What Does God Look Like?
By Thomas H. Graves
"…He was afraid to look at God" Exodus 3:6
Ray and I were friends. We were very good friends.
Our friendship grew out of several trips that we took
together. We attended denominational meetings with
one another. We traveled to Las Vegas and then on
to Los Angeles where we sat in the left field stands
to see a dodger's game. We spent a week in Danville,
Virginia, with his family and had a marvelous time.
We planned a trip this summer to Maine, just the two
of us, a trip we were never were able to take because
of his quickly progressing cancer. We spent a great
deal of time in conversation, not just while traveling
but also at mealtime in many restaurants in town.
These last few months provided a great deal of time
for talking in hospital rooms and at the bedside in his
home.
Almost to the very end, Ray was able to keep on
talking and for that I thank God. It was that last
conversation, just hours before his death that I'll
always cherish and can never forget. It was very
late in the evening, but my friend wanted to talk.
His wife called and I drove quickly to their home.
Ray had a question. We had had some previous
conversations about a particular passage in Scripture
concerning the image of God, so his question did not
come out of the blue, and it wasn't a childish or
thoughtless kind of question and certainly not a
cynical one. But he said, very deliberately, searching
for the right words, "Tom, I have a question." And
he put the question into these slowly formed syllables:
"What does God look like now, Tom? What does
God look like now, for me?" Here was man whose life
was ebbing away. With all his strength all gone, he
looked to his wife, son, and friend, all standing by his
bed, and asked,
"What does God look like for me right now?"
That is an important question for us all to consider
as we ponder the visitation of death. What does God
look like for us right now? As we gather in the midst
of a deadly world, in the face of the death of many
gone too early, too early for us to escape the harsh
questions of sorrow, what does God look like
now for us?
To Ray that night, my immediate response was
that right now, good friend, God looks like a man
dying on a cross. That's one way God looks. A
clear word to a dying man, a suffering family,
grieving friends, a sorrowing church, is that God
endures our pain as well. Not only has God been
there, but also he is there, mixing his tears with ours.
God looks like a dying man on a cross, suffering and
weeping. Our God shares our grief. Christ enters into
our suffering as he says at the beginning of his
ministry, "I have come to heal the broken-hearted."
He shares our sorrow as he stands by the graveside
of his dear friend Lazarus and weeps. He shares in
our suffering when he says, "Come to me all ye who
labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."
He shares our suffering when he speaks those very
last words, "Lo, I am with you always." That
promise includes his presence at a deathbed and a
funeral service. Our sufferings belong to God. We
are not alone in our grief. That is what Paul meant
when he spoke: "There is absolutely nothing that
can separate us from the love of Christ. Not life, not
death, not anything else." What does God look like?
God looks like a man dying on a cross.
Someday our conversations will resume. Ray will
have more questions and many more answers to my
questions as we struggle with the reality of death.
That is possible because of the Christian affirmation
that God also looks like the risen Lord. That is the
very core of our faith: We come even in the awful
sadness of this deadly moment and speak of hope
and resurrection.
Ray knew when to die. He waited until dawn: his
timing was perfect. We are now gathered on a
Sunday, Our faith's day of resurrection celebration,
to ask about death. Here we are on the day that
proclaims the dawn of a New Hope. What does
God look like? Today, especially on this day,
God looks like the risen Lord.
I remember another conversation months before.
I had lunch with Ray just prior to his doctor's
appointment. We really didn't spend much time
talking about his physical condition. But that
very night he pulled me aside, in the parking lot of
our church. He'd gotten awful news from his doctor.
The cancer had spread; it was a great deal worse than
he ever realized. As he talked about it in his blunt
and frank fashion, he assured me, "Tom, always know
I'll be alright." And then he began to quote, like his
mother could do so well, some poetry. Drawing from
William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis", the words
came easily to his lips, so easily and heartfelt that I
hurried to my office and read them again. Here are
the words he remembered:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd
By one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
God looks like the risen Lord. That the very core of
our faith and that's why Ray left me written
instructions concerning his funeral. At the bottom
of the page he scrawled, "Go home and have a party
when it's over!" I could not do that and I don't
expect others to do that either. We can, however,
gain a sense of the hope he held on to. We can
gain a sense of the joy and peace he felt in the
presence of the risen Lord. What does God look
like? ..Like a man on a cross; like the risen Lord.
What else does God look like? One more thing Ray
said to me that night. Realize how difficult the
conversation was for him, struggling for words and
only with difficulty forming them into understandable
sounds. "God told us," he said, "God told us what
he looked like. God told us he looked like love."
That's the simplest yet most profound, picture in all
of the Scripture. God looks like love.
I saw that in my friend's life. It was something
beautiful for God. The kind of word, the caring deed,
the acts of ministry and care, flowers and phone calls
for others, even as he was dying. God looks like love,
and I saw a great deal of that through the life of Ray.
We see that supremely in the revelation of God's
love in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see God as one
who embraces the sick, who soothes the anxious,
who affirms the discouraged, and who forgives the
sinner. In Jesus we see a God who loves.
What does God look like? Like a dying man on a
cross, like the risen Christ, Like love. The
conversation ended as Ray said, "Yeah, Yeah.
That's what God looks like." That was our last, but
not our final conversation. What does God look like?
Like a man on a cross, Like the risen Lord, like love.
I know that much more clearly because of a saintly
friend, who taught me well what God looks like.
From Book, "5 BEST SERMONS",
Edited by James W. Cox
Harper Collins Publishers
Without permission
Back To The Ant And The Contact Lens
A Day Of Falling Stars
