I had this sort of dream once. For some reason, I was determined to see the face of God. I knew that this was absurd, but, for some reason, that’s where I was at. I looked at the expanse ahead of me and there was a single head. Suddenly, I saw face after face after face. Some were young and some were old. They were all kinds of genders and skin tones and hair styles and everything else you could think of. This face was from every tribe and every people; every ability and every disability. It was the face of every person that ever lived, flashing before my eyes. And then, at the very end, there was another flash and that same space was empty.
There’s an ongoing debate about what Jesus looked like and how he should be portrayed. Well, if we want to know what God looks like, we have to include everything that is and then recognize that God is within and beyond that. Why should we limit ourselves to one image or one kind of image? It might just be that God made sure that there would be no exact copy of Jesus’s face precisely so that we could see Christ with us everywhere, always. We can look for the superabundance of creation that flows through his veins and fingertips; the warmth of grace that radiates from his smile. The power and restlessness of the Spirit are the shape of his arms and the lightness of his movements.