2011 A.D.: 6th Day Series: The Face of Man - Does It Subtly Display Christ Crucified?
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I think our face might have been designed to display Christ crucified. When I see three wrinkles on the forehead of someone, I think of the three lines of writing on the sign placed above Jesus' head on the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth - King of the Jews" in three common languages of the day. And remember, even the Gospels place the location of His crucifixion at Golgotha, which means 'place of the skull'. Maybe that's a God-hint. The face is on the front of the skull, right?
I think the nose of some people (not mine!) could look like most of the body of Jesus, hanging such that his lower legs go back into our face at about a 90-degree angle, and the tip of the nose is the knees. The eyebrows are his arms, and that patch between the brows is his hanging head. Like I said, some faces...not many...can really exemplify this! The flares of our nostrils are like calf muscles, but from the bottom of the calf muscle on down, the legs disappear into our head (for the analogy to work, I mean.)
That furrow that goes from beneath our nose to the top lip looks like the rest of the cross going into the ground. Our top lip could be interpreted as that mound of dirt you might find at the base of a post that you have just buried and set for a fence...or for a cross you just set? Our top lip might be reddish because of the shed blood of the one on a cross. The bottom lip could represent a pool of that same blood. That curve around our lips, the 'parenthesis' around our mouth, is like a small hill perhaps.
Our eyes can be seen to look like two fish, observing the figure on the cross closely, looking upon the crucified Lord Jesus, who is in agony as He buys the freedom of those men who will follow Him with His life - the life of His human body. Fish were the earliest symbol of the Christian, I have heard. Didn't Jesus tell Peter and Andrew that they would be fishers of men? Our eye lashes might be the fin spines...the spines of bone that stiffen the fins of the fish. Our iris looks a little like the curve of their gills...our pupils look kind of like the eyes of the fish.
Our ears, like the shells of an oyster, may hold the 'pearl of great price', which is a name that Jesus seems to have suggested for the Bible. Our auricular sound scoopers are called 'ears', but the cluster that individual seeds of the various grains that man raises are also called ears; we refer to an ear of corn, in older times to an 'ear' of wheat or barley, though sometimes now the word 'head' is used more often for those particular grains. Jesus likens grain seeds to the Word of God in the parable of the sewer, wherein he describes the fate of seeds (the word of God) that fall on the different types of soil. So, an 'ear' on a grain plant is a place that actual grain seeds are gathered, and an ear on a human is where the symbolic seeds, the words of God, are gathered. My point is the English language has conspired to use words - for parts of the human anatomy - which suggest a holy meaning. That happens a whole lot.
Our hair can be like the leaves, the foliage, of some tree that our Lord is crucified on. What makes that interesting is that hair seems to often represent pride or glory in the Bible. So, when you think about how leaves drop off the tree in the fall, and how hair often quits growing on a man's head during the 'fall season' of our life (our 40 to 60 years old time frame especially), it 'falls out' we say, it is as if hair reminds us of the 'fall of man'. We 'fell' when we sinned in the Garden of Eden, and no generation of us has done any better ever since, really. Hair, by the way, is used in the Old Testament scripture to represent men sometimes.
English is funny when it comes to having words, pertaining to our anatomy, that seem to hint at a holy connection. Often the words pertaining to a part of the body seem to conveniently express a Christian sentiment associated with the 'Christian scenes' that I believe are throughout our body. If it only happened once or twice, well then, OK...just a coincidence. But it happens over and over and over. A 'for instance' or two: Beneath Jesus, on the face we grow a 'mustache'. But how those of his followers who looked up at the scene of their Lord crucified must have ached in their heart and soul. If you see such a thing, you certainly must ache. Must-ache. Mustache.
Who are Jesus's witnesses? I am. ' I '. Eye. And the Christian beside me says ' I ' as well. An ' I ' on each side. Our face has an eye on each side. Hair falls. Leafs fall. Man falls. Leafs on trees disappear 'in the Fall'. The glory of man was lost 'in the fall'. Hair, in the scriptures, often denotes glory, as previously mentioned.
Witnesses of Jesus must 'pick up our cross and carry it' as the Lord did. We must be able to endure sufferings as He did. Maybe even beatings and whippings. Lashes! And the eyes, which look like fishes, the symbol of a Christian, have 'eye lashes'. How etymologically convenient!
We must study the Gospel, so we can be qualified workmen, able to share the Lord's words with others. To study, we must be 'pupils' of the Lord's teachings. And the eyes of these 'fish' that are on our face are called the 'pupils' of our actual physical eyes.
If our 'nose' is Jesus, isn't it interesting that Christian 'pupils' need to learn from one who 'knows', one who can teach them, one who speaks the very words of God the Father. And the fish - the 'pupils' - face one who 'knows', Jesus was such a one. And Jesus' body was 'broken' for us on the cross, and in the day prior to His crucifixion. When a 'nose' is fractured, we don't usually say 'fractured', we say 'broken'.
The hump in our nose, that would correspond to Jesus's chest (or His heart area perhaps) is called the 'bridge'. And Jesus came to be that very thing between God and His separated children, we sinful, fallen men; he came to be a 'bridge', a mediator, an intercessor, the thing Job wished for...someone that could lay a hand on both God and the offending human, and negotiate terms of forgiveness.
Is there a pillar-like bone that forms part of the human temple that is lateral to each of our eyes? There was a pillar on each side of the entry door to the Temple of God as well, just outside of the doorways through which you entered. They even had names: Boaz and Joachin. Jesus said he was the narrow doorway (Luke 13:24, John 14:6) through which we might enter the Temple of God in Heaven. And there he is, on our face, a 'doorway' between the 'pillars' of bone that form the front of our human 'temples'.
Jesus said, as He was about to enter Jerusalem: Matthew 23:37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you will not see me again until you say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."
And look at how the outstretched arms (our eyebrows) of this crucified Christ that (I believe) is upon our face arch over the fish, the witnesses, the children followers of Jesus (our eyes) somewhat like a hen's wings might protectively envelope her children. Women have been known to use 'henna' around their eyes. Eye makeup is for 'chicks'. Again, the English cooperates beautifully with the idea that God built us with pictures on us and in us.
What about our iris...the iris of our eye? I don't know what that word relates to in the English....maybe something I'm not thinking of yet? But if you look up the origin of the word, it is the name of a Greek false goddess. I wouldn't bring it up, except that she was the supposed goddess of the rainbow, and a messenger for the gods....so the Greeks believed. And if our eyes are supposed to look like fish, the symbol of the Christian...if our eyes are supposed to represent Christian witnesses, how neat that Christians are messengers for God the Father, Jeus the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit.
And in a way, Jesus relates to the rainbow, and we are certainly messengers for Jesus! Oddly, the rainbow was the overarching visual symbol of the protective covenant that God gave Noah and his family when they had to depart the boat called the Ark. Now here is a very strange correlation. Once, God's presence was in the Ark of the Covenant. His 'presence' dwelt there by His choice, and the protective covenant under which His people (the Israelites) dwelt was the Laws of Moses, and the greatest and most potent visible symbol of that was the Ark. And Jesus - who physically departed from us - is sometimes equated to the ark of Noah as well. Remember - Jesus physically departed His disciples to ascend, but he left behind His Gospel, His Holy words, to guide them. Psalm 12 says, in part: "The words of the Lord are like silver, refined in a furnace of clay, purified 7 times." When Noah departed the Ark, there was the rainbow, given to reassure them, just as Jesus's words, and all the Bible - was left to reassure Jesus' disciples. Now follow this if you will for a moment: Jesus' words are Jesus' 'light' to the world. The words of the Lord are purified 7 times. To purify something, you usually separate out the part you want from the dross that you don't want - think 'separate'. A rainbow is light 'separated' into 7 colors.
God Almighty had it be that His people would one day leave that covenant that He gave through Moses. And when they left it, when they left that covenant that had 'the Ark' as the dwelling place of God, they were to go to Christianity...the belief that Jesus had been the dwelling place of God among men, and that His teachings were now to be followed instead of Moses'. Jesus brought and still enforces the New Covenant...so we Christians firmly believe. And on our face, Jesus' arms arch out over our eyes (I'm speculating that the eyes on our face represent fish, Christians, God's people) somewhat like a rainbow (though they could likewise be likened to hen's wings.) As Noah left the Ark for the covenant of the Rainbow, so did the people of Jesus' time have only one choice...to leave the Ark for the 'Rainbow'. After all, the New Covenant were the words of God, and His words are like silver, purified 7 times. Psalm 12. Our eyebrows can be any color of hair, but I think that there are 7 colors of hair: white, black, gray, platinum, red, brown, and yellow....7 colors. Just as there are 7 colors in a rainbow. So, maybeeeeee...maybe some such thing is hinted, and maybe not.
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