If you could deliver one sermon, what would you speak about? Though the question sounds trite, it has sometimes been asked of most preachers - usually in a half-serious way. What text, truth, or character has come to fill your heart's imagination, changed your life, or made you eager to use one big chance to share it with others?

For me, the answer is in the story of the reconciliation in the desert between Esau and Jacob, years after the stealing of the birthright, where, comforted by Esau's forgiveness, Jacob says: "To see your face is like seeing the face of God."

I have fallen in love with this part of the Genesis narrative because it is filled with echoes and the images of having so often seen, during the years of my active ministry, the face of God in the faces of others. We say of…