“Till We Have Faces”
In Matthew 22, Jesus is asked about the law and gives a summation that was well-known in his day, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Yet however good this is, the new covenant outshines it by far. The new covenant reveals that our neighbor loves us. The new covenant is the revelation that the Lord is this neighbor. But there’s more. It doesn’t only mean seeing that the Lord is the neighbor who loves us but also the vision to see our neighbors and the love shining in their faces towards us, and even by reflection who we really are in Jesus. Right now of course this is not seen all the time. Isaiah 25 speaks of “the veil,” “the covering,” that is over all nations. We do not see one another or the Lord; the face of God and man is obscured. But one day the veils will be removed, the face coverings taken away and we will. Paul writes that this has already begun to happen, “And we all with unveiled faces, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image going from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.” As a minister I see this every Sunday, I look into the faces of those before me and I see a light and a love beyond words. I begin perhaps to see even the face of the Lord. In C.S. Lewis’ last book, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, “Till We Have Faces,” written with the help of his wife, Joy Davidson, the main character asks “how can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” Using this myth the Lewises were telling us that we have covered over and suppressed the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, we have covered over and suppressed his face and ours. But God removes the covering and the face is revealed. We will see our neighbor. Then God will swallow up death in victory and all tears will be wiped away and people will say, “Look! This is our God, we have waited for him and he will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for him.”
