazing? I’m not alone in this, am I? I’m sure there must be others. There have to be. This must be true because just look how everyone responds to Jesus … because isn’t that what Jesus is? Isn’t Jesus the face of God? That’s what people saw when they looked at him, at least. They looked at him and realized that they were getting a glimpse of God … and seeing this, it changed them.

Just look at today’s gospel. Jesus walks up to the edge of the water near where two fishermen, Peter and his brother Andrew, are busy tossing in their nets and hauling out fish and simply says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” and what do they do? They immediately throw down their nets, come to shore, and follow him. They don’t even hesitate. Just like that, they toss away their old lives entirely and go after him. They abandon it all — not just what they were doing right then, but everything — their boat, their work, their very capacity for a livelihood — everything that they had both known and done up until then. They give it all up … and why? Because they had seen the face of God. Then, soon after that, it happens again, this time with two other brothers, James and John. They leave everything also, abandoning it all to their father, and they too go after Jesus.

That’s what seeing the face of God does to us.

The thing is, at the very core of Jesus’ teaching is this: that Jesus is not alone in carrying the face of God. We carry it too …if only we can see it … if only we allow it. We just have to recognize that bit of God which God planted in each of us at our birth and draw it out and make it visible. When we are able to do that, people notice. This is what Jesus meant when he told Peter and Andrew that he would make them fishers of people. We must be for each person we meet what Jesus had been for those fishermen. We must show them the face of God. The thing is, it won’t really be with our words that we’ll show them this. It will be in our actions. They’ll either see Jesus in us — or else they won’t not — according to what we do.

Does it make you uncomfortable to think that you yourself might carry the face of God? And yet you do. All of you. Each and every one of you. I know you all. I love you all. And all of you show me the face of God.

“Show me the face of God,” I said when I was two years old. I won’t go to sleep until you do. I had to wait many decades but now it’s happened. I have seen the face of God, and it’s just as amazing as I knew it would be. I’ve seen it in each and every one of you.… Now I can rest. AMEN

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