Seeing the Face of Jesus
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue preached this sermon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Albany, Georgia on February 11, 2018.
Seeing the Face of Jesus
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
How might we see Jesus?
We get the answer tucked into our reading from the second Letter to the Corinthians. Follow me as I work through this and I will show you not only what the Bible teaches about seeing Jesus, but where I have seen Jesus lately. I hope that if you take this journey with me, you will see Jesus in this coming week too.
First, let’s hear what our reading says about why we should want to see Jesus. In our epistle reading we heard that one can see the light of God in the face of Jesus, “For 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.”
So the same God who called light into being in creation, shows us the glory of God in the face of Jesus. In a world that seems all too full of darkness and fear, finding the face of Jesus is all the more important. If that were not enough, just a few verses before today’s epistle, we read, that those of us who see the glory of the Lord, “are being transformed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18). So not only can we learn to see Jesus, but in seeing him, we become, little, by little, more Christ like along the way.
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And when the righteous wonder when they cared for Jesus, he will say, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
So when we serve others, we are serving Jesus. We find the face of Jesus in the faces of others, especially those in need. Now this is something St. Paul’s is well suited to understand. From Barney’s Run to Feed My Sheep, this is a church that serves. You are also a church that has both benefitted from the ministry of deacons, like Deacon Jim Purks, but raised up fine deacons like Ri Lamb and Joy Davis. And finding the face of Christ in others is certainly part of the role of a deacon. In the words of the ordination liturgy for deacons, “At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.”
A week ago, as I was praying through the scriptures for this Sunday, this reading from Second Corinthians stood out to me. I have referenced it before in preaching at the ordination of deacons. I also knew St. Paul’s had the excellent examples of deacons. What I did not know as I first wrote out this sermon was that I would spend some time with Deacon Jim Purks before I arrived in this pulpit.
On Saturday morning, Father Lee and I went to the hospital to pray with Jim in SICU around lunch time and Deacon Purks gripped our hands firmly. Lee told Jim, about the bevy of ladies in the waiting room there for him and I added we are going to need a bigger waiting room. Jim laughed and it set off alarms on the machines in his room. I thought we were going to get kicked out.
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