The 2010 drama film “The Social Network” portrayed many interesting features of Mark Zuckerberg’s development of his online creation. But they missed a big one: the name he chose for his baby “Facebook.”
Let’s face it: humans are obsessed with the unique, defining nature of our faces. The arrangement of our eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, forehead, never ceases to amaze and fascinate us.
More than 5000 distinguishable facial expressions have been identified, and that is probably just a start on the human face. The 18th century German satirist Georg Lichtenberg called the human face “the most entertaining surface on earth.”
How could we possibly resist pursuing and endlessly perusing an online site called “Facebook?”
We recognize friends — and enemies — by their face. Bank robbers wear masks to hide their faces, knowing full well that, no matter how clear the pictures of their bodies might be, without a full view of their face, they cannot be accurately identified.
When the Protestant Reformers came across images of the saints and the Virgin Mary, they defaced them on paintings and had their faces gouged out of carvings and sculptures.
Babies look at faces — learning how to put the pieces together and how to recognize and trust the familiar, and reject and be fearful of the unfamiliar. It is in our human DNA to look into the face of others for critical, life-preserving, information. “We find ourselves in the faces of others” says Siri Hustvedt in her novel The Summer Without Men (2011). We become human through our relationships with others.
In short, long before “virtual life,” human beings were walking, talking “Facebooks.”
Our language reflects this fixation. We speak of taking things at “face value,” or of doing an “about face,” or of “facing off” against opponents. We “face the music,” make “face time,” and when dishonored we “lose face.” “Face cards” carry the most value and to stand “face-to-face” with another signifies being in the most valued of positions. One of the most advanced new computer identification techniques is the science of “facial recognition” — computer programs that can scan and identify individual faces without any other physical information.
In the “transfiguration” scene described in this week’s gospel text (Luke 9:28ff), Jesus’ face shines. He is “transfigured,” transformed, by a glorious presence. God’s glory is manifested physically upon Jesus’ face — the focal point of his humanity. Jesus’ face shone so gloriously and was so illuminated that even his famously clueless disciples could see and report about its radiant nature.
In the epistle text for this week, Paul recalls another transfiguration scene with a glory-gleamed face — the face of Moses after he had finished conversing with God on the mountain and after he had received the commandments of the Lord. When he came down from the mountain, the Bible says, “Moses’ face shone” with the wondrous wattage of God’s glory.
It was so obvious that it was off-putting. The people were afraid to approach Moses because of his transfigured face. So Moses veiled himself, veiled the glory, played down his face-to-face encounter with the Lord. Instead the people focused on the Laws, on the tablets, on the guidelines God had given. In other words, the glory of God’s presence and ultimate purpose was subtly screened — “veiled” from public view.
In Exodus 33:20 God warns Moses that he “cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” God hides Moses in a cleft in the rocks so that all he spies of God is his back, not his face. Yet elsewhere, throughout the Old Testament the faithful are urged to seek out the face of God.
Seek the lord and his strength, seek his face continually
(1 Chronicles 16:11)
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face . . . then they will hear from heaven
(2 Chronicles 7:14)
When thou said, “Seek my face,” my heart said, “Thy face, Lord I will seek”
(Psalm 27:8)
Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore
(Psalm 105:4)
It seems unlikely that these texts would be offered as a death wish. The point is that these texts urge those faithful to the Lord to “seek” his face — to be on a continual quest for that moment of face-to-face recognition. Seeking God’s face, getting a glimpse, a shadow, a suggestion — that is the spiritual quest God calls his faithful to follow.
Paul’s assertion is that we now have the most powerful of guides on this quest. No less than the human face of God, the Spirit of Christ himself, will guide us on our journey to the face of the Father. This Spirit is present in us and presented to us as we participate in the Body of Christ, the incarnated presence of our Lord. Through the incarnation of Christ’s spirit we all are invited to a “sneak preview” of God’s image.
Okay. We still are not gazing directly upon God’s face. There are some powers that our frail physical bodies cannot withstand. During a total eclipse astronomers recommend that we observe the remarkable images through a reflection — a mirror image of the actual event. In that way the fragility of the human body can be protected, while the yearning of the human spirit can be fulfilled.
That is what every believer does for every other member of the Body of Christ. We “reflect,” we “mirror image,” Christ’s presence, the very face of God, to each other and to the world. Like mirrors, the Christbody community is not a perfect representation. There are always ripples and wrinkles, distortions and disjunctions. But the reflection is still there and shows the world what might be.
As disciples each of us has been “transfigured” by our holy encounter with the Holy Spirit and by the person of Jesus Christ. We are definitely, definitively different. We have been called to reflect the face of God to this world. Our humanity has been “transfigured” into a life that reflects the radiance of God’s presence, as the “face” that God puts forward to the world.
Yet a major irony of Christianity is that we who have been sent by Jesus into the world as transfigured people don’t cease being ordinary people, vessels of clay, even though we are entrusted with a gospel of gold. We comport a glory that is not ours, with the greatness found in the gift and Giver, not the bearer of the gift.
What is this “face” we are called to present to the world? Throughout the gospels, Paul’s writings, and all the other epistles, there is one overwhelming “facial” quality that is extolled: love. Love God. Love neighbor. Love others and love the other.
Love is patient, kind, never boastful or envious. Love rejoices in the truth. Love endures all things. Love never ends. John 5:41 reads “I do not look to men for honor.” Glory for the Jesus follower is not fame and splendor and perks and honor and acclaim and pomp. Glory is transcendent goodness and beauty and love.
The big time, bit hit movie of this winter is “Les Miserables.” It is a musical based upon a two hundred plus year old novel about France. Doesn’t sound like it would translate to 21st century USA very well, does it?
It does. But the musical highlight of the show reveals that the novel, play, movie, has never been about history, or politics, or economics. In the finale musical number, the “heroes,” Fantine, Valjean and Eponine, sing a duet together about that which has transformed, transfigured, their lives from drives of desperation to hopes of higher aspirations.
Take my hand,
And lead me to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Did you get that?
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Charles Wesley expressed the essence of the class meeting in his hymn “At Meeting of Friends,” which begins with a testimony to this love that binds those who “together seek his face:”
All Praise to our redeeming Lord,
Who joins us by his grace,
And binds us, each to each restored,
Together seek his face.
Face to face, let us seek and see the face of God this week.
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COMMENTARY
“Transfiguration.” What does this big, fifteen letter word mean?
It is the gift of being able to look at the familiar and yet see the extraordinary, to see something wholly new and fresh in the normal.
Although we usually think of the traditional “Transfiguration” scene presented in the gospels (Luke 9:28ff; Matthew 17:2ff; Mark 9:2ff) as the source of all transfiguration imagery, Paul extends that concept in two different ways in this week’s epistle text. First, Paul “transfigures” the familiar scripture from Exodus 34:27-35, which describes Moses’ shining face after he had been in conversation with God. Second, Paul then goes on to describe the transfiguration that is now extended to everyone through faith in Christ.
As a pharisaic Jew, Paul had been steeped in the study of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. He knew the texts, practiced the laws, and studied the midrash (commentaries) on these scriptures.
Yet here in 2 Corinthians 3:12 Paul creates his own midrash, a decidedly Christian commentary on the event describes in Exodus 34:27-25. The salvation of Christ, his cross and resurrection, has so transformed the world that Paul sees Moses’ actions in a completely different light. Although he acknowledges that Moses’ face shone with “glory” in 2 Corinthians 3:7, the apostle now focuses on the “veil” that Moses used to cloak that radiance from the people.
In the Exodus text Moses veils himself after he speaks the Lord’s words to the Israelites “because they were afraid to come near him” (Exodus 34:30). Moses only removed the veil when he went in to speak with Yahweh and when he was repeating the Lord’s words to the people. Out of deference to the fearfulness of the Israelites Moses veils his face, a face gleaming with the radiance of a God’s glory, for his day-to-day interactions with the people.
But here in 2 Corinthians Paul declares that there was an entirely different reason for Moses’ veiled appearance. Instead of hiding the radiance, Moses was obscuring the fact that the glory spelled out on his face, and the glory of those spellbinding words he had delivered, were fading. Paul insists that the glory was momentary, that it was being “set aside.” From Paul’s post-resurrection perspective he views Moses’ act of veiling as evidence the prophet recognized the transitory, temporary “glory” of the Law. Hence he did not want the people to fixate upon it.
In Paul’s midrash of this “veiling” text, Moses’ attempt to “tone down” the glorification of the Law failed. The people’s “minds were hardened” as they neglect to see beyond the “old covenant.” Where Paul sees the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings of the Old Testament all pointing forward to their ultimate fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ, those who opposed Christ and his followers have veiled themselves from this new truth. The veil of Moses, Paul asserts, is now a veil that lies “over their minds” whenever the words of Moses (the Pentateuch) are read. The literal veil of Moses has become a metaphorical barrier keeping the religious establishment of the first century from seeing the glory of Christ as he fulfilled all scripture.
There is almost endless exegetical speculation and contestation over Paul’s declaration in v.17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit.” Ultimately there is no completely clear grammatical or textual way to determine conclusively whether the apostle intended “the Lord” as a reference to Christ or to God. However, because Paul has already stated that it is only “in Christ” that the veil is set aside, it does seem to suggest that the apostle’s focus at this point is more on the activity of Christ than on the ongoing presence of God’s Spirit. Likewise, since Paul’s emphasis here, as elsewhere, is on the new possibilities made real by the new covenant, and that the resurrected Christ is experienced through the Spirit, it seems reasonable here to understand “the Lord is the Spirit” as a reference to Christ.
It is the Spirit, the presence of the living Christ in the world, that now offers what the old covenant never could — “freedom.” This freedom is what enables Paul to preach with “hope and great boldness” (v.12). It is in this new state of holy boldness that those with faith in Christ may stand “unveiled” and view “the glory of the Lord” (v.8).
This is Paul’s second “transfiguration” within this week’s text. “All of us,” Jew and Gentile, who confess Christ; all who experience the freeing power of the Spirit, see Christ’s glory “as reflected in a mirror.” What is this mirror image of Christ?
Since the physical body of Jesus has been resurrected, the mirror image that remains for Christ’s followers is the active presence of the Spirit on earth and the Body of Christ that is the community of faith. Paul declares that “all of us,” all who are members of Christ’s body, are in a continual process of being “transformed (“metamorphoumai”) by the presence of that Spirit into a reflection of Christ’s own image. This is a transformation, a transfiguration, from “glory to glory.”
The encounter with the Spirit, with the incarnation of Christ’s glory, in turn invites the faithful to reflect that glory, like a mirror. This reflected glory shines forth from the community of faith into the world.