Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus

One day in the spring of 1945, a young man awoke in a military hospital. He was fortunate to be alive—he’d been shot just behind the ear, but doctors had operated, and he could now walk and talk normally.

Tragically, the bullet had damaged the part of his brain that recognized faces. He now looked at his wife without a spark of recognition; he couldn’t recognize his own mother. Even the face in the mirror was foreign to him—he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.¹

He’d become face-blind—a condition that affects millions of people.²

People who are severely face-blind try to identify others by memorizing rules—a rule for recognizing a daughter by the pattern of her freckles or a friend by her shuffling gait.

Here’s a second story, closer to home: As a young boy, I often saw my mom as the rule maker. She decided when I could play and when I had to go to bed or, worse, pull weeds in the yard.

She obviously loved me. But too often and to my shame, I saw her only as “She Who Must Be Obeyed.”

Only years later did I come to see her as a real person. I am embarrassed that I never really noticed her sacrifice or wondered why for years she only ever wore the same two old skirts (while I got new school clothes) or why, at the end of the day, she was so tired and eager for me to go to bed early.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that these two stories are really one story—for too many years, I was, in effect, face-blind. I failed to see my mom as a real person. I saw her rules but didn’t see in them her love.

I tell you these two stories to make one point: I suspect you know someone (perhaps you are someone) who suffers from a kind of spiritual face blindness.

You may struggle to see God as a loving Father. You may look heavenward and see not the face of love and mercy but a thicket of rules through which you must wend your way. Perhaps you believe God rules in His heavens, speaks through His prophets, and loves your sister, but you secretly wonder whether He loves you.³ Perhaps you have felt the iron rod in your hand but not yet felt your Savior’s love to which it leads.⁴

I suspect you know people like this because for a long time, I was someone like this—I was spiritually face-blind.

I thought my life was about following rules and measuring up to abstract standards. I knew God loved you perfectly but didn’t feel it myself. I’m afraid I thought more about getting into heaven than being with my Heavenly Father.

If you, like me, can sometimes only lip-synch but not “sing the song of redeeming love,”⁵ what can we do?

The answer, as President Russell M. Nelson reminds us, is always Jesus.⁶ And that is very good news.

There’s a short verse in John that I love. It tells of a group of outsiders who make their way to a disciple with an important request. “Sir,” they say, “we would [like to] see Jesus.”⁷

That is what we all want—we want to see Jesus for who He is and to feel His love. This should be the reason for most of what we do in the Church—and certainly of every sacrament meeting. If you’re ever wondering what kind of lesson to teach, what kind of meeting to plan, and whether to just give up on the deacons and play dodgeball, you might take this verse as your guide: will this help people see and love Jesus Christ? If not, maybe try something else.

When I realized that I was spiritually face-blind, that I saw rules but not the face of the Father’s mercy, I knew it wasn’t the Church’s fault. It wasn’t God’s, and it didn’t mean everything was lost; it’s something we all have to learn. Even the early witnesses to the Resurrection often came face-to-face with the resurrected Lord but did not recognize Him; from the Garden Tomb to the shores of Galilee, His first followers “saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.”⁸ They had to learn to recognize Him, and so do we.⁹

When I realized I was spiritually face-blind, I started to follow Mormon’s counsel to pray “with all the energy of heart” to be filled with the love promised His disciples—my love for Him and His love for me—and to “see him as he is … and have this hope.”¹⁰ I prayed for years to be able to follow the first great commandment to love God and to feel that “first great truth … that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength.”¹¹

I also read and reread and reread the four Gospels—this time reading not to extract rules but to see who He is and what He loves. And, in time, I was swept away by the river of love that flowed from Him.

Jesus announced at the outset that He had come “to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.”¹²

This wasn’t just a to-do list or good PR; it is the shape of His love.

Open the Gospels at random; on almost every page we see Him caring for people who suffer—socially, spiritually, and physically. He touches people considered polluted and unclean¹³ and feeds the hungry.¹⁴

What is your favorite story of Jesus? I suspect it shows the Son of God reaching out to embrace or offer hope to someone on the margins—the leper,¹⁵ the hated Samaritan,¹⁶ the accused and scandalous sinner,¹⁷ or the national enemy.¹⁸ That kind of grace is amazing.

Try writing down every time He praises or heals or eats with an outsider, and you will run low on ink before you leave Luke.

As I saw this, my heart leapt in loving recognition, and I began to feel that He might love me. As President Nelson taught, “The more you learn about the Savior, the easier it will be to trust in His mercy, His infinite love.”¹⁹ And the more you will trust and love your Heavenly Father.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has taught us that Jesus came to show “us who and what God our Eternal Father is like, how completely devoted He is to His children in every age and nation.”²⁰

Paul says God is “the Father of [all] mercies, and the God of all comfort.”²¹

If you see Him differently, please keep trying.

Prophets invite us to seek His face.²² I take this as a reminder that we worship our Father, not a formula, and that we’re not finished until we see Jesus as the face of our Father’s love²³ and follow Him, not just His rules.²⁴

When prophets and apostles talk of covenants, they aren’t like coaches yelling out from (red velvet) bleachers, telling us to “try harder!” They want us to see our covenants are fundamentally about relationships²⁵ and can be a cure for spiritual face blindness.²⁶ They are not rules to earn His love; He already loves you perfectly. Our challenge is to understand and shape our life to that love.²⁷

We try to see through our covenants, as if through a window, to the face of the Father’s mercy behind.

Covenants are the shape of God’s embrace.

Finally, we can learn to see Him by serving Him. “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served?”²⁸

A few years ago, I got a calling I didn’t feel up to. I awoke early, nervous—but with a phrase in mind I had not heard before: that to serve in this Church is to stand in the river of God’s love for His children. This Church is a work party of people with picks and shovels trying to help clear the channel for the river of God’s love to reach His children at the end of the row.

Whoever you are, whatever your past, there is room for you in this Church.²⁹

Grab a pick and shovel and join the team. Help carry His love to His children, and some of it will splash on you.³⁰

Let us seek His loving face, His covenant embrace, and then join arm in arm with His children, and together we will sing “Redeemer of Israel”:

May we seek His loving face and then be vessels of His mercy to His children.³² In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.