The Face of Us

Scripture – John 14:23 (NRSV)

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Devotion

In yesterday’s devotional, I wrote about how Philip in this story asked a provocative request with great interpretive payoff: “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responds: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Jesus in his full humanity displays the face of the Father. Jesus houses the presence of God. He becomes a place of habitation and also a space of revelation. The gospel becomes the love of God in the face of Christ. What if Jesus extends the same invitation unto us? If the gospel is the love of God in the face of Christ, could the face of Christ in the face of us be an extension of the same?

What if this invitation is imitation? God through the gospels, time after time, chooses to inhabit the ordinary, and every human becomes holy ground. Every story is sacred ground. Like Moses, every person that has encountered God’s presence becomes a burning bush of God’s love. Like Mother Mary, every human becomes a carrier of God’s grace, conduit of God’s compassion and co-architect of God’s justice.

What a holy thought: God chooses to inhabit us and not one person can house the fullness of God. Therefore, God honors our God-given differences. God takes the initiative so that the Trinity stays within us, sojourning with us; they remain and sustain us. All the while we are in hopes that another catches a glimpse of God’s delight through us—so that they know how deep, how wide, how tall and how long is the love of God in the face of Christ, and in the face of us.

Reflect

What aspect of God’s character or fruit of the Holy Spirit do we house best in our lives? What fruit of the Spirit is harder to house in ourselves?

Act

Write a note, text or e-mail to someone who has shown you the face and love of God lately. Tell them how and why.

Pray

God with a face, help us to turn our face towards your face. Help us to find our identity in your very being. Help us to rid ourselves of our false selves, the masks that we wear, the guards that keep us from intimacy with you and others. God with a face, help us to show your face. To the stranger in the street, the regular people we bump into day in and day out, the familiar faces who need to see our attentive faces reflecting back to them their true selves. God with a face, we long to see your face, for in you we live, we work, and move, and breathe and have our very being. Amen.

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Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Commentary on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Jesus, the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15–29)