Turning Our Faces

Matthew 21: 1-11; Matthew 27: 11-54

FPC; 3-16-08

 

          The faces in the crowd are varied by different shapes, sizes and even colors.  Some are marked by lines indicating old age.  Others are as smooth as glass suggesting youthfulness.  All those faces are turned towards the road and the one coming into the city, riding on the back of a colt. 

          Long ago, Jesus had turned his face to the city of Jerusalem.  Now, Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled: “He did not hide his face.” 

          As he comes into the city to the shouts of “Hosanna, blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord” was his face wearing a smile?  I wonder. 

          Later, love will adorn his face as he sits at the table and is surrounded on all sides by his closest friends and most ardent supporters; he feeds them bread for their bodies and mercy for their souls.  He gives to them gifts that will trigger their memories of him-memories of his faithfulness and kindness, memories of the love shining from his face. 

          Later, that same face will show grief and anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.  There, Jesus will contemplate the reversal of his journey, an ‘about face’ that would change his direction and change, also, the direction of the world. “Father, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 

          Later, that same face will be contorted by excruciating pain on the cross; the physical pain of crucifixion and the heart-seated pain of knowing your closest friends have turned their faces from you. 

          One of them was a man named Peter.  Earlier in the evening, while at the Mount of Olives, Jesus had said, “You will all become deserters because of me this night.”  Peter boldly and confidently proclaimed, “Though everyone else may abandon you, Lord, I will never desert you.”   

          Later in the evening, in the courtyard a young servant girl says to Peter, “You also were with the Galilean.”  Peter denies it.  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”  “I don’t know the man.”  Three times he makes the denial.  In the distance, the rooster crowed, which is one of the saddest sounds of Holy Week matched only by the tragic site of Peter turning his face from Jesus, to whom he had just pledged his undying loyalty.   

          I am wondering about our faces.  In what direction are they turned at the beginning of this Holy Week?  What noticeable difference does your faith make in your life? 

          William Willimon tells a story about a friend who is an international economist.  The friend grew up in the church, but he grew away from the church.  But then he came back to the church and became active.  Willimon asked him what propelled him back.  He responded that on an academic visit to the former Soviet Union, he had a conversation with a colleague.  She was communist.  In the course of the conversation, she asked, “Do you believe in God?” 

          He said that he did.  And then she asked, “What difference does it make in your life that you believe in God?”  She then admitted, “I don’t believe, but if I did it would probably complicate my life.”  “What difference does God make in your life?”  And Willimon says that his friend could not come up with a single thing in his life that was different because of his faith.[1] 

          That whole conversation propelled him back to church. 

          To the people at work, to the people you see in the mall, to your family, your friends and your enemies, too, what noticeable difference does it make in your life that you believe in Christ? 

        If we dare turn our faces towards Jerusalem we will be called upon to have in us “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus our Lord…who emptied himself, became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” 

        In one of his books, Professor William Placher uses an illustration from the world of basketball to speak of what it means to have the mind of Christ in us.  He writes, “In basketball the players who are always asking, 'how am I doing? Am I getting my share of the shots?' Those are the ones who never reach their full potential. It is the players who lose themselves who ultimately find themselves. And it's that kind of self-forgetfulness that makes the best players."[2] And it is that kind of self-forgetfulness that makes the most exemplary Christian disciples, too.

          If we seek not our own interests but the interests of others; if we empty ourselves of self-promotion and self-gain, if we dare not hide our faces and instead have Christ’s mind in us, we will have courage to speak of Christ’s salvation without counting the cost.  We will seek steps to extinguish flames of hatred, no matter the risks.  We will find ways to grant sight to the blind and deliverance to those shackled by fear and despair.  We will come to our knees, as Jesus did, wash each other’s feet and serve one another with love, even if it means sacrificing our own selves. 

            Otherwise, it may as well be us in the courtyard: “I do not know the man.”  It may as well be us doing the shouting “Crucify him!  Crucify him!”

          Can people see the face of Christ in our faces? Is the mind of Christ evident in our every day living?  What difference does it make in your life that you believe in Christ? 

          There was once a young advertising executive, a man who was on the rise in his profession.  He belonged to a Presbyterian congregation in Atlanta.  Every Tuesday night he volunteered at the foot clinic for the homeless people who made their home in that church’s fellowship hall.  Robert was his name. He was the neatest dresser you could imagine. He typically wore a crisp shirt with red suspenders. He would sit on a stool before the chair on which one of the homeless guests was sitting. He would take the guest's feet and place them in a basin of warm water. Then he would take a towel and dry the feet. He then applied ointment to their sores. The ritual ended with the gift of a clean, white pair of socks. It was not unusual for the man in the chair, as he slipped on his socks, to brush a tear from his own cheek- tough men whom no one had touched with tenderness in a very long time. Her minister once asked Robert, the advertising executive on the move, why he came to the foot clinic every week. He brushed her aside, saying, "I figure I have a better chance of running into Jesus here than most places. That's all." As that minister watched him week after week, she realized that she was developing a sort of double vision (that’s how she put it). “I was seeing Christ in the stranger that he served. I was also seeing Christ in the one who was finding deep meaning in his life through serving others.” [3]

          “Hosanna!  Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!”  As we make that shout, our faces are turned towards the one coming into the city.  Don’t turn your face away!  Keep your eyes on him all the way to the cross. 

          If you’ll do that, the world will see his face in yours! 

          All praise and thanks be to God!

 

           

             

           

           

           

           

                          

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