On Good Friday, Cityview, The Bridge, and The Urban Village Church collaborated for a worship service.  In preparation for the service we experimented with a form of presentation called pecha kucha.  What is calls for is 20 images, with 20 seconds of talk for each slide, for a total presentation of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.  Each congregation was given a 6:40 slot for presentation; we planned the service around the theme of Love Lays Down from John 15:13:  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  As well we focused on the body of Christ:  His Head, His Hands, His Feet.  The pecha kuchas were woven in between worship songs and scripture readings and then finally we shared the Lord’s Supper together.  The text for my contribution without the slides is below.

Love Lays Down, His Head; text

 

Please, find me an average Jewish man from the turn of Herod’s century and I will know what Jesus looked like.  If you want to know what a person is really like we believe, look at their head, see the features of their face.  “by the time you are forty every person has the face they deserve.”  Jesus did not have that long.  And our faith does not afford us that luxury.  But that has not stopped us from wanting to know.

 

“What was Jesus like?”  Was he kind?  Was he strong?  Did he always have that “knowing look?”  Like the one dad had when he came from home from work and unbeknownst to you had talked with mom before getting there.  Would Jesus see through me and know the real me?  Could really be one of us?

 

The urge to lay some personal or cultural claim on Jesus, the Son of Man is almost irresistible.  Our artists capture our fascination, as our academics search for the real Jesus in seminars and archeologists scour sacred ossuaries.  What was Jesus like?  Would the real Jesus please show his face?

 

And find Him we must…  But the plastic Jesus on our dashboard bobbles his head and seems to mock our efforts.  It seems He won’t be contained in static forms or manipulated as a charm against misfortune or as a talisman promising creaturely comforts.  The elder John says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,

 

Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us…”  Now you see Him

 

Now you don’t.  When do we really see Jesus?  We sing “I want to know you, I want to see your face…” But when does the elusive face of Jesus come into focus for us?  When are we really in His Presence?  As I pour through the pages of our sacred text I am confronted with a God who glories in acting decisively to create a forgiven people out of people who are not like him.

 

I am confronted with The One who lay his head down in a borrowed stable and against the breast of his mother.  Who came into this hostile environment head first, and then declared that this world was truly not his home— “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”  This One who even in death had no home of his own who was hastily buried in a borrowed tomb–I am not sure that this is the Jesus I want to follow.

 

I am confronted by the Son of Man who received the weakest of His day—the lame, the prostitutes, the sick, the tax collectors, the well known sinners, and the children.  Who looked with love at one like me who naively declared his self-righteousness and yet refused to part with expensive tastes and a self-ordered life for a Saviour whose kingdom commanded unadulterated allegiance. 

 

Jesus will be the head.  He will be Lord.  He will be the Source of our lives.  But His journey towards exaltation included the most devastating humiliations.  Shame upon shame was heaped upon Him. Jesus knowingly poured his life out–blindfolded, struck on the head, on the face, beard ripped out, and crowned with thorns in mock homage by people playing their part in a cosmic drama bigger than their courtyard or hilly stage framed by three crosses.

 

And if I only use my head, I’m not sure that I want to follow Jesus into such utter humiliation.  My passion is not that great.  And like many of His disciples I fear that I could not bear the fellowship of that cross and the small but dramatic stage it creates.  It seems terribly small to equate the relatively minor irritations of my day as a cross to bear and a crown to wear.  

 

Yet, every stage requires its grace and its prayer.  And the grace that was poured out to and through Jesus at the cross is sufficient for us again and again.  Paul Gerhardt, wrote some of his greatest poetry in agony:  living through the death of five children and his wife, challenged with parenting a sixth child who suffered through sickness in Berlin, and tending to a church and city torn 1st by war and then by theological division.  He wrote this words:

 

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown; How pale Thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!  How does that visage languish Which once was bright as morn!  What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered was all for sinners’ gain; Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.

 

Lo, here I fall, my Saviour!  ‘Tis I deserve Thy place; Look on me with Thy favor, Vouchsafe to me Thy grace.  What language shall I borrow To thank Thee, dearest Friend, For This Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?  O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

 

And so I’m left to ask, Where can I find Jesus and see His face?  How shall my love find life and voice?  Is it only in my crowded closet and cluttered heart?  Is it only in the halls of great auditoriums?  Or will I meet him in the lonely paths of other’s suffering?  Can I go head to head and heart to heart with those hiding right in front of me and find Jesus there between us?  Jesus says I can,

 

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”  Then righteous will answer him, Lord when did we see you…?

 

It seems there is an unconscious experience for the followers of Jesus in the fellowship of the cross.  We don’t always know we’ve seen him, we missed him but he was there in front of us.  Perhaps He is seen by those who receive the water, the clothes, the food, the touch, the fellowship of someone who cares.  But if we live with our heads in the sand we will miss Him.  If we bury ourselves from the reality of people’s suffering and more pertinent to this day—to the suffering of Jesus Christ, we will miss him. 

 

Oh that our services were invaded more often by the suffering of people and the love Christ lay down for them.  He lay it down that he might take it up again and empower us to be emissaries of grace.  I am sinner becoming a saint, but I am not a saviour.  David says of Him, “Thou, O Lord are the lifter of my head.”  And I need the Spirit of God to lift up my head from the pre-occupation of self and to help me see Jesus again, anew, and perhaps for the first time in the face of those we are called to serve.