Sunday, February 07, 2016

Terror and Transfiguration - February 7, 2016

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12 - 4:2
Luke 9:28-43

How would you like to stand in the presence of God? If someone said, “Here’s your chance - line up now for some one-on-one time with God, the Creator of the Universe!” would you be lining up? My first thought is that, yeah, of course I would! Who wouldn’t want to get a chance to actually be in the presence of God? To ask the hard questions, like “Why did you make the platypus? Why did you invent the common cold virus? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did you make me with depression? Why do you let children starve to death?” As a pastor and a professional theologian, I have with pages of questions that I would *love* to ask God if we were face-to-face.

I think. I’m actually not so sure, though. Because today’s readings, the texts for Transfiguration Sunday when we celebrate the times when humans have come fully into God’s presence, do not give us any indication that face-to-face encounters with God are particularly enjoyable. In fact, the readings seem to indicate that such moments are quite the opposite. In our reading from Exodus, Moses spends some serious time in the presence of God on Mount Sinai, and the skin of his face is glowing and shining so brightly with the light of God that “when Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses ... they were afraid to come near him.” Something about Moses’ encounter with God so transformed him that he took on an aura of heavenly brilliance so intense that the people were afraid. (Incidentally, the translation that says that Moses’ face was shining has been translated in the past to say that horns of light were coming from Moses’ face, which is where we get the Renaissance paintings of Moses that look like there are horns coming out of his head, and where we get the superstition that was alive not so long ago that Jews had horns growing out of their foreheads. Which just goes to show that bad translations can be real problem.) Anyway, the people were so frightened by the effect of Moses’ encounter with God - a second-hand encounter for them, actually - that Moses had to hide his face every time he talked to them.

And then there’s the disciples’ encounter with God when they went up the mountain with Jesus. Peter and John and James saw Jesus transfigured, and saw Moses and Elijah appear in front of them and talk to Jesus, about Jesus’ death no less, and then were confronted by the cloud of God. And they were terrified. So terrified that they couldn’t talk about the encounter for many days. Something about being in that cloud where God touched earth, and where God’s voice spoke clearly, was terrifying. Their encounter with God was so intense it made them speechless.

The Israelites that had a second-hand encounter with God through Moses and the Jewish disciples of Jesus who had a cloud-based encounter with God were not excited, or thrilled, or joyful. They were scared and even terrified. So I’m not sure anymore that I *do* want a face-to-face encounter with God. I now wonder if, given the opportunity, I might hide in the corner rather than ask God my questions.

I suspect that’s true for all of us. Because encounters with God are actually no small thing. When we come face-to-face with God, whether on the top of a mountain or on our knees in prayer or coming forward for Communion, whether exposed in the wilderness or secure in our own home, we are coming face-to-face with the one who created the universe. The one who is the creator of life-itself. We enter into the presence of the one who knows our hearts so fully there is nothing else - the one who knows what makes us cry, the one who knows when we have made others cry, the one who has seen our most shameful moments, the one who has seen into our hearts in those times we still can’t bear to think about. That is Not Fun. That is Not Something We Want To Do. Yes, God loves us, and yes God forgives us, and all of that - I’m not discounting that - but God also knows all about our failures - those times when we tried so hard to be good and do the right thing and just couldn’t manage it. God knows all about our limitations - those things that we hide from others so they don’t know we’re not perfect. God knows all about our weaknesses - those things that we want so badly we’re ashamed to admit it. God knows our thoughts, words, and deeds, things done and left undone - God knows our sins. We say those words so blithely during Confession and Forgiveness, but they are really actually terrifying. Think about those things that you won’t admit to anyone else, that you can hardly even admit to yourself, and now imagine that in the encounter with God, these things are so clear to God that it’s as if they are written on your face. Who would want to go before God under those conditions? It’s no wonder the Israelites couldn’t stand even a second-hand encounter with God. It’s no wonder the disciples didn’t talk about their experience with God until quite some time had passed. I’m surprised we even make it up the aisle for Communion and don’t hide under the pews in terror.

And yet, if we want to get past our failures and our limitations and our weaknesses, if we want to get past what we call our sins, we have to come before God. Because it is God alone who enables us to live in spite of our failures and limitations and weaknesses. God alone gave the Torah to the Israelites so they might have joy in living under God’s commandments. God alone granted the power of healing so that Jesus, God’s Son, could heal those who came to him. And it is God alone who transfigures us so that we are more than our failures and more than our sins. Only when we come before God, terrified that we have completely and totally mucked up this whole life that God has given us, only then does God pick us up and shine God’s glory on us, and fill us with such light that all the darkness of our lives is banished. God alone transfigures us so that our faces shine with God’s glory instead of our own dimness. God alone sees your wretchedness and claims you as God’s own beloved and, as the healing immediately following the transfiguration story tells us, casts out the demons that make your lives hell. 

So we live with this paradox - that we know we need to go before God - we know that coming face-to-face with God is what truly heals us - and yet we’re terrified to do it. So how is it that we manage to do this? How is it that we manage to make it up the aisle to Communion? That we manage to even begin to enter into the presence of God through Communion or even prayer? 
God makes us brave. As Paul says in our second reading, “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.” (And then Paul deliberately misinterprets Moses’ encounter on the mountain in Exodus, but we’ll let that go for today.) Paul points out that we are able to be bold because of the great hope, by which he means the justification that we receive through Jesus Christ. God makes us brave enough to come into God’s presence by first coming into our presence as Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us. The Incarnation––God taking on a human body––what we celebrate at Christmas, was undertaken for the purpose of the Crucifixion––God dying as a human body––what we celebrate at Easter, so that we would be made worthy enough to come into God’s presence and receive healing, be transfigured. Transfiguration Sunday falls almost precisely in the middle between Christmas and Easter. Transfiguration Sunday tells us that God arranges everything, does everything, for our sake. So that we can come into the presence of God to be transfigured and restored to wholeness.


And so we are made brave enough to withstand a face-to-face encounter with God. Maybe even brave enough to ask God all our questions. Definitely brave enough to come forward for Communion, into the presence of God, and brave enough to pray. Because we know that God has and continues to heal us, and that God has and continues to transfigure us, we welcome these times when God brings us into God’s presence, and we come both terrified and trusting, unprepared and made ready, proclaiming, as we always do, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.

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