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The Face of God
A sermon by Dr. Roberta
Damon
Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 3, 2008
I
have been fascinated by Dr. Somerville’s use of the lectionary. So I thought I
would try my hand at it. The people who put the Scriptures together from the Old
Testament, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles try to come up with a
coherent theme so that one is related to the other. As I read today’s
scriptures, I thought, “What under God’s blue sky does the feeding of the five
thousand have to do with Jacob wresting with God?” And for the life of me, I
couldn’t see a connection until I began to put it into context. So, here goes.
Today’s Old Testament story does not begin with the night that Jacob wrestled
with God. We need a little background and a little review. Jacob, as you
remember, was a piece of work, but then, so was his mama, Rebekah. If he was
bad, she was worse. He was a mama’s boy and she was not above lying and cheating
and stealing to see that her favorite child got what she wanted for him. Typical
stage mother! Her philosophy seemed to be, “Just do what I tell you, honey, and
you can have it all.” And of course, Jacob went right along with that.
Jacob stole his brother Esau’s birthright and blessing – bag and baggage. Poor
dumb Esau! He never knew what hit him. Swindling, conniving Jacob – his very
name means “supplanter” or “deceiver.” He ran for his life, away from his
brother’s rage, and now, after twenty years of estrangement, he is on his way
home for a family reunion. If ever there was a dysfunctional family, this is it.
Jacob got word that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men. So, fearful of his
brother’s anger, he began to send gifts across Brook Jabbock. He sent herds of
animals – sheep, oxen, cattle. He sent his two wives, his two maids, his eleven
children and finally Jacob was left alone in the dark.
You
know the story. Jacob spent that long night wrestling with God and some
remarkable things happened. He demanded a blessing and he received it. He also
got a name change. No longer Jacob the deceiver; now Israel, which literally
means soldier of God. He named the place “Peniel,” the face of God. Oh, and oh
yes, he limped away from the experience. That’s just the way it is, isn’t it? We
can’t go back and pretend it never happened. We can’t undo the loss or the
estrangement or the betrayal. We can’t get back the ones that we have loved and
lost. And when we come out on the other side of such experience, we may be
healed, but we are left with scars – or a limp. Even so, we seek God’s blessing.
We have a deep need to see God’s face.
David Kirkpatrick, my wonderful systematic theology professor at Southwestern
Seminary, told the story of a project that he and his son, Paul Kevin, decided
to do together. Paul Kevin must have been about eight years old when this
happened. They decided to build birdhouses. Now, David has a brilliant mind and
he is an extremely meticulous person. So he gathered all the materials for the
birdhouses, including architectural blueprint drawings. When the project was
complete, father and son hung six perfect birdhouses in their back yard.
The
next day, Paul Kevin decided that he would build a birdhouse without his
father’s help. It was pretty awful! He didn’t even have an opening for the bird
to get in and out. When it was complete, he took it out to hang it with the
other birdhouses and when he compared his ugly little birdhouse with all those
perfect ones, in frustration he threw his up against the back fence where it
broke apart and it stayed there the whole, long winter.
Next spring, David came out to survey the situation in the back yard, and he saw
that shattered birdhouse, and just at the broken place, a bird was building a
nest.
Sometimes, we are shattered. And sometimes, that’s where God gets in – right at
the broken place. Sometimes, it’s at that moment that we see the face of God.
Look with me at the Gospel passage. The story of the feeding of the 5,000 is the
only miracle that is recorded by all four Gospel writers. Both Matthew and Luke
place this event right after the beheading of John the Baptist. I don’t think I
had ever noticed that before I was preparing for today. Usually, we read the two
events as one having nothing to do with the other. But again, the story does not
begin when Jesus feeds the multitude. It begins at the beginning of that chapter
with a woman named Herodius. Now, Herodius reminds me a lot of Jacob’s mama,
Rebecca. They were both ambitious and devious women.
Herodius dumped her husband, Phillip, for his brother, Herod, because Herod was
king and Phillip was not. Herodius always did want to be queen – and now she
was. John the Baptist showed up uninvited to the wedding reception and he just
ruined the party. He bluntly confronted these two people with their sleazy
lifestyles. Neither Herodius nor Herod was particularly happy about John’s
butting in and telling them off. While Herod fumed and grumbled, Herodius
(clever girl) hatched a plan. She decided that she would throw a birthday party
for her new sweetie and for entertainment, she coached her nubile young
daughter, Salome, in an extreme form of exotic dancing. Had Salome lived in our
day, she might have aspired to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. At any rate, her
mama coached her well – so well in fact, that Herod, drunk as a goat,
imprudently exclaimed something that can be loosely translated as, “Um, um, um.
Come over here, you sweet young thing, and tell your old step-daddy what he can
do to reward you for that pretty little dance.”
Salome, child of Herodius, looked at him like a cat with a twitchy tail, and
under fluttering eyelashes, in the best Scarlet O’Hara tradition, she said,
“Well, fiddle-dee-dee, I think I’ll have, let me see – John’s head on a
platter.”
You
know what happened. Herod called the Lord High Executioner and the deed was
done. John’s severed head was placed at Herod’s feet – and wasn’t that a dainty
dish to set before the king? Scripture records that John’s disciples buried his
body and the very next thing they did, they ran to tell Jesus what had happened.
Anyone who knew the Baptizer knew that Jesus was his cousin. They were related
through their mothers. Both Mary and Elizabeth knew that these two boys were
miracle babies. Before the boys were born, as soon as Mary knew she was to have
God’s child, she ran through the hill country to Elizabeth, her cousin, who was
well advanced in age and was six months pregnant. Is it too much to imagine that
these two women, separated by age, but joined in miraculous motherhood,
conferred with each other through the childrens’ growing-up years? Is it too
much to imagine that John the Baptist and Jesus played together when they were
boys?
The
very first sermon that Dr. Somerville preached to us had to do with the raising
of Lazarus. And in that sermon, you will remember he said that Jesus and Lazarus
were such good friends that it was very possible that the two boys had played
together as children. I wonder if it’s not easier to imagine that Jesus and John
the Baptist played together, not only friends, but blood relatives, cousins.
If
Jesus wept for Lazarus, imagine how he must have felt now. John was dead; Jesus
must have been stricken with shock, with grief, devastated at his loss. Was this
a foreshadowing of Gethsemane – that dark night of the soul?
Why
didn’t Jesus rush to bring John back to life? He certainly had the power to do
it. I don’t know. Maybe it was because Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief – like we are.
When Jesus heard the news of John’s death, he slipped away by boat. The Peterson
translation says, “to an out-of-the-way place by himself.” He often needed to
get away, to seek his Father’s face. Now, more than ever.
The
quiet he was hoping for did not last long. People saw him. Word got around. They
began to gather – thousands of them. The scripture says he was moved with
compassion. He was moved with pity. He spent the day healing and teaching. “He
had no tears for his own grief,” but seeing their need, he taught them. Seeing
their need, he healed them. Seeing their hunger, he fed them.
When the crowd went away that day, they knew that they had seen the face of God.
And maybe, all that terrible day, Jesus saw his Father’s face after all – in the
face of the little boy who shared his lunch; in the face of Andrew, the
disciple, who brought the child to him; in the faces of children healed; in the
faces of grateful parents.
In
the summer of 2006, some of us had a remarkably and profoundly moving
experience. For the seventh year, our team from First Baptist went to teach in a
Christian English Camp in Ruzomberok, Slovakia. On Saturday of that week, we
took a side trip to Poland to the little community of Osweicim. You may not
recognize that name. It’s better known as Auschwitz. A lovely young Polish woman
was our guide. She spoke heavily accented but perfectly correct English. She
showed us through the death camp where a million and a half people were
murdered. We saw the bins of shoes, of eyeglasses. We saw suitcases labeled with
the names of people who were gassed in the crematoria. Baby clothes, human hair
baled for the manufacture of upholstery fabric. We saw the torture rooms, the
gallows – overwhelming to the senses. The ultimate results of man’s inhumanity
to man.
In
the 1940’s, during the war, the huge searchlights oscillated and illuminated the
electrified barbed wire at the end of the rail lines. We stood in that
watchtower above the camp and saw the end of the rail line where cattle cars
stopped and disgorged their passengers, people who were already dead or dying,
but people who knew this was their final destination. Our guide told us a story.
As I stood there and listened to that story, I remembered this place. I had
never seen it before but I remembered it from the movie, “Shindler’s List.” The
story the guide told went like this.
In
the 1940’s, during the war, a young Polish man fell in love with a beautiful
Jewish girl. Somehow, he managed to steal an SS officer’s uniform. He put it on,
he walked to her barracks, he shouted out her number, and he walked her out of
the front gate. They were met by fighters of the Resistance. He stayed to fight
with the Resistance. She was taken to a city nearby for hiding. At liberation,
they tried to find each other. Through the Swedish Red Cross, she was informed
that he had been killed, and he was told that she had died. She immigrated to
New York City, she married, had a family. He stayed in Poland. He also
eventually married and had a family. Thirty-nine years after liberation, they
each discovered that the other was alive. They entered into contact and they
decided on a reunion. He waited for her on the selection platform at the end of
the rail line at Auschwitz, and in his arms he held 39 red roses – one for every
year they had been apart.
This story has haunted me in these subsequent years. I must make theological
connections. It is evident that the young Polish man is the Christ figure –
literally saving the young woman. He represents the life-giver. But I think it
goes beyond that. It is what Christ does for all of us. He meets all of us at
the point of death, of grief, of estrangement, of tragedy, and of hopelessness.
He meets us with blood-red roses, plucked from the gardens of paradise – tokens
of his sacrificial love.
It
is here – at the place of death, of estrangement – that Christ meets a weary,
needy world. If we are attentive, even in our darkest hour, we will see the face
of God.
Where flowers bloom,
God is there.
Where kindness is shown, God is there.
Where bread is shared, God is there.
Where sin is forgiven, God is there.
Where grief is assuaged, God is there.
Where reconciliation occurs, God is there.
Where inclusiveness reigns, God is there.
Where life is celebrated, God is there.
Where love abounds, God is there.
If
we lift our faces long enough from our busy-ness and yes even from our sorrow,
we will look around us and we will see the very face of God.
May
it be so for you.
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