Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9
Our reading from Exodus today begins to tell an amazing story, with Moses going up the mountain, where the glory of the LORD blazes like a devouring fire. At the top of the mountain, Moses enters the cloud of that glory and . . . that’s where the reading ends. Our lectionary leaves out the best part, or at least the part I think is so crucial for today, which is when Moses comes down from the mountain. So here’s how the story goes: Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him (Exod. 34:29-20). That shining, that radiance, is apparently the natural result of intimacy with God: it just happens. Moses didn’t control it or make it happen: he didn’t even know it was happening. People had to tell him! But it was real: the Israelites go on to insist that he actually wear a veil over his face when he talks to them because it is so bright.
So this leads me to a question, which I will pose to you. You just heard the Gospel. Do you think that Jesus knew his face was shining? Do you think he did it on purpose to impress his disciples? Was this some kind of show or demonstration of divine power? Did he just turn it on like a lightbulb? I don’t think so. I don’t think Jesus did anything other than be himself. We say that he was transfigured in the sight of Peter, James, and John, but that is purely subjective: from their perspective, his appearance changes. But I don’t think Jesus himself changed at all: I think for a moment the veil was lifted, and for some fleeting period of time – seconds, minutes, hours, we don’t know – those disciples saw Jesus as he really is, God’s beloved, filled with the brilliant light of the Holy One. They reacted in fear, like the Israelites did with Moses, because what they were seeing was utterly Real. And as the poet T. S. Eliot once wrote, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
And indeed we cannot, which is no doubt why God in her mercy only allows us glimpses of Ultimate Reality in this world. I feel certain that I could not bear to see the full light of God’s pure holiness and unconditional love, but I have, like most people, seen glimpses of it. I’ve had moments when the veil was lifted just enough for me to catch a hint of that glory. Those include moments when I was talking with people who were luminous to me, people through whom God was shining. They had no idea that was happening, but it was happening nonetheless. Such moments are gifts. And occasionally they can be intense. I have shared with you before the epiphany Thomas Merton once had on the streets of Louisville when he was overcome with love for the people around him, when he realized that he was one with them in God. When writing about it later, he said: “Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.” He famously summed up that experience by writing, “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
That epiphany faded, of course, just like the face of Moses eventually stopped shining, just like the transfiguration of Jesus came to an end. But the Reality those events point to remains. God is light. We are all God’s children, we are all made in the image of God. Which is to say, God’s light fills our souls. Jesus is the perfect conduit of that light, of course, but even so we share in that. We are part of the Body of Christ, after all, his Spirit lives in us, God’s light shines through us. Jesus shows us this, shows us who we really are. And yes, we frequently forget that or we disregard that, which is the essence of sin and the source of all our bad behavior, from the petty to the horrific. And yes, we are about to enter into the season of Lent, which will afford us opportunities to acknowledge how often we forget who we truly are and how much damage that causes. But today we remember what Paul tells the Thessalonians, that we are, all of us, children of light (1 Thes. 5:5).
I realize that we cannot make ourselves shine, nor can we control the light: it’s God’s light after all, not ours. And I know that much of the time we don’t see it. But we can still turn to the light. We can remind ourselves of who we truly are, which is one reason why coming to worship is so important. It contributes to our spiritual wholeness and our emotional well-being because it helps save us from dark thoughts and hateful feelings. We worship God and in God’s light we see light. The divine light of God’s love really does shine at the center of our being. Seeing that in ourselves is awesome, and it also opens us up to seeing it in others. The only reason I am standing up here talking to you today, the only reason I am a person of faith, is that when I was a teenager, a couple of people saw God’s light in me and helped me to see it. I was very adept at seeing how bad I was, and there was plenty of toxic religion around me telling me how bad I was. But I thank God for those light-filled people who opened my eyes and literally helped me to see the light. I can’t imagine a greater gift than helping people see that the light of God shines in them, which is the gift that Jesus Christ gives to all of us. And like all of the gifts of Christ, I urge you to take it and pass it on.
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