Remembering the Face of God
Rebirth, communion, and the presence we were made to face
When geese are born, they come into the presence of their parents. They see a face, imprint on it, and begin to follow it.
Imprinting is the process by which young birds recognize and develop an attachment to a conspicuous object they encounter after hatching. Young goslings show a strong response to the first moving object in their surroundings. They follow it. They remember it.
Recall the movie Fly Away Home. The newly hatched Canada geese imprint on Amy and adopt her as their mother. Amy and her father (played by a young Jeff Daniels) use ultralight aircraft to teach them to fly south. The geese know which face to follow.
Christians have two births.
In our natural birth, all of us were born flawed, with a propensity to sin, to parents who were also flawed and sinful. From the beginning, the faces of the people who held us and remained close to us were imprinted on our minds. We learned which faces to recognize and which faces to follow—imperfect sinners.
But in John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus about a second birth.
“Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus asks the obvious question: “How can a man be born when he is old?”
Jesus tells him that he’s obviously not talking about a second natural birth but a spiritual one.
In that sense, rebirth takes us back to the beginning.
When Adam and Eve were first formed, the first face they encountered and imprinted was God’s. He was their Father—perfect and without sin.
But unlike Jesus, who is eternally begotten of the Father, Adam and Eve were created. They had a beginning which means they did not possess God’s divine nature. They could live in his presence, but they could also turn away from it.
And it was precisely when they were away from the face of God that they chose to sin. Afterward, when they heard God walking in the garden, they further distanced themselves from God by hiding among the trees. When God banished them, He simply gave them over to the consequence they had chosen: life away from the face of God.
A face they continued to remember.
In the Hebrew lexicon, the word for face is panim. Interestingly enough, this is the same word that we tend to translate as “presence” in English. So to be before someone’s face is to be in that person’s presence.
When we are born again, we do not ordinarily see the physical face of Jesus. (Although some people have seen visions of Jesus, which is awesome.) Rather, what we experience is what we tend to refer to as his presence. Which in Hebrew, is his face or countenance.
Yesterday evening, we had our monthly all-church prayer meeting. I was set to lead the communion portion of the gathering, but my friend and fellow elder, Alex Koval, nudged me and said, “Hey, do you mind if I lead this portion? I just had a revelation I wanted to share.”
He read the words of Jesus in Luke 22:19: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Jesus spoke those words to the twelve disciples who had lived with him for three years. They worked together. They rested together. They camped together. They drove out demons together. They would have had a million moments that they could recall with the physical Jesus.
But we—those in the room and the vast majority of Christians who have come to faith since the ascension—have never met the physical Jesus. So how are we supposed to remember, Jesus, exactly?
The idea Alex shared that evening was that we remember Jesus by recalling the moments in our lives when we experienced his presence.
For some, his face was imprinted on their souls in a dramatic moment at an altar. For others, it happened through a series of quieter, more ordinary moments. You may not be able to recall the precise moment you were born again, but you can remember his nearness. You can remember his countenance. You can remember how it felt to be before his face.
Looking over Jerusalem, Jesus said, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” That is what we bring with us to the communion table.
We remember the presence that met us in our rebirth. We remember the face that was imprinted on us. We remember the One who gathered us under his wings and taught us whom to follow.