My first trip to the Soviet Union was a long time ago. We travelled only to Moscow and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). The Cold War was set on chill and, while on that trip, an international incident turned the dial to freeze.

Tourists were kept apart from ordinary people. We stayed in separate hotels, shopped in special stores reserved for outsiders. The agency, Intourist, was the group that spied on us, we joked. Maybe it wasn’t so much as keeping an eye on us as it was to make sure we were safe and had the most positive impression possible of the USSR’s great cities and liberating history. But when needed, muscles could be flexed. Our group was assigned our own guide, but it soon became clear that our tourist group was actually two smallish groups combined.

The group was made up of a group of Jews from the East Coast and a group of us Christians from the Midwest. Both our groups were there to visit “friends,” Jews or Christians in their synagogues or churches. We compared notes of what the Jews and the Christians we met said about living in a place where neither of the groups were welcomed or felt they belonged even though it was their country of birth. We posed with one another for photos.

I stood next to one of the men and our hair color was the same (brown), our beards the same length and we were the same height, our eyes, too, were the same color. “You look like you could be brothers,” another person commented.

A few weeks after we got home, I attended a human rights rally for Christians and Jews for the ministry where I served. Because of the people we traveled with, I felt comfortable. I put out our newsletters that told stories of Christians in jails, prisons and hospitals in the Gulag.

People stopped at my display. I would talk to them about the prisoners in the newsletter and invite people to sign up to pray with us. Some people did.

Because one the “friends” I met with while in the Soviet Union had been arrested and was awaiting trial shortly after we left, I was especially worked up. The thought of a brother in Christ who had me into his home for dinner, fellowship and prayer now incarcerated—that was almost more than I could bear. I wasn’t sleeping too well some nights. I told people about him. I continued talking about Christians. I wanted people to join me in praying and taking whatever action to get him out.

“Why don’t you just admit it?” one of the listeners asked.

“What? Admit what?”

“That you’re Jewish.”

“What?”

“Anyone can see that you’re a Jew.”

“No. I’m not. Look at my literature. It’s all about Christians. I’m a Christian.”

“What are you ashamed of? The least you could do is acknowledge it.”

I could easily reply with a negative—I’m not Jewish—but I couldn’t easily give a counter explanation. English, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, Choctaw, Cherokee, Irish. Maybe all the above. Neither of my parents were only one thing, and no one knew for sure. My mom used to jokingly say she was Heinz 57. This was not a condiment in our house. I didn’t know what that even meant for the longest time. But I was pretty sure I was one hundred percent Goy.

When Grace, my mother-in-law-to-be, first met me, we hugged and she said to Lorraine and me, “You look more like my son of David than Lorraine does my daughter of Sarah.” We smiled and I hugged her. “You’re not the first person to tell me that,” I said.

Grace was born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and came to faith in Christ after she and Lorraine’s Finnish dad were married.

So, she immediately felt at home with me. And I, of course, loved her because she was Lorraine’s mom, and she was so welcoming and accepting. It wasn’t really how I looked, but who I loved that made the difference. I loved her daughter, so I immediately had my second mom.

Lorraine recently heard people talking about what Jesus looks like, how no one knows, but people keep trying to paint him the way they look. Imagine if we actually did know. It’s so much folly. The Jesus height. The Jesus hair color. The Jesus diet. The Jesus workout. This is the way we humans would approach being like him—looking like him, trying to match his physicality or his taste in whatever.

Jesus knows his sheep. Like Grace, he sees ways that we look like him. He sees the resemblance before we do. We can’t see it. Maybe we shouldn’t. So often we look in the wrong places.

“Oh, I can’t get over how much you’re like your Dad.”

We have only to be guided by him now that we are his. We have only to accept by faith that we look like and can live like our Shepherd Father, the Son. It's not our hair or eye color or height or weight or complexion of clothes. We are his from the inside out. I want to be his lookalike inside, not to try making him look like me.

By the power of the Spirit, we can be Jesus to the people around us. May we find ourselves saying things that are more Jesus than us, surprising ourselves, and doing the deeds of the holy one of God. It’s going to be a Jesus Saturday today.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18