What Does God Look Like?

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 
  




 

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