I had a
strange experience a few weeks ago. I
was standing in my garden, in the early dawn, when suddenly I saw the face of
Jesus looking back at me, from the grass.
Just his head...as though someone had buried Jesus up to his neck on my
lawn. It was quite a shock, I can tell
you - until I realised that what I was actually looking at was the remnants of
a football which my daughter’s dog had systematically chewed pieces off,
leaving just some bits of white leather hanging on! In the right light, it looked just like the
face of a bearded man, looking right at me.
My first
thought was 'E-bay'! I could make a
fortune. There have been faces of Jesus
on pieces of toast, or in the core of a tomato that have gone for thousands! The face of Jesus on a Vicar's
football...that would be worth something!
But then, it set me wondering.
For a start, no-one actually knows what Jesus looked like. There are no portraits of him by anyone who
knew him. We have a picture of him in
our minds - long hair, beard, nice smile and so on. But actually, the chances are that he would
have had short hair. And probably a
typically Jewish nose! So on reflection,
I decided that pedalling dubious images of Jesus wouldn't be very
appropriate. So I booted the ball back
up the garden!
I wonder
whether you have ever tried to imagine the face of God. It's impossible of course. But I think it is possible to imagine God's
expression, at least. I imagine God
looking, frankly, disappointed. I
imagine him looking at the mess our world is in, and being rather miffed, to
say the least. He must look at the
wealthy bankers getting richer, while the foodbanks and hostels of Havant
struggle to keep up with the demand from the homeless and poor. He must weep over the battles in Syria and all
around the Middle East. He must be
distraught at one million refugees who have sought refuge in Europe, just as
Jesus himself sought refuge in Egypt.
As well as
imagining God's expression, I wonder if we could try putting ourselves in God's
shoes for a moment. Given a world which
is systematically ignoring your call to love God and love your neighbour, what
would you do about it? If you were God?
Perhaps you
would be tempted to jolly-well sort it all out.
Perhaps you would appear on a thunder cloud, and start laying down the
law with an iron fist, coupled with the threat of thunder bolts and lighting
(very very frighteningly! Galileo,
Galileo...). Perhaps you would use your
almighty, omnipotent power to force people to be kind to one another.
But, if you
did that...you might find that you have a new problem. Instead of a human race which chooses of its
own free will to love you and worship you, you would have created a race of
puppets. You would have reduced the
beautiful thing that a human being is - filled with possibilities for
ingenuity, music, science, art and creativity into something not much better
than a toy. Adam and Eve would be reduced
to Ken and Barbie. And any love or
worship they offered you or one another would be a poor thing indeed. A mere shadow, a fabrication.
So, what do
you do? How do you persuade human-kind
that there is another way? How do you
speak a Word to them that they will hear, and to which they can respond with
all their hearts? Here's what you do...
You send
them your Son - a human being who is so filled with God that he can say with
integrity "I and the Father are one".
You send them a Word clothed in flesh.
You show them what a human life can be like if it overflows with God.
You send them a Word which reveals the full glory of God by living the kind of
life that God calls all his creation to live.
You send
them...a baby. You send humanity the
most fragile form of humanity that you can conceive, so that humankind might
finally wake up to the idea that the glory of God is not shown in acquiring
wealth, or looking after number one, or living in hate - but the glory of God
is shown in the weakest kind of human being possible...a baby, in a stable; son
of a poor unmarried woman in a backwater of the mighty Roman empire.
If you could
stand in God's shoes today, perhaps you too would send humankind a Divine Word
clothed in flesh. For today, God comes
to us as a human, to show us what it really means for us to be human. By a life of selfless giving, total
sacrifice, total love and compassion, Jesus shows us the heart, and the face,
of God.
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