“I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God.”

(Genesis 33:10)

For those of us who have chosen the religious life is not this the nub of our problem: how to handle the stuff of existence so God will not be dropped out or passed over unnoticed? How to handle the rough and tumble tussle for what we shall eat and what we shall drink and how we shall be housed and with what we shall be clothed — how, in all that struggle we shall yet be seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Yes, surely that is the everyday problem of every person with religious inclinations — how to handle the stuff of this life so God will be real to us and His way for us plain.

But how to find God? Where to look for Him? Every person of faith cries with the Psalmist: “O that I knew where I might find Him.” The Bible plainly states: “No man hath seen God at any time.” And Blaise Pascal, as he earnestly sought for God, remarked that the world only gives us indications of the presence of God who conceals Himself.

And yet, there is the promise: “If, with all your hearts, ye truly seek me, ye shall surely ever find me, thus saith your God.” But how and where to look for God?

In the Bible? Yes, of course, but I feel Jesus Himself would be the very first to tell us not to begin and end our search there. Though Jesus knew the scriptures backwards and forwards, as the gospel writers show, it was the professional students of the Holy Books — the Scribes and Pharisees – with whom the Master had least patience, and to whom He said in disgust: “Why, the harlots and the people you’ve turned out of the churches will go into the Kingdom of God before you.”

Shall we look for God in the churches? Why, yes, of course. That’s why we’ve come here this morning, hoping to get some glimpse of God. A little boy, in passing the church building where his parents often took him, pointed to it and said: “That’s God’s house,” and then, asking as if he had just thought of the question for the first time: “Is He in there?” The only truthful answer to such a question, I suppose, would be: “Yes, He is there to some people, but to others He isn’t there at all.” But again, I believe Jesus would be the last one to counsel us to begin and end our search for God at church. Jesus certainly did not conceive of His earthly mission in terms of inaugurating a “back to church” movement. In fact, what Jesus did was more in the opposite direction. He took people out into the open fields to tell them about God, and into the market place where the noisy crowd congregated to show God to them. One of the charges on which the Galilean was convicted and crucified was that He had talked in a minimizing way of the Temple and its relative importance to religion.

Listen to Jesus as He talked to people about where to look for God: “Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do they spin — Behold the fowls of the air, they reap not nor gather into barns, yet your Father in Heaven careth for them” … Here’s where to look to find evidence of God’s care for you.

Watch Jesus as He points to the places where they may look for God: to a shepherd who has lost one sheep out of a flock of one hundred and risks his life on the precipice’s brink to rescue that one stray lamb — to a broken hearted father whose son has run away to sow his wild oats; a father who never forgets and runs out with a warm welcome to meet the returning prodigal.

Jesus was at it early and late trying to tell us that God, to be seen and known, must be encountered not just on the written page of scripture, not just within the dimly lit halls of worship — but in the world all about us, and especially in our encounters with our fellow human beings who are God’s children. The humble Jesus, in amazingly divine self-consciousness, called people to see God in Himself — in His own person. Remember that He said: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And St. Paul affirmed that we have found the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Yes, that’s where the Christ of the gospels began — urging people to look for God in the faces of those they saw, in the experiences of everyday. And so, today, the authoritative voice of Christ to us is as that inner voice to Martin, the shoemaker in Tolstoy’s story: “Martin, Martin, look for me in the street tomorrow, for I am coming to see you.”

Listen again to Jacob’s grateful cry to his brother whom he had wronged, when Esau welcomed him back after the long estrangement. ‘I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God.’” (James Stewart — Heralds of God) Jacob had cheated his brother out of his birthright. Jacob had stolen the inheritance from Esau. Then, Jacob the coward, had run away. Now after some twenty years absence, in fear and trembling of the just vengeance Esau would take out of his hide, Jacob comes sneaking back. To his amazement Esau welcomes him with open arms. Esau forgives. And Jacob, almost speechless at the unexpected clemency, cries out: “I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God.”

The glory of the Eternal God revealed in human flesh! How many times have you and I felt like Jacob, in wonder and awe that we, too, have unexpectantly encountered the divine in the human? Are we not often impressed with the wonderful way that “God comes through to us in the fact of friendship — of how God uses all our human relationships with their experiences of trust and forgiveness and loyalty to interpret and make luminous for us the very heart and nature of the Eternal? Have there not been times when we did say, or should have said, to a friend or an enemy — to our child — or even to our wife — “I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God.”

Stanley Jones used to tell of a sailor who fell into sin when away on shipping voyages. Then once on leave at home, ashamed, he told his wife the whole sordid story. Hearing, her face went white with the hurt and horror of it. “Then,” said the sailor, “I saw for the first time the meaning of the cross of Christ, for wounded and crucified by my sin, she yet loved and forgave.” He saw her face as though he had seen the face of God.

I once knew a woman who wanted to believe in God. She was coming to church. She was hearing the gospel … She was reading her Bible. She was trying to pray. But she was having difficulty accepting the articles of faith in the Apostles’ Creed. No explanation, no long conferences with clergy, no convincing arguments, could solve her difficulties. Then she took a room in the apartment of a radiantly Christian woman. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her intellectual difficulties were resolved and she sincerely confessed the faith. How did it happen? She would have said: “I saw my friend’s face as though I had seen the face of God.”

Once a friend shared with me her concern for a family who were going to meet a trying ordeal. They were facing a long incurable illness for one member of the family. My friend feared lest the members of that family be not spiritually mature enough to meet their testing by fire with courage and faith, so she had come seeking suggestions for devotional materials which would be a source of spiritual strength and poise to see them through. As she went away all I could think was: “How like the very mercy of God, preparing ahead of time a way for us. How like the compassion of our Heavenly Father.” Yes, in that ten minute interview with that dear woman I saw God better than I would had I read my Bible all day long.

“O Saul,” cries David in Browning’s poem:

It shall be

A face like my face that receives thee;

A man like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by forever;

A hand like this hand

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee;

See the Christ stand!

“I have seen thy face as thought I had seen the face of God.”

Oh yes, it is not that we cannot see God — neither that we do not know where to look for Him. Our trouble is that we see Him and never recognize that it is He. We handle so carelessly — so irreverently — the sacred stuff of life that He eludes us.

Arthur John Gossip told of how the celebrated Scottish New Testament scholar, A. B. Davidson, came as a lonely, timid, country lad to the lonelier streets of Aberdeen and in his shy, sensitive manner would steal through the city looking in upon family gatherings in happy fellowship around the evening fire. Then someone would pull down the window shades and the lonely student would slip away in still more bitter loneliness. That is the picture of what we are too often doing — pulling down the shades on the glorious glimpses of God in human life before us.

When we have a critical attitude toward life in general, and toward some people in particular, rather than a grateful, humble spirit before the goodness of God and the grace of life itself, we pull down the shades. Finding fault with others, picking out this little offensive habit, this place where someone else is not doing his duty. (Of course, everybody knows that the over-critical spirits are the most ineffectual and inefficient housekeepers and executives.) But the greatest tragedy is not our Pharisiasm, not even our ugly, unsympathetic spirit which sours our disposition; the real tragedy is that our critical spirit pulls down the shade so we don’t ever see God in the faces of our human companions.

Being in too big a rush can also pull down the shades. Hurrying from one appointment to another — we carry too heavy a schedule so that all the time we are keeping one engagement our thoughts have rushed ahead of us and we are not attending where at the moment we are. God has no chance with us through the people we meet and see — for we don’t really see them — we are looking through them to the next experience. But the Lord of history is the God of the present. He works with the present moment. The stuff of life is not yesterday, nor tomorrow, nor even the next hour, but this living present. If we are not fully here, He can have no traffic with us.

It is not just that we cannot see God — neither that we do not know where to find Him. Let us just be sure that we do not pull down the shades that shut Him out and leave us in God-forsaken loneliness.

But of course, our concern of where to look for God concerns not only ourselves and our search, but others and their search for Him. We have a duty and a privilege there. And the big question for us is this: “Could it be said of you and me what Jacob said of his brother Esau: ‘I have seen thy face as thought I had seen the face of God.’”

Can our brothers and sisters — our children, our business associates, our neighbors, say that about us? Can the people who have wronged us — done us dirt, spoiled our plans, irreparably injured us, say that about us? Have others seen something like the divine forgiveness and the eternal compassion in us?

Again today, Lord,

Let me write

In characters of sweat and tears

Words that will bring

Thy children to the light.

And faith and hope and love

Will be the warp and woof

Of fabric gay

That I would weave for Thee today.

                        —A Japanese Christian