Unveiled Glory

Scriptures:     Exodus 34:29-35,  Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2    Luke 9:28-43

In 2018, Netflix carried a movie called “Bird Box” – did anyone here happen to see it?  In it, Sandra Bullock plays a mother who has to take her two children down river on a boat to safety.  But, in the world of the movie, there’s some dire outside threat such that, if people look at it, they commit suicide.  And so the signature image of Bird Box is Sandra Bullock and two children in a boat on a river, all blindfolded.  And, of course, after the movie’s release, people had to be warned not to try this at home, not to try to go through their daily tasks blindfolded. 

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before the start of Lent.  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday – we won’t be having dinner church this week, by the way, because the Ash Wednesday service will be at Bridesburg Methodist, and I believe there will be food beforehand there.  Anyway, on Transfiguration Sunday, we remember that Jesus took Peter, James, and John, the inner circle of the disciples, the three closest friends of Jesus, up on a high mountain.   And on that mountain, the three disciples were granted a vision not given to the others, a glimpse of Jesus in glory.  We’re told that his clothing became dazzling white and his face became radiant.  Suddenly on either side of Jesus were Moses and Elijah – Moses, representing the law that had guided the Jews for centuries, and Elijah, representing the great tradition of the prophets, who constantly called the people back to faithfulness when they had gone astray – which they did quite often.   Jesus was in conversation with Moses and Elijah about what Luke calls his departure – we’ll talk about that a little later.  Peter starts babbling about setting up some booths so that the three can hang around a while.  A cloud covers Moses and Elijah, and a voice from the cloud says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”  And then the vision ended, and they saw Jesus as they always had seen him – even though after this experience, they probably never looked at Jesus in exactly the same way again.

What is going on here?  Did Jesus just feel like treating his three closest disciples to a light show and some special effects?  There are many cross references between our Old Testament reading, about Moses’ face shining after his conversations with God on Mt Sinai, and our Gospel reading.  In fact, just as Moses went to Mt. Sinai to receive the law and to converse with God – we’re told that Moses was privileged to speak to God face to face, like a friend – Luke is telling us that the same is true of Jesus, that Jesus spoke to God as a friend – as more than a friend, as a father – and that his face became radiant in the same way that Moses’ face did.  And Jesus let the closest of his disciples in on this experience.

The account of the Transfiguration appears in three of the Gospels, Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s, but not John’s.  In Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels, we’re told of Jesus being in conversation with Moses and Elijah, but we’re not told what they were talking about.  Luke’s gospel fills in that detail – they were talking about what Luke called “Jesus’ departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.”  The Greek word translated in English as departure is “exodus”.  So Moses and Elijah were talking about Jesus’ exodus, which was about to be accomplished in Jerusalem.  The use of that word exodus makes the parallels between Moses and Jesus just about as obvious and powerful as they could be – just as Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness to freedom, Jesus through his arrest and trial, crucifixion and resurrection, would lead his followers to spiritual freedom.  And then Moses and Elijah are covered in a cloud, and the voice from the cloud proclaims to the three disciples the same words that Jesus himself had heard at his baptism – “This is my Son, the beloved” – with the addition “Listen to him.”  And then they saw Jesus as they had always seen him – though, as the saying goes, once you see something, you can’t unsee it, and I’m sure that even in the midst of their later foibles and failures, the three disciples never completely forgot the vision that was granted to them.

Jesus and the three disciples go back down the mountain, and once again there are parallels between this account of Jesus and the Old Testament accounts of Moses.  We may remember that when Moses came down Mt Sinai with the tablets of the law, he found Aaron, his sons, and the people worshipping the Golden Calf.  When Jesus and his disciples came down the mountain, they found, not a golden calf, but a crowd, a desperate father, a son afflicted by seizures, and nine of the disciples utterly unable to help him.   And just as Moses was enraged by the worship of the golden calf, enraged at failure in their walk with God, Jesus became angry at the apparent failure of the disciples’ faith in not being able to deliver the son from the seizures.  “How much longer will I have to put up with you?” Jesus screams at them.  Ouch!...that left a  mark.  But then Jesus healed the man’s son.

This sequence – the exalted vision, followed by the letdown of having to wade into the muck and mire of ministry – was not just for Jesus and Moses, but it is often the pattern of our walk with God.  We come to church, seeking communion and closeness with God, seeking God’s presence, seeking to be fed spiritually – and maybe physically as well.  And no, I don’t know how to put on a light show like Jesus did, and Moses and Elijah haven’t spoken to me lately…sorry.  (Was it something I said? Something I didn’t say?)  But even so, maybe not every Sunday, but hopefully at least an occasional Sunday now and then, we leave here with a different feeling from when we came here.  But we do leave here, to go out into the muck and mire of our daily lives, with all the petty annoyances along with the larger challenges and even crises that life brings.  It’s tempting to run back to church, to escape from it all.  But the purpose of coming here is precisely to be fed and built up and strengthened and equipped so that we can deal with all the craziness that’s waiting for us out there on the other side of the church door.

Diverting just a moment, I believe it may have been this image of Jesus in conversation with Moses and Elijah that inspired the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of Biblical text that we follow – and while I go off the lectionary occasionally, it’s a rare occurrence.  Each Sunday, the lectionary gives us an Old Testament reading, a Psalm – also from the Old Testament – an Epistle reading, that is to say one of the letters of Paul or Peter or James or John – and a Gospel reading.  And these texts are often selected so that the one text may comment or provide context on another text, just as the lectionary puts the account of Moses’ shining face next to the Gospel account of the transfiguration.  It’s not always possible, and it’s rare that all four texts are entirely in sync, but that seems to be the intent – a conversation between different scriptural texts, on which we are privileged to listen in.  

In our reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul also references the account of Moses’ shining faith, and takes it in a different direction.  Remember that Paul did not encounter Jesus in his earthly ministry and so does not tell of Jesus’ transfiguration – but he seems to reference it by saying that something similar happens in the lives of Jesus’ followers when we open ourselves up to God.  Paul references the veil that Moses wore to hide the radiance of his face, but says that when we approach God with unveiled faces, we will not only see God’s glory but reflect God’s glory to others.  And, Paul writes, not only will we see God’s glory and reflect God’s glory, our lives will be transformed into images of God’s glory.

Reflecting God’s glory, being transformed into images of God’s glory – that’s a tall order.  That’s a mouthful.  And the contrast of Moses’ veil with the notion of approaching God with unveiled faces reminds us that a veil, or curtain, can serve more than one purpose.  Exodus seems to say that Moses wore a veil on his face because the radiance of his face was more than the people could take, but Paul reinterprets the account to say that Moses wore the veil so that the people could not see the radiance gradually fading from his face.  To take the image in a slightly different direction, veils can be used as masks to keep the outside world from seeing us, or as blindfolds to keep us from seeing the outside world…sort of like the Berlin Wall prior to its fall – was it there to keep the outside world out of East Germany, or to keep those in East Germany from leaving for the outside world?  Paul, in frustration with the opposition he faced, said that those who did not receive his message read Scripture with a veil over their minds.  To use the imagery of the movie Bird Box, Paul was saying in effect that people who did not receive his message read Scripture with blindfolds on.  And I think we all read Scripture with veiled minds, with mental blindfolds on, from time to time – we may seize too quickly on time-worn understandings of the text, often handed down from others, and not take the time to really engage with the text ourselves, to dig into the text, to ponder it, to pray over it, to let it work on us and maybe lead us in unexpected directions.  

I was at a meeting with some other pastors last Tuesday night, and we read the 2 Corinthians passage as a devotional at the start of our meeting.  As we discussed the 2 Corinthians passage, the image of the veil worked on my mind.  What does it mean to see the glory of God with unveiled faces?  To me, it meant to take off our mental blindfolds and to be radically open to God’s direction. And what does it mean to reflect God’s’ glory in our unveiled faces? To me, it seems to mean that if we are being radically open with other people, removing the blindfolds and veils and masks we may wear and letting people see us as we really are, we can trust that those around us will see God’s glory reflected in us.  But we trust nothing of the sort – at least I trust nothing of the sort.  Instead, we may wear masks and engage in what we might call image management to put up a facade that we think will please people and attract them to us, and even perhaps a facade that we think makes us look like good and pious followers of God.  But Paul seems to be saying that God’s glory is better reflected in our lives just as they are, warts and all.  Now, I have to say, that thought absolutely terrifies me – it scares me silly.  I think we all wear masks to some extent, sometimes even hiding the truth of our lives from ourselves as well as from others.   And pastors are no exception.  I told the other pastors at the meeting that I was afraid that if I removed some of the veils from my life, rather than seeing God’s glory reflected there, people would see something more like the head of Medusa, something so hideous that it would turn their spirits to stone.  Somewhere in the midst of all that I seemed to hear a call from God to be a bit less self-protective, a bit less guarded in relating to others.  Who knows where that could lead.  To be continued….

After his conversations with God, Moses reflected God’s glory so strongly that it was literally as plain as the nose on his face – and the same is true of Jesus.  May we allow God’s glory to be just as visible, just as radiant, in our lives as well, and may we have eyes open to see God’s radiant glory in the lives of our neighbors and in the world around us.  Amen.