This year has been unprecedented. The small, pernicious virus has done its best to undo our world. Covid-19 has resulted in over 160,000 deaths in the US. These deaths are made more tragic by the inability of many to see their loved ones before they pass or provide a proper funeral to remember them. We are required to “social distance,” to isolate ourselves, to wear masks to hide our faces. We rebel against this because we are not made to be isolated. We need people; we are not really “human” unless we are with other “humans.” As philosopher Martin Buber wrote, there is no “I” without a “You.” To be “human” means to be with another. “He that is one is none.”[1]
The Power of Zoom
And so we find ways to connect. We text, call friends and relatives, enjoy video chats. Thus the power of Zoom. Why has Zoom become so important? Because we need a face. More than Facebook, we need a Face. While texts, emails, and letters help, we long for face to face connection. Face to face heals our pain and eases our loneliness. Face to face also changes what we say and how we say it. Covid-19 has exacerbated the tension and division in our nation because we are isolated. Most of the negative posts on social media would not occur if people were in the same room with the ones they are attacking. Ideas can cause division if we don’t listen to and understand the people behind the ideas. We need more than the word; we need the word with a face.
Meeting God Face to Face
When God gave the Ten Commandments, he met Moses on the mountain “face to face” (Exod. 34; Deut. 34:10). What does that mean that God met him face to face? To say “God” means we are talking about the Force that created trillions of galaxies in our universe, a universe so intricate in every detail as to have the exact right conditions for life to exist. Any encounter with this God would be “radioactive.” Such was Moses’ meeting with God. That “face to face” meeting with Moses was so radioactive, so full of light, that Moses’ face was glowing. He had to put a mask over his face because it was too bright for people to talk to him (Exod. 34:33). But what really does it mean to say God met Moses “face to face?” I think it means God adapted himself to Moses so that Moses could encounter God, so Moses could actually connect with this incredibly Great God. This means that although God doesn’t have a “human” face, there is something in the essence of the God revealed in the Bible that is irrevocably bound to humans. There is something about God that finds a way to adapt to us, to communicate with us. God creates a way to connect with humans because he simply will not be without the humans he created.
There is no Humanlessness in God
If I were to try to come up with my own idea of “God,” I don’t think I would have included this idea that God is “bound” to humans. Our ideas of God are usually abstract; God is “something up there where humans are not present.” But that concept of God is so completely different from the God revealed in the Bible. The God of the Bible took the initiative and met Moses face to face. He bound himself by covenant with the people of Israel, and his name throughout scripture is Emmanuel, or “God with us.” As theologian Karl Barth said, “there is no humanlessness in God.” God has bound himself to humans because God’s very nature is love, but also because God created humans in his image. You might say God is the “prototype” of the humans he made. As the apostle John put it, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3).
And because humans are created in the image of God, we are only truly “human” when we are in relationship with God and in relationship with other humans. We are only truly “human” when we allow God to meet us “face to face,” to experience the light of his Person. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4). God the “idea” is like any other “ideas:” it isolates and causes us to become our own “gods,” making our god into our image. But God the Person, the God as he revealed himself in Jesus Christ, meets us face to face. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. No one has ever seen God, but God, the One and Only who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:14, 18). Instead of being apart from humans, the real God binds himself to the humans made in his image. He seeks to know us and exalt us to a place we could never, ever get to by ourselves. By encountering the God who is the “prototype” of us humans, the “humane” God enables us to be more human, more understanding, more loving, more “face to face” with others.
Encountering the Living God
When we think of God in the abstract, as concepts, ideas, or even moral codes, a mask covers our face, and we don’t let the living God meet us face to face. God is alive, and he is not bound by time and space. God’s Presence, His Spirit, can pierce our hearts, souls, and lives by his mercy, grace, and presence. The early Christians referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the risen Jesus, the Son of God in heaven who still bears the nail scars of his love for us. Because God is so bound to the humans he created, he wills to know us now, to be with us now, and to transform us by our encounters with him. We can still meet this God, the real God, face to face. As Paul said, when we turn to the Lord Jesus, our mask is taken away. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unmasked faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus with ever-increasing glory. For God, who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
[1] George Herbert, Trinity Sunday.