"Like Seeing the Face of God"

February 13, 2000

"Two Valentines are listed in the Martyrology for February 14 . . . ," states the Oxford Dictionary of Saints. "Neither of them seems to have any clear connection with lovers or courting couples."

In fact, the two Valentines are probably one and the same, and, at any rate, little is known about either or the one. One suspects that sainthood came easier in the early days of the Church, and that the burden of proof was simpler in a pre-empirical age.

Whatever the reason for the association of Valentine and love, St. Valentine's Day at least gives us preachers a handy topic for the second Sunday in February. Though love, I need hardly remind you, is rather a broad topic. And so I am glad that Frank Morrill approached me a few Sundays ago to ask if I would be willing to speak today on his favorite biblical passage, the so-called "Great Commandment" of Jesus: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

The great Rabbi Hillel, echoing Jesus, once said that the whole of the law and the prophets could be summed up by this great commandment to love God and neighbor. "All else," he said, "is commentary."

But the story, as we were reminded by the morning's reading [Luke 10: 25-37], does not end there. For Jesus is asked the question which has provoked us ever since: "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus answers by telling the story of a good Samaritan.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the dissenting Lutheran pastor martyred by the Nazis during World War II, suggested that God and neighbor are really one and the same. He said, "Whoever happens to be one's neighbor and reachable is the transcendent." Bonhoeffer wrote this not in the comfort of his minister's study, but in a jail cell where his nearest neighbor was a petty criminal and Nazi sympathizer.

Jesus asked his listeners to see one's neighbor in the face of a stranger, even an enemy: the Samaritan. What he did by telling the story of the good Samaritan would be like unto telling an Albanian that his neighbor is a Serb, or telling a Hutu that her neighbor is a Tutsi.

Bonhoeffer took it a step further by suggesting that we see the face of God in all our neighbors, abhorrent as some of them may seem to us. God is in our neighbor; our neighbor is God.

Obviously, neither Jesus nor Bonhoeffer was talking about a "groovy" kind of love. This is the original form of "tough love." People are not always easy to like, let alone to love. There is nothing even vaguely romantic about the kind of love Jesus and Bonhoeffer were talking about. Remember, Jesus also is reported to have said, "Love your enemies." Sometimes, as recent events in the world remind us, our enemies are our neighbors.

All we know about the real Valentine is that he was martyred in the streets of Rome. Did he love his enemies?

The question, "And who is my neighbor?" is easy enough to answer in a community like Newburyport--if we don't look too far.

It's easy to answer in most of our neighborhoods. It's real easy to answer in a "gated" community. But how do we answer when our neighbor hates our guts or wants to cut our throat?

Samaritans and Jews were not on friendly terms. But Jesus makes it clear that true neighborliness transcends questions of like or dislike, of nationality or religion. For first a priest passes by "on the other side," and then a Levite. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, "Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend."

We get a pretty good idea of what Jesus thought about the ruling orthodoxy of his day, what he thought of false piety and hypocritical shows of religious devotion. This Jesus cared more about our actions than our professions of belief or our claims to righteousness.

The trick, of course--and it's some trick--is to know our neighbor not only in those who are like us, but in those who are unlike us, and not only those who are unlike us, but those who don't even like us, and whom we don't particularly like, either. It is to know our neighbor not just in those who agree with us, but in those who disagree; not just in those who believe like us, but in those who don't believe at all. Jesus noted a fact that we are still struggling to internalize two centuries down the line: that we are all of us connected, all of us, in John Donne's famous line, "part of the main"--all, to put it another way, "in this mess together." And all of us, I might add, "God's children."

True neighborliness transcends nationality and race and creed.

And nowadays we need to add economic status and sexual orientation. Easy enough for me to say, but not really easy at all. But it is only as we come to see the humanity in all our neighbors that we can have a ghost of a chance of surviving together on this little spinning planet. I happen to think that this is what religion is really about: it's about loving God by loving those people around us who are the embodiment of God. And we don't get to choose who they will be or how they will act.

That is why I chose the other story, the one about Jacob and Esau's reconciliation, as a reading for this morning. Jacob, if you remember the whole story, had stolen his brother Esau's birthright by donning an animal skin so that he would appear to be "an hairy man" like Esau and receive the blessing of his blind father, Isaac. Surely God is a trickster God, otherwise why would the father of his people be a thief and a cheat? Jacob's name becomes Israel, and the rest is history.

The theft of Esau's birthright means that Esau must fend for himself rather than receive his rightful inheritance as the elder brother. Not surprisingly, Esau hates Jacob for what he has done, and plots to kill him. But Jacob is warned by his mother Rebekah to flee from Esau's wrath, until, she says, his "fury turns away--until your brother's anger against you turns away and he forgets what you have done to him. . . ."

Who could blame Esau for his anger? After all, his brother has cheated him and taken what is rightfully his. And never does he offer to give it back. But Esau's fury does turn away. And thus seeing his face full of forgiveness for what he has done, Jacob tells Esau, "for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God."

This beautiful image speaks to me of our task as human beings. That task is to see the face of God in all we meet, even those from whom we are separated. It is to see the face of God not only in those who look like us, but in those who don't. Our God is a loving God and a reconciling God and, with my Universalist ancestors, I can wholeheartedly say a forgiving God, a God of all people, whoever and wherever they may be. As for a wrathful God, well, if you need that, I feel sorry for you.

Several years ago, a story was making the rounds on the internet, not unlike the infamous "kidney harvesting" story which has been popular of late. The story claimed that carloads of nameless "young men" were driving around the country with their headlights off, and when approaching motorists would take notice and blink their headlights in warning, these young men would chase them down and murder them. Though state police denied any truth to the story, it hung around for months, striking fear among those who believed it, exacerbated perhaps by a rash of driveby shootings that occured in Florida around the same time.

Who were those nameless and faceless young men? How could such a terrible story get started, except in a world where we no longer take the time to know our neighbors, a world where we live in fear of the unknown, a world where we live in fear and ignorance of all the young men and women right next door who may not look like us but in whose faces, if we only take the time to look, we may see the face of God looking back at us?

What we choose to see is often what we end up getting. During the time I have spent out on the Indian reservation--on "the rez," as they say--the last couple of summers, I have had some time to think about this question of neighborhood. In Pine Ridge, South Dakota, one can choose to see only the face of poverty, only the filth, only the ravages of alcohol and unemployment. Or, quite simply put, one can choose to see the face of God. One can choose to concentrate only on what is different--the skin color, the attitude of indifference or even hostility toward much of what we think is important--or one can choose to see what makes us the same, what brings us together, what we share as human beings, what we can learn from each other. Which do you choose to see?

And if all of that negative stuff, too, is the face of God, what is it trying to tell me? What responsibility do I bear for its existence? What can I learn from it, not only about what it means to be human, but what can I learn about God? And what can I do about it?

These are not easy questions, but they remind us that words are not enough, wonderful as they may be. Words are never enough. Nor is money enough, or sympathy enough. To love one's neighbor and to see God's face there is the greatest challenge we have to meet. It is as difficult as passing a stranger lying in the street and going to his aid. For it is to set aside our imagined superiority and to see "the log in our own eye," to fix ourselves before we set about to save anyone else. It is as hard as looking at what is different and seeing that deep down everything, and everyone, is made of the same stuff.

Not that, God forbid, we must all be the same, look the same, or act the same. That would make it a lot easier to love our neighbor, but that's not the point. God, if there is a God, created a world of variety. If we truly loved our neighbor as ourself, what a different world this would be. It would be like seeing the face of God.

The great rabbi and civil rights activist Abraham Heschel once wrote, "There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in the soul. . . ." Let us remember that, and treat one another as if it were true, and know each other at last.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock