The face of a child, the face of God

Today we celebrate the birth of a child, and the welcoming of that child into our church community. I want to read to you from this beautiful novel - Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.
 
The person speaking in this excerpt is an elderly man, remembering holding his baby daughter in his arms fifty years previously - a daughter who sadly only lived for one week. This is what he recalls:
 
"They say an infant can't see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn't really study my face. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize that there is nothing more astonishing than a human face... It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any."
 
The singularity of it. The courage and loneliness of it. I find these to be striking words. Not words we often use of the face of a child. We are more inclined to notice cuteness, or wrinkledness, or likeness to a family member, or perhaps nothing remarkable at all. But these words - singularity, courage, loneliness. They resonate with me profoundly. There is something very brave about being born into this world. And something very serious. And human.
 
Singularity - There is only one of any of us. We bear the burden and the joy and the extraordinariness of our own uniqueness in the world. There is nobody else who can be me. Nobody else has my DNA, my fingertips. Nobody else with the particular constellation of physical and emotional and character qualities and weaknesses and talents and self-hood. I am a small, singular, particular part of all that is and will ever be. Iranaeus famously said that the glory of God is a human, fully alive. I wonder if part of what that means is that I make up a part of God's fullness. That God's glory, God's presence in the world, the mystery that is God, somehow includes my particularity. What a challenge and a gift - the task of the human life is to unfold in such a way as to be fully alive...fully who God created and sees us to be - and so manifest the glory of God in the world.
 
And hence Courage - because to be born into this world is to be born into a place where our aliveness is threatened. To start off with there's the sheer helplessness and dependence on adults to nurture us, to feed and shelter us. We come into the world so needy. It takes courage to need others. There is nothing you can do but make your needs known, and wait.
 
 
And even when sheer physical need abates, our singular self is wounded by the wounds of the world. We give thanks that little Elijah, and the other children of our church are wanted, enjoyed, cherished, and cared for. But even these children need courage...to learn to be themselves in the midst of a world that is as often hostile as it is warm and welcoming.
 
And hence Loneliness - not only because there is only one of us, and nobody else can know quite what it is to be that...but because while we can care for one another, nobody else can finally do for me what I need to do and be for myself. In the end, we each of us need to learn to be on our own, to be in our own company, and to put our roots down deeply into the nourishment that is God's presence.
 
We celebrate the coming of this child into our community because we know that we need each other, and we know that in our singularity and our courage and our loneliness, it is community that provides the shelter and encouragement and wisdom and love that can sustain us on our journey of being fully alive.
 
Our community is imperfect in so many ways. We make a lot of mistakes. But in our best, we try to reflect God to one another, to be the blessing of God to each other and to our hurting world.
 
When we bless a child, we use the beautiful traditional blessing from the Bible: "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace."
 
The reading from the novel Gilead describes an encounter with the face of an infant as a mystical vision. The most well loved blessing in our tradition speaks of the blessing in the face of God - God's face turned toward us, shining on us, and granting us peace. Maybe part of what this blessing means to us is that sense of being face to face with another who sees us truly. Perhaps from the moment we come into the world we are seeking a face that will bless us and give us peace...a face that will recognise our face and truly know and protect the person that is expressed there. We are seeking the face of God. We may find in the faces of our family, or in the face of a beloved, or in the faces of a community, reflections of the face of God, and be blessed and known and held by these faces.
 
But ultimately, in our singularity, our courage, and our loneliness, the blessing we most need is the face of God...God's countenance lifted up upon us. We were born from God, created and loved into this world. Through the journey of our lives we need to learn to find God here, in the difficulty and extraordinariness of human living, to learn how to turn our faces toward God and receive the blessing of recognition and peace. Then, not only can we turn our faces to the world to bless others, but we can step into the aliveness that is the glory of God, and discover the face that will be ours in eternity.