Seeing His Face

I am all for celebrating holidays according to the Church calendar, but I am not one to systematically begin and end the celebration. I like my Christmas tree up early, and some years I never mentally take it down. This is one of those years. I am still not done thinking about Advent and Christmas, so here is my only apology for writing this post: those holidays are all about the coming of the Light, and since the Light just keeps getting brighter as the calendar year continues, why should I make any further excuses for dwelling here a little longer?

Obviously, this causes some disorder in my celebration: the essence of Advent is longing, but I don’t like to wait. I listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and I compulsively drive down the blocks with the brightest houses. In fact, if it were not for my string of twinkle lights, the somber darkness would eat away at my cheery spirit.

I am thankful that this electric age allows me to cheat the darkness, but I still know I am waiting for Christmas day, that day when all the lights were turned on. We live in the age of instant light, but we still wait for the baby blazing with glory, the morning star who brings the eternal sunrise from on high; we wait for the One who made all light switches possible.

Light is a sign of God’s favor. When He blesses His people, His face shines on them: Moses saw Yahweh on the mountain and thus became a bearer of God’s glory, the Psalmist prayed for a blessing in the form of God’s shining face, and the priests were anointed with oil to visually show God’s favor toward His people. These were signs of God’s love and presence, but also visions of the future Emmanuel –God with us.

In Emmanuel, God Himself came as the blessing. He came with a face like ours, and He did not mask that face. He did not hide His face, not from shame or from spitting (Isa 50:6). He came to shine on our hearts that we might see ourselves and flee to Him. He came that we might receive a heart like His and a face to reflects that heart.

Diane Ackerman says that the face is the expression of the heart. Perhaps that is what was so terrifying about Moses’ shining face: the people of Israel saw God’s face in the radiance of Moses. They could not bear to see him without a veil, and perhaps that was partially because their own faces were far less radiant—their hearts were dark and dim. Yet, though this world is full of the deformities of sin and death, God’s face is full of love and favor. God touched the darkness of this earth to transform it; we no longer need to fear the light.

The babe in the manger brings real change. He brings light that does not merely shatter all our darkness, but pierces our souls. He brings the light of salvation, as well as the brightness of a light bulb in a dark room.

The light shined brighter and brighter at Christ’s coming. The angel Gabriel appeared before Mary, a star lit up the heavens, and the angelic choirs joined in a heavenly bonfire before the shepherds. All that to announce the real light show: the face of a baby in an animal’s food trough.

The King of glory was laid out for the world like food for animals in a stable. He came in blood and filth, and not just the blood and filth of a baby born in a 20th century hospital, though that is gritty enough. He came in the grime and filth of a stable with hay and (yes, really!) pooping animals. Hymns may say that the little town was still and sweet, but His birth was no sentimental moment. Jesus was not a haloed cooing baby. He was the baby born to die for our sins, the baby given gifts for His burial when He was only one.

Here is the glory of God: a baby crying in the slums of Bethlehem.

On Christmas Eve, I attended a service where the minister said this baby was not historical. No, He was not really seen by shepherds or His mother. He was not seen at all. Baby Jesus was a character in a story with true meaning, but He was not real.

The minister proceeded to preach peace and comfort amidst the massacre of innocent children and a warmongering world; and why? Because of an untrue story that tells the truth. What a load of crap. This man who claimed to be a minister of God, spoke lies and hopeless darkness on a night brilliant with truth.

No sweet story can soothe a soul’s bitter anguish. If Jesus did not take human flesh and die, our sins are not covered and our warfare is not over. There is no comfort; no comfort for me or anyone else who sat in the illuminated cathedral listening to that minister. If Jesus is not real then there is no hope, only darkness and death.

The fools of this age may rage, but only my Savior’s face can comfort me. God descended to take on human flesh, and no man can take that truth from me.

These are the facts: God came, and as if that was not enough to make us look to Bethlehem, angels leapt through the heavens to wake earth from her slumbers. The skies shook with trumpeting angel voices and the dark exploded with the most terrifying fireworks display ever seen. In the midst of darkness, God paraded out light incarnate.

This baby’s blazing face is our only hope. Yet, how easily we, like the minister, forget that God’s face shone upon us and that Emanuel is with us. We lose sight of the manger, and darkness and doubt creep in to cloud our senses. Yet, just as the sun does not shine without changing our night to day, God does not descend without profound and piercing change.

Lest we forget that He has come, we need only see the angelic choir around us. The heavens descended that night and pronounced the anthem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” These are the words sung to God in heaven, and at Jesus’ birth the antiphonal choir descended and sang to men. They did not come to sing to another angelic choir, but to lowly shepherds. When the angels sing their antiphon, the shepherds picked it up and sang: “They made it widely known the saying which was told them,” (Luke 2:17). They became the angel choir.

We too are those humble shepherds swept up into the antiphonal choir to sing His praises. Here is our Truth and our Life and our Light: “We have found a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Strike up the tune and sing the fire-angel song. See God in human faces—see Light shine out of the darkness of human hearts. Tear off every mask and expose every falsehood that dims His glory; the Sun has come and brightness is all His rising. Forget the electric bill: plug in the twinkle lights, flip on every light switch, light the candles, burn the bonfire, and stare at the blazing spheres overhead. Together we all declare, “Glory to God in the highest. Emmanuel is here.”