LET'S FACE IT
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
Mark 9:2-8
"All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of
the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same
image from one degree of glory to another."
It is Lent and have a confession to make. I have become a Facebook friend! I had long resisted the temptation and felt
proud of the fact. Facebook, I said, was
for the vain, those who splashed selfies across the internet, and boast about how
many friends they had. Yes, I fell into
temptation just at the time when Lent dawned and I should have doubled my
resistance. Some people I know even gave
up on Facebook for Lent, and here was I taking up Facebook during Lent. But I am not really sorry. I have reconnected with lots of old friends,
and made new ones. I can even see their faces and they can see mine, and I can,
if I want to, enter into virtual conversation with them if not actually face to
face. Well, like all converts, I can go
on about this, but I will refrain. I
have said enough to get into my meditation stride that will lead to the words
of St. Paul that "all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the
glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into
the same image from one degree of glory to another."
Faces are fundamental to our identity, to who
we are. When we think about people, we
immediately see their faces. Faces may change
through accidents or illness, and inevitably as we grow older, but our faces are unique even if we are look-alike
twins. They are the way in which we
relate to others from the moment we are born, the moment our parents see us and
we begin to recognise their faces and learn to relate to them and others. All our emotions are expressed in our faces:
love and fear, anger and hatred, joy and
pain, compassion and indifference. When
we look at another's face we can usually tell what they are feeling and maybe
even thinking.
One of C.S. Lewis' lesser known books and yet
one that some regard as his best, is entitled Till we have Faces. Lewis
retells the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche's
elder sister Orual. Orual doesn't love
anyone more than she loves beautiful Psyche. But her love was selfishly protective, not by
serving Psyche's happiness in serving and healing others, but her own. On Psyche's death as a sacrifice to appease
the gods, Orual is forced to examine her motives and is forced to acknowledge
that unlike beautiful Psyche who unselfishly serves others, she is self-centred
and unattractive. In fact, her father tells
her that her she will never find a husband because her looks could knock down a
horse. She eventually becomes too embarrassed
to show her face to anyone. She puts on a veil, and decides never to take it
off. Then, as queen after her father's death, she becomes famous for her
generosity, courage, and wisdom. As her
fame spreads, so do tales that she wears the veil to cover a beautiful face,
because certainly no one whose acts are so lovely can be ugly. And when, finally
she does take off the veil, no on notices that her face is ugly. Through her actions, her authentic, hopeful
actions we might say, Orual's face is transformed into one of beauty which fits
her personality and unselfish love for others.
Lent is a time when, like Orual, we are
brought face to face with ourselves again.
We have to take off the veils that hide our true selves. But we unmask ourselves not to denigrate
ourselves, but in order that we can be set free to become more truly the person
we can and should be. The reason is that
Lent brings us face to face again with the crucified One whose suffering love
unmasks us. We stand unveiled before the
cross and discover that God loves us irrespective of our looks. We discover a look that does not condemn us, or
reject us as ugly, not the look that shuns us but one that accepts us just as
we are in order to become what we are truly meant to be. This love set us free to embark on the
journey of life without the need to hide our faces from the One who loves us. A
journey from birth to death which, St. Paul tells us in his ode to love, begins
when we see ourselves as we really are as in a mirror, but then come
face to face with ourselves and know ourselves as God already knows us in
Christ. (1 Corinthians 13:11-13)
In the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus
celebrated this week on the way to the cross, the inner circle of disciples see
Jesus' face in a totally new light. They
had already come to recognise him as a great healer and teacher, a man of compassion
and wisdom, and possibly the promised Messiah.
But on the Mount of Transfiguration they see the beauty and glory of God
in the face of Jesus and the truth dawns on them that Jesus is the human face of God, the One
who reveals who God truly is. "This
is my beloved Son," are the words that confirm what their eyes now see for
the first time even though they do not grasp its full significance. That comes later when, after the resurrection
Christ is acknowledged as the icon of God.
As St. Paul puts it: "Christ is image (icon) of the invisible
God." (Colossians 1:15)
And again, God "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians)
After that experience on the mountain top the
disciples still had a long way to go before they came to that conclusion. And along that way they would betray, deny and
desert Jesus. They had yet to come face
to face with the suffering face of the crucified One, a face from which people
turned away in horror as the prophet Isaiah had said: "A man of
suffering... from whom others hide their faces." (53:3) But it was in that face, marred and scarred by
suffering and pain, that they would come to see the very heart of the God who
love and redeems us, and who suffers in
solidarity with the suffering and struggling peoples of the world.
In journeying
deeper into the mystery of God revealed in the face of Jesus, in seeking to
follow him in love and compassion, in seeking justice and embracing the outcast,
without our knowing it, our faces are transformed says Paul into the image of
Christ "from one degree of glory to another." Yes, it is still us, still the same face with
which we were born, however beautiful or ugly it seems to us or others, but by
God's grace we somehow begin to reflect something, if only a smidgen, of God's
glory in our own faces. Let's face it, our
faces will probably never be beautiful enough to win a beauty pageant, but
neither was the face of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Yet in her love for the outcasts of India she
became something beautiful for God.
"May the beauty of Jesus be seen in us" we sang as Sunday
School children. That sums up the
journey into the mystery of God. For "all of us, with unveiled
faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 25 February 2016
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