Who Was That Masked Man?

Many fictional crime fighters wear masks to protect themselves from the criminals they fight. God wears a mask, too, but it's for a very different reason. What is that mask? Maybe this sermon will help you to think about that very thing.

I hope that you smiled when you saw the title of today’s sermon. Did it bring back memories of a black-and-white TV show that you watched many years ago? So, who was that masked man? Why, it was the Lone Ranger! I remember watching that show when I was a kid: the Lone Ranger on his white horse Silver, and Tonto, his faithful companion on his paint horse Scout. At the end of each episode, after the Lone Ranger had cleaned up the town of outlaws, or saved a widow’s farm, or provided a role model for an adoring young boy, somebody would ask “Who was that masked man?” And somebody else always responded, “Why, don’t you know? That was the Lone Ranger!”

The Lone Ranger was one of a long line of heroes who wear a mask. Batman, Spiderman, the Green Hornet: all of them wear a mask. And they all wear a mask for the same reason: for protection. They want to protect themselves from retaliation by the thugs they help to put in jail. After all, if you’re fighting criminals, it’s a risk to let them know who you are. That’s why people are put into the witness protection program after they have testified against someone like a mob boss. When you’re fighting evildoers, protecting your identity can be a very wise thing to do.

God hides his face for protection, too. But God doesn’t hide his face to protect himself from evildoers; God hides his face to protect us. In this morning’s reading from the book of Exodus, you heard God’s response when Moses asked to see God’s glory. “You cannot see my face,” said God, “for no one can see my face and live.” To protect Moses from harm, Moses was only permitted to get a glimpse of God’s back. The sight of God’s face, where his full glory is visible, is off limits. If Moses had seen God’s face, he would have died. He might have met the same fate as the bad guys in the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” They melted when they opened the Ark of the Covenant and confronted God’s glory! God’s face – God’s full presence in all its majesty and power – is just too much for human beings to see.

So, does that mean that God has to remain invisible and unknown? Do we have to rely on reports of God from people of the Bible who experienced God long ago? Of course not! We can see glimpses of God all around us right now! One obvious place is in the natural world. We can see part of a painter through her paintings, and we can catch glimpses of a sculptor through his statues. In the same way, we can see some of God in creation. When we gaze at the multicolored beauty of a forest in autumn, or stand in awe on a rocky shore next to thundering ocean waves, or marvel at the intricate laciness of a dragonfly wing, or consider the incredible vastness of the universe, we catch a glimpse of the one who created it. God is beauty, power, complexity, and majesty; and we can see that reflected in his creation. Many years ago I learned a song that asks, “Did you ever look at the sunset, with the sky yellow and red, and the clouds suspended like feathers?” If you have, then you’ve seen God.

But we can see God in more than just creation. We can look at the face of Jesus Christ. Now, we can’t look at the historical face of Jesus. That is lost to us forever in the mists of the past. The pictures that we see of a fair-skinned, bearded young man may not look anything at all like the historical Jesus! But that really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Jesus shows us what God looks like. In the gospel of John, Jesus claims “If you have seen me, you have seen my father.” He wasn’t talking about the color of his hair or his eyes. He was talking about tuning in to God’s feelings, values and actions. He was talking about understanding what is most important to God. He was talking about knowing how God responds to us – and how God wants us to respond to him.

When we look at Jesus, we see someone who loved people, accepted them, and was patient with them. We see a healer, a teacher, and a friend. Oh, we see someone who got angry, but most of the time that anger was directed against the oppressive structures of society that keep some people poor and hungry; and against the powerful leaders who keep those structures in place for their own benefit. Jesus got angry with the religious leaders of his time because they didn’t care about the people at all. They only cared about the quality of their own lives! Jesus wanted all people to have lives that were good and full of joy. And that’s what God wants for us, too. When we see God’s face, we don’t see the face of a judgmental tyrant who takes pleasure in punishing us. We see the face of a loving parent who wants the best for all of us.

But we see God’s face somewhere else, too. We see God’s face in the faces of people around us. Now, it’s not a perfect resemblance. We frequently distort God’s face through worry and pain and suffering. Sometimes it’s marred by rage or frustration or grief. But behind all of our responses to the situations that this very imperfect world throws at us, the face of God still shines through. We can see God’s face in the serenity of a young mother holding her baby – and in the contentment of the child who snuggles in her lap. We can see God’s face in the concern of a nurse for her patient – and in the trust of the patient who is in her care. We can see God’s face in the zeal of a crowd that has gathered to demonstrate on behalf of a living wage for migrant workers – and in the gratitude of those migrant workers that someone cares about them and about their families. God hasn’t hidden his face from us at all. It’s all around us, wherever we look, in the faces of our family and our friends and even those unknown people we see on the street and on the evening news.

And that means that we are the face of God for other people! That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? We Christians claim to have the spirit of Jesus in our lives. If that is the case – and Jesus himself says that it is – then when others look at us, they see Jesus; and if they see Jesus, they see God in us! What do they see when they look at us? We all know what they should see, because we know that kind of people we should be. We should be people who offer love, compassion, and mercy. We should work for justice, but also try our best to offer forgiveness. We should be people who look for the best in others, but who don’t get discouraged when we see the worst, because we live in hope. We should point beyond ourselves to the God who created us, because that’s what Jesus did in his life, death, and resurrection.

Yes, we are God’s face now, through the spirit of Jesus Christ who has called us to love the world the way that God loves it. We don’t show God’s full glory, because no one but Jesus Christ can do that. God’s face is masked by our own very human faces – and by the problems and the sorrows of our world. But every now and then, we catch a glimpse of God’s face – in creation, in our experience of Jesus Christ, and in the people around us. And when we do, we won’t have to ask, “Who was that masked man?” We will know!