Transformation

A sermon about closing the gap between heaven and earth

I think it’s poetic justice that on this Fat Sunday, when wearing masks in church makes perfect sense, both Old and New Testament readings deal in veiled and unveiled faces. I do believe God has a sense of humor!

In our own day we seldom see covered faces any more. True, a few decades ago when ladies still wore hats to church, it was common to see a swatch of netting crossing their brows. And today at weddings a cascade of white gauze is not unusual floating over the blushing bride. But as for the burkahs of Muslim women, they frankly strike us as strange. We’ve grown too used to viewing one another out in the open, face-to-face, and so getting the gist of today’s scriptures will take a bit of digging.

It will take archeology, in fact, because we’ll have to go all the way back to the time of Moses, some 3500 years ago, as he led a band of nomads across the Sinai desert on their way to a promised land. It all started when Moses was a young man out herding sheep, and he stumbled upon a burning bush. God’s voice was rising with the flames, and that astonishing encounter started a lifelong conversation between the two of them, Moses and God.

At God’s command, and against Moses’ better judgment, he made an outrageous demand of the Egyptian pharaoh: let this bunch of enslaved nomads go, just on God’s say-so because God loves them. Having strangely gained their freedom, Moses led a hair raising escape through the Red Sea. Clambering up the far shore, his band straggled from oasis to oasis toward the hill country, until mid-journey God summoned Moses up onto Mt. Sinai for a briefing. As he disappeared into the clouds, the beloved nomads waiting below reported awesome thundering and quaking. The commotion went on for some 40 days until Moses again reappeared heading back down the mountain, lugging two big flat rocks. Turns out they were carved with God’s Ten Commandments for faithful living. The first three revealed the kind of relationship God wanted with these beloved nomads, and the final seven the kind of relationship he wanted them to have with one another.

It is at this point—as Moses brings this good news down the mountain—that our Old Testament reading begins. Because he’s been hanging out with God the past forty days and nights, Moses now literally glows, much like that breathtaking bush he saw years before. This is not a warm, healthy glow, like sunshine bathing branches, but a kind of massive radiation that sends people running for cover. Moses has to call for his brother’s help just to bring back a handful of leaders, so he can pass on what God has revealed. Once these few brave souls have stood face to face with glowing Moses and lived to tell about, the other Israelites are reluctantly willing to take the risk of doing it themselves—provided he makes it quick. Moses sees the terror in their eyes, and so he veils his face.

This business of the glowing face is scripture’s way of saying that we mortals must never be too casual when dealing with God. Because we really have no idea what we’re dealing with. To come at God directly would be like reaching for a 220 line, with sparks flying everywhere. If this stunt were filmed for TV it would doubtless be captioned, “Don’t try this at home.” The Israelites were slow on some things, but they were quick to pick up on this: the distance between heaven and earth was astronomical, and any foolhardy attempt to take heaven by storm would surely end in disaster.

No, to carry on any conversation with God you needed assistance. You needed a transformer, something or someone who could take the voltage full force and step it down, someone like veiled Moses through whom it would pass in ways that somehow made it more manageable. Moses served as that transformer for Israel his whole life long, long enough to lead God’s beloved nomads to their promised land.

In today’s Gospel we see a new transformer in action, and now it is Jesus. Most days he seems quite ordinary and safe, but every now and then—such as at his birth when the constellations over Bethlehem broke rank, or at his baptism when a voice broke in from heaven—every now and then sparks fly. Today he’s up on the mountain with his good friends Peter, James and John, and momentarily Jesus goes incandescent. In the aura of his glow the ancient transformer Moses materializes alongside him.

Now Peter, James and John instantly make the intended connection, because they know their scripture. Still they are only human, and before it all becomes too much for them, before they start calling for Jesus to veil his face like Moses, the eerie glow fades and only the very human face of Jesus is left. Oh but the memory, the searing memory of that moment on the mountain when heaven literally faced off with earth, that memory lives on in their souls and becomes enshrined in our Gospel.

It turns out that despite some modern fantasies about a nice, domesticated heaven of pastel angels playing harps, the real thing is far more awesome and wonderful. The heavens are filled with God’s thundering power and blazing glory, at such an unimaginable wattage that it literally goes right over our heads. And that’s okay, because God loves us and sends first a veiled intermediary like Moses, and then an unveiled intermediary like Jesus, to lower the voltage to a level at which you and I can actually receive it, and respond.

It is true that one day we will see God face to face, but between us and God will sit Jesus at God’s right hand, welcoming us and saying, “Yes Father, I’ve known this child for years. Absolutely Father, the more you get to know this man—the more this woman gets to know you—the more delighted you two will be with one another.” And Jesus will just beam as he muses, “Oh how I’ve been looking forward to this family reunion forever!”

Until that great day we are welcome to put on our gleaming bling down here and party hardy. We are free to simply eat, drink and make merry, because we rest in the real relationship that we already have with Jesus. Content to realize that we are safe—that we are saved—forever. Amen.

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