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.
In a parable of the last judgment, Jesus told that people will be separated as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats saying, “to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me’ (Matthew 25:34-36).
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.
Then later I went back and after making some plans for today with a larger group in the chapel including Pam Reynolds and Mollie Swann, I went to pray with Jim once more. With me were deacons Dianne Hall, Joy Davis, and Ri Lamb. I was humbled to be in the midst of such brilliant servant ministers. These are Christians who we all know to put their faith into action. And beyond that, the role of a deacon isn’t to serve others so the rest of us are off the hook.
As I just said, the ordination liturgy spells out that a deacon’s “life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.” The deacon is to show Christ’s people that when we serve the helpless we are serving Christ. The role of a deacon is not to serve in the place of others. Deacons are to be icons of service.
Icon. This is a better way of seeing the role of a deacon. The Greek word “Icon” means “image” or “likeness.” In our Epistle reading, we are told that Christ is the image of God. The word image in that verse is “icon” in the Greek. As Christ served as an icon of God the Father, deacons serve as icons of Jesus, pointing us to Him.
This past week as I was thinking about icons of Jesus, I remembered some years ago coming to Albany to make a video of a group from St. Paul’s serving food at St. Clare’s kitchen. I could see Deacon Jim Purks lit from the inside with joy as he served people in need. You could tell this was not a burden, but what he was meant to do. But it is far too easy to see the face of Jesus Christ when watching Jim Purks serve others. There is no challenge in that.
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Jesus raised the bar much higher than that. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven….If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” (Matthew 5:44-46).
I got thinking about what else I knew about Jim. Those of us who know him remember how Jim served as Deputy Press Secretary in President Jimmy Carter’s Administration, and his work as a speech writer for a number of Fortune 500 Companies and how while serving in marketing at Habitat for Humanity, he collaborated on two books with Habitat founder Millard Fuller.
But the keystone of his vocation before the diaconate came as an Associated Press reporter. Jim looked evil in the face while covering the Civil Rights Movement. His best known story from those seven years came as he wrote about walking through 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham just after the bodies of 11 year old Denise McNair, and 14 year olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, were removed from the bomb blast site. Killed for preparing for worship in a church that was a Civil Rights center in the area. Jim Purks interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s.
He walked through the debris of hatred stepping on a piece of glass with blood on it, and to this day anytime something crunches underneath his feet, he remembers that scene far too well. He has said, that his servant ministry is dedicated to Denise, Addie Mae, Carole, and Cynthia to whose deaths he bore witness for us all.
As I was praying through this sermon, I went online to see photos from the church bombing, to get a feel for what Jim saw. Knowing I intended to preach about seeing the face of Jesus, one photo took my breath away. As the bomb was under the stairs to the church, the real damage was down below, but the stained glass in the church had suffered.
I saw a photo of Jesus in stained glass with the pews below and where Jesus face had been, was just white in the black and white photo. The debris blasted through the window had removed the face of Jesus, what an image. Walking through the bombed out church that Sunday morning, young Jim Purks was in the valley of the shadow of death where it was so very hard for anyone to see the face of Jesus.
During that same time in his life, Jim said “I encountered a very muscular member of the Ku Klux Klan who wanted to know, ‘What are you doing here?’” He would later say that was the first time he saw the face of hate.
Jim said, “I don’t know whether you’ve seen the face of hate. You’ve seen anger, bad tempers, but my experience with hate was complete calm in the face, complete calm. Looking at you and making you feel like you were nothing.”
Making you feel like nothing. That is the opposite of Jim. If you know if even passingly well, you have likely received a hand written note from him, each one a work of art with drawings and stamps, that signature Jim Purks’ style.
But it his work in the midst of evil that makes Jim’s joy all the more meaningful to me. He is not a man who has lived a blessed life far beyond the cares of this world. No, he has been very much in the center of pain and suffering and yet he still finds joy. Here in Albany, he has given countless hours in Phoebe Putney [hospital] offering the compassion that comes from Christ and in many ministries around the area.
But the point of this sermon is not Jim Purks, as much as an icon of Jesus as he is. The point here is that all Christians are called to see the face of Christ in others. And it is this Jesus who told us not just to love one another, but also to love our enemies who we seek when we look for the face of Jesus. And so we don’t need to look hard to see the face of Jesus in Jim or Ri, Dianne or Joy, imperfect people as we all are, to be sure, but people who seem so perfect when living out their servant ministry as deacons.
We are all called to something more. We are called to see as Jesus those who have hurt us, those who disappoint us, even those who would attack us. This is a tall order. We won’t always get it right. But God calls us to this journey. For I have found that God comes to me through people who annoy me, interrupt me, or seem to be distracting me from my purpose. God comes in all sorts of ways, but most reliable places to see the face of Jesus are to look for him in people most in need and those you are ready to ignore, overlook, or judge.
The more we can muster the inner strength found in Christ alone to treat folks like this as we would treat Jesus, the more we truly become by Christ. And life being what it is, all of us will have someone this week who finds our last nerve or seems to call forth our judgment. When that happens to me, I plan to try to pray for the grace to see Jesus in that person, for our will be looking at someone for whom our Lord gave his life and would do so all over again. And if you will do the same in your week ahead, I know that none of us has the power in ourselves to do this, but Christ will work through us. And in the process, that person, might, just might, see the face of Jesus in you.
Amen.
