When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. One the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.” (Luke 9.51-53)
At one point in Frederick Buechner’s book, The Son of Laughter, a fictional take on the Old Testament figure Jacob, he describes Jacob’s escape from Canaan after he had duped his father Isaac and had stolen his brother Esau’s birthright. Aided by his mother Rebecca, he makes for his uncle’s farm in Mesopotamia, the long road ahead of him giving him time to sort through his misdeeds and come to terms with his duplicity.
Buechner writes of Jacob’s journey in this way, “For the first days I traveled, my eyes were fixed only inward. I saw nothing of the land I passed through. If a lion had sprung into the path before me, I wouldn’t have seen him. Hills and valleys were one and the same to me. . . It was not shrubs, clouds, earth I saw. I saw faces.”
He continues, “I saw the fat, milky-eyed face of my father. I saw Laughter’s [Isaac’s] face with stew all over his mouth and chin, tears running down his cheeks. His face was telling me my smell was the smell of a field that the Fear had blessed. The nose of his face was smelling me.”
Then Jacob considers the brother he has wronged. “I saw Esau’s face. I saw the wet teeth of his tilted grin. I saw his red mane. All that my brother was at any moment was in his face for as long as that moment lasted, unlike me whose face is what I hide who I am behind. There is nothing ever in my face except what I choose to have in it.”
Continuing, Jacob describes his brother’s face, “All the fullness of his anger was in Esau’s face when he was angry, or of his lust when he was lustful. When he loved you, his love for you was in his face to overflowing. You drew back to avoid being drowned by it. His bent eyes flooded you with love, his parted lips, the way he cocked his head at you calling you darling, darling, staring at you so hard that it was as if there was never a delight under the sun or the moon like the delight of you.”
Then Jacob considers the face of God. “They say the Fear has no face a man can see, and I did not see it. But on starless nights as I traveled north with my black camel I saw over my head an emptiness that had no end. I saw darkness. I heard silence deeper than the kingdom of the dead. I knew that this was the way the face of the Fear appears to those who have committed abominations in his sight, and I shuddered beneath it.”
In his clever way, Buechner has Jacob remind us of the importance of a person’s face. As we know from our own experience, it is through faces that we identify ourselves and others. And it is not only our exterior person that our faces identify, but also our interior person. As Jacob makes clear, who a person is inside him or herself is very often found in his or her face, unless a person consciously chooses to hide his real self from others, as Jacob did.
Interestingly, the evangelist Luke also finds faces to be important, at least in the passage that we hear from today that appears in the ninth chapter of his gospel. Scholars are quick to point out that these verses signal a major turn in Rabbi Jesus’ ministry, his Galilean ministry done, his final mission awaiting him in Jerusalem.
Luke makes the notable shift in geography in this way, “When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.”
As we study the text, we learn that the problem with a translation from Greek into English is that often the translator substitutes more graphic descriptions with more mundane wording. These three verses attest to the weakness in translations. The fact is the evangelist uses the word face in each of these verses, although the translation does not indicate it.
First, when the text says Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, the more proper translation is when he set his face towards Jerusalem. Fortunately, some translations choose to go with the original rather than go with the implied meaning. The same occurs in the subsequent verse when the evangelist says that Rabbi Jesus sent messengers ahead of him, the more precise translation of the phrase being before his face.
Finally, in the third verse of this text, it reads that the Samaritans did not welcome Jesus because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. Again, a more direct translation would read, “because his face was set towards Jerusalem. Arguably, this might be considered much ado about nothing, except for the fact that there is something very powerful when these phrases are translated literally.
To say that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem describes for us vividly his resoluteness, his determination, his lack of hesitancy. And that is exactly what the evangelist wants us to understand–that nothing and nobody will sidetrack Rabbi Jesus from his mission in Jerusalem, not inhospitable Samaritans, not weak-kneed disciples, not the bloodthirsty elites in the city. His face is set in one direction and it will not be turned sideways or backwards.
The evangelist wants us to know that Rabbi Jesus’ face could be read with the same clarity as Esau’s face, no doubt left as to what he was thinking, where he was going, and who he would have to face off with once he got there. No poker face, no straight face, not just another pretty face, the Galilean’s face was one that said he was a man with a mission.
Cleverly, the evangelist provides us with a clear contrast in the second part of the passage by way of three characters who lack the commitment and the constancy to stay the course that Rabbi Jesus sets before his followers as the criterion for those who wish to be his companions on the way to the cross.
The first seemingly falters when he learns that “the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” The second wants first to bury his father, to which the Rabbi answers, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The third wants to say farewell to his family before taking leave, resulting in the Rabbi telling him, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
While good points could be made for the legitimacy of the arguments of each of these potential partners, it is clear the reasons are not good enough. And it is not a coincidence that the third excuse is met with Rabbi Jesus describing the faint-hearted follower as one whose face is looking behind him rather than looking before him towards the work to be done.
With these contrasts, the evangelist leaves no doubt that the disciple must walk towards his destination with the same determination as the Teacher, ready to face off with the challenges ahead of him without compromise and without delay. For the disciple, his face is to show his interior resolve as well as his exterior commitment.
An old Benedictine prior once said, “Personally, I am convinced that the spiritual life has a deep effect on the physical appearance of a person, on their face.” He continued, “The Greek tradition talks of spiritually mature monks as the ‘beautiful old men.’” We must confess that there is much to be said for the concept, our face becoming with time the roadmap of our spiritual advancement or our spiritual decline.
In 1850, the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story that he called “The Great Stone Face.” It tells the story of a young boy named Ernest who grew up with his mother in a small village in the shadow of a rock formation that seemed at first glance to look like the face of a man. According to local legend, one day a man would come whose face would resemble the Great Stone Face because he would be “the greatest and noblest personage of his time.”
As the years pass, would-be pretenders arrive in town, among them a wealthy merchant, a proud general, a polished politician, and a successful poet, each declaring himself to be the fulfillment of the prophecy, but each revealing soon enough serious character flaws that contrast with the conditions of the prophecy. Not only do their faces not match the face on the mountain, neither do their interior dispositions.
Ernest, disappointed that the prophecy stays unfulfilled, grows into an old man. Much of his life had been spent as a simple farmer before becoming an equally good-hearted preacher. On one occasion, Ernest is asked to deliver some remarks at the site of the base of the Great Stone Face. The people listen attentively to his words.
Hawthorne writes, “At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulsive, threw his arms aloft and shouted, ‘Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!’”
“Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what he had to say, took the poet’s arm, and walked slowly homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the Great Stone Face.”
There is much for us to learn in that story, just as there is much for us to learn in the story that the evangelist tells us today about Rabbi Jesus’ face, a face that challenges, inspires, and encourages others to imitate his way and his mission, so much so that in time our own face should show a striking similarity to his, a face that speaks unremittingly of a man on a mission.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 