Have you ever walked past someone you do not know—someone older or younger than you, someone richer or poorer than you, someone cooler or squarer than you—and you try to make eye contact, but it doesn’t happen?

So you make a deal with yourself: You will greet them if you make eye contact. The problem is that you both have to look at each other at exactly the same moment, and a stranger is not likely to look at you if she thinks you won’t truly see her.

Maybe you never make eye contact and so you keep walking or shopping or pumping gas or whatever you’re doing without ever acknowledging them—and for what? To keep you from looking foolish because you have said hello to someone who did not reply? What a pity!

The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, you are living in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, who have ears to hear but do not hear; for they are a rebellious house.—Ezekiel 12:1-3a

This kind of split-second negotiation happens inside my head on a regular basis, when I am going into the public library or walking down the sidewalk in an unfamiliar neighborhood or shopping for groceries. Far too often, whether at home or on the street, I have eyes to see but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear.

Yet the Word became flesh and lived among us. In the person of Jesus, we can glimpse God—without slipping into idolatry—whether we see images of Jesus depicted in art or revealed in the face of another person.

Paul writes to Colossian believers that “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Orthodox Christians believe that in the face of Jesus there is potential to witness the Incarnation in a way that transfigures and transforms the viewer.

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, portraits of Christ, called icons, began to take on certain standard characteristics: large, deeply lined eyes that look straight ahead at the viewer; stylized facial features, such as a long nose and pursed lips; and specific gestures and colors that convey meaning, especially gold to symbolize divine light.

Michel Quenot, an Orthodox Christian, writes that icons must first of all be truthful before they are beautiful: “Today, when the human countenance is so disfigured, when racial discrimination persists, when so many people suffer from a lack of genuine, sincere communication, faces on the icons radiating a light that comes from beyond fascinate and beckon us to contemplate. Although they speak indeed of God, they also speak about humanity” (The Icon: Window on the Kingdom). The paradox of the icon is that it depicts a Christ that looks so “unrealistic,” so unlike us in its details, and that, at the same time, can call us to see Christ in each other.

When Jesus is speaking to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, he tells them about a king who will separate those who are blessed from those who are accursed. The king (Jesus) tells the first group, “I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” They ask him, “When was it that we saw you?” They had not recognized Jesus’ image in the faces of the hungry, the poor, the alien, the dying, the imprisoned, but they had served him in “the least of these who are members of my family.”

So you make yourself a new deal: Walking past a stranger, you say hello instead of waiting for eye contact. You greet them, conscious of God’s image within them, seeing Christ’s face in theirs, allowing the Spirit to move us and our communities toward greater wholeness.

Christ, help us see you.
Christ, help us hear you.
Christ, help us know you.
Amen.

Sara Dick is associate pastor at Shalom Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.