By Guy Sayles
One of the most astonishing things Jesus said was: “Whoever who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14).
When we see Jesus, we see what God is like.
To borrow a phrase from John A. T. Robinson, Jesus is “the human face of God” (The Human Face of God, 1973).
Like Jesus, God is not aloof from us: detached, disinterested and disconnected. Instead, God is with us, one of us, sharing our lives, tasting our joys, feeling our sorrows.
When looking at Jesus, I see what a human being is meant to be: fully alive and fully engaged.
Reynolds Price said that, in Jesus, we catch “sight of a single human life lived nearer to the Maker’s mind than any other life yet heard of” (Three Gospels, p. 240).
Jesus was passionate about the rule and reign of God: freedom, justice, mercy, peace and love.
He promised abundant life; and, because he was himself so vibrantly and fully alive, people trusted that he could and would keep that promise.
Jesus’ life calls out to me. In him, I see what it means to be human, and he awakens in me a desire to be like him.
He urges me to lose my false self in the great mysteries of love and to take up my true life, a life centered not on my ego but on him.
Jesus’ face glows with authentic humanity, and it also shines with the bright light of God.
Writing, about Jesus’ transfiguration, Paul said to the community of Christians in Corinth: “It is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
I’m not sure what Paul meant by these lyrical and luminous words, but it’s something like: The light of creation and the light of Jesus originate with God, and the face—the story-formed image—of Jesus radiates the glory of God.
Jesus, as the human face of God shows us the possibilities of personhood; and, as the human face of God, he reveals the character of the divine.
A New Testament hymn (Colossians 1:15-20)invites us to praise this cosmic Christ:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
This stunning poetry gives me words for my experience with Jesus. With, through and in him, I learn what God is like.
His life and the life of creation are inseparably connected. Without him, everything and everyone would come apart and devolve into chaos.
For Jesus, the tomb became a womb; he was born from death; now he midwives us through our own dying into fullness of life.
Through him, everything divided is coming back together, estrangement is being replaced with friendship, and violence is being vanquished by peace.
For me, Jesus is vaster than we can know and nearer than our own breath. He encompasses the cosmos and embraces each of us.
Guy Sayles is a writer and speaker in Asheville, N.C., and a facilitator for the Jesus Worldview Initiative.