You will recall the ancient myth that lies behind our sermon theme for today. Helen, the wife of Sparta's king Menelaus, was acclaimed the most beautiful woman of Greece. The Greeks fought the Trojan War in order to get her back from Troy, where Paris, the son of King Priam, had taken her. In Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, the question is asked concerning Helen, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium?" Today's text speaks of a far greater face, a face that launched a thousand, perhaps ten thousand times ten thousand, lives into an experience that beggars description. It is, of course, the face of Christ, our Lord. Verse 5 describes it for us, "For the same God who said, out of darkness let light shine, has caused his light to shine with…