The Faces of God by Seth Brown
New York City contains so many faces.
I feel strange seeing so many faces, because each one has a story to tell, and I want to hear all of them! Some people have no problem with the multitudes, but I am not fortunate enough to ignore all the faces, or at least, to be numbed enough by them yet. I get caught up in the symbol and feeling of seeing the faces of millions pass me by.
I get overwhelmed, exhausted, almost like I could die underneath the weight of the human experience captured in all those faces. Of course, this makes me think of the Bible and God’s strange commandment about not ever getting to see God's face, or else one might die. See Exodus 33 and then stick with me as I attempt to unpack via old Bible stories the strange feeling of seeing New York City's abundance of faces.
God's command about the consequences of seeing his face is laden with Hebrew thought and theology, and upon first impression, seems a bit intense; however, there are a few exceptions in the biblical account, or at least contradictions, depending on how one reads/interprets the stories. A great example is when the elders and Moses go up Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24:9–11. They dine with God, see him, and walk away unscathed. But that's not the story I'll be examining in this post.
The story I'd like to focus on occurs in Genesis 32 and 33. Jacob wrestles with God just before meeting his brother Esau and names the place of wrestling, Peniel, which means, “I have seen God face-to-face and lived.”
On its surface, the story indicates Jacob has had an intense religious experience, a wrestling of sorts, again laden with Hebrew theology worth exploring at length in other blog posts. The basics of the encounter are this: Jacob wrestles with God, receives a new name from God, and then names the location of the wrestling match. The important thing here is that Jacob wraps his experience up in a label as best as he can, and that label is more or less, “I have seen the face of God and have been spared.”
In the next scene, Jacob encounters Esau, his estranged brother whom he betrayed for a birthright in previous chapters of Genesis. Jacob is unsure whether Esau is coming to kill him or not, and therefore Jacob concocts a plan to ensure he does not die.
After bombarding Esau with gifts, Jacob finally arrives, face-to-face, initiating a highly charged conversation, which includes Jacob saying to his brother, “For seeing your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have dealt with me favorably.” (Esau does not kill his brother.)
Let’s explore this, because to me, the connection Jacob makes is massively important for understanding what it means to see God today, and maybe why I feel overwhelmed by all the faces found in New York City.
Jacob basically says to Esau, "You have the face of God." Now, Esau doesn’t know Jacob has just seen the face of God, so to him it may sound like flattery. But the reader knows Jacob literally within 24 hours (presumably) has seen the face of God! In one case, he is spared by God; in another, he is spared by his brother. Jacob connects this experience through the symbol of face, and I think we should too.
Furthermore, Jacob could have prompted Esau to spare him with all the gifts! I know this might sound a bit jaded and cynical, but humans are humans, and gifts go a long way. Jacob gave Esau over 500 animals! Was Jacob trying to repay his brother for the birthright? Maybe. Was Esau persuaded only by the gifts? We don’t know.
One wonders if Esau would have behaved the same had he and his men encountered Jacob alone in the desert with nothing to offer.
Theologically, I suggest we can understand a few things from this story:
We can see God in the faces of those who we might consider our enemy, or the "other."
We can see God in the faces of others when they act like God would act.
Perhaps, we might be able to draw out the divine face from those who aren’t even aware they look like God.
So, what does this all mean?
I believe we can encounter the divine in the face of anyone. This is what the imago dei (fancy Christian term meaning humans have been made in God's image) means to me. Not just that every individual has value and is worthy in and of themselves. It is that, yes, but also so much more. Every individual’s face can be a way to experience God's character, in a way that only that individual could provide for us.
Seeing God’s love through the way a father loves his child is an example of this, but I would go further. I want to argue that seeing Curtis (my father) love me shows me in a way that only Curtis could something about God’s love for me. It is not just the generic father's love that reveals God’s love for me. It is Curtis's love for me that reveals to me experientially God’s love for me.
I think these three theological implications also lead me to believe that we can elicit a divine response from people, and in doing so allow them to see themselves as made in the image of God.
I also believe that it is the encounter of the face of the other, the face of my enemy that can point me to knowing God more.
Maybe the reason I get so overwhelmed by all the faces I’m seeing is that I believe each one of them have something to tell me about who God might be, in a way that only that face and that person can, and the problem is that I simply can’t know them all. I wonder if anyone else feels this way.
I am reminded of what Kurt Vonnegut has to say in his deeply satirical book, Breakfast of Champions.
In one of the final scenes, a famous artist goes to a small town, Midland City, to exhibit his painting, which has been purchased by the local art museum. The townspeople feel attacked because the artist isn't impressed by the local celebrities, one of which is a female named Mary Alice who could swim “like a motorboat.”
At this point, he reveals his painting, The Temptation of St. Anthony, to be a solid background with an unwavering band of light running through one side. He turns to the townspeople and says something like (I'm paraphrasing here), “You are proud of your Mary Alice for being like a motorboat, but don’t you see, she is so much more than that—she is an unwavering band of light. We are all of us just that, unwavering bands of light.”
All these faces in New York City could easily get passed off as motorboats, cogs, gears, just another in a sea of others, but the artist Rabo Karabekian (i.e., Kurt Vonnegut) would say they each are an unwavering band of light—the Christian - a face waiting to reveal the divine. Maybe that’s why New York can’t get any sleep, because it is so bright here, all the time, with all these unwavering bands of light walking around at all hours.
Written by Seth Brown.