The Glory That Shines Within
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Several years ago, in an attempt to provide some shade for the house, my wife and I planted two trees in the front yard. I noticed this last March, though, that one of them had suddenly died. I say "suddenly" -- to be honest, I'm not sure exactly when it died. As you know, there's not much difference between a bare tree and a dead one during the winter -- at least not as far as the eye can tell. You only learn the difference (as I did) with the coming of spring, when all of the other trees begin to leaf out and one is left behind in the general green onrush of new life.
The Apostle Paul uses a slightly different analogy in this passage, but I think he makes a similar point. You see, for centuries the Jewish people had lived under the requirements of the old covenant. It was designed to give them an identity, so that they could serve as an example for the other nations. However, instead of lifting them up, all it really did was to show how often they fell short. In other words, the law could describe sin, but it couldn't deter it.
Of course, no one realized this deficiency at the time -- for the same reason, I suppose, that it's so difficult to tell if a tree is dead in the middle of winter. You only recognize something like that with the coming of spring. And for Paul, spring arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. It's the life he offered us in the new covenant that finally demonstrated how dead and barren the old covenant truly was. But the Israelites couldn't see that. In fact, adds Paul, "To this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside" (v. 14).
The veil of which Paul speaks is a reference to the story in Exodus 34, after Moses had had a conversation with the Almighty face-to-face. He didn't actually see God's face, mind you. Because it was believed in those days that no one could do that and live to tell about it. But Moses had been permitted to see God's back, and that was apparently close enough that some of God's glory rubbed off on him. When he came down from the mountain, he literally returned with glowing reports.
His face was shining, and as a result, the people were scared to death. This is understandable, considering what they had been doing while Moses and God were discussing the commandments. They had been busy trying to create their own god and compose their own rules. But they knew now, that, no matter how much they polished that silly golden calf, it was never going to shine as brightly as Moses' face. It was as if he had been given God's own personal spotlight, in order to bring a little of the divine presence right into their midst. No wonder the Israelites were intimidated. Some bowed their heads, others quickly buried theirs in shame, but no one was willing to face Moses, so to speak. He finally had to put on a veil, just to shield them from it.
The book of Exodus never really explains why he did this. Maybe he didn't want the people to be so frightened, or perhaps he was tired of them all staring and pointing at him. Whatever the actual reason may have been, Paul interprets this to mean that the afterglow of his visit with God was already beginning to fade. The way he saw it, Moses put the veil over his face "to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside" (v. 12). Only they didn't realize that it was being set aside, because "their minds were hardened" (v. 14). It's almost as if they were the ones who had been wearing the veil. And as far as Paul is concerned, they never bothered to take it off. "But when one turns to the Lord," he announces, "the veil is removed" (v. 16). For in Jesus Christ, we behold God's full glory -- the Shekinah in the flesh.
No one knows for sure whether Paul was thinking about the story of the Transfiguration when he wrote this, but he might have because it obviously fits. The mountain Jesus happened to be standing on was in Israel instead of Egypt, but it was clearly the same glory that enveloped him. As Peter, James, and John watched him pray, suddenly Jesus' entire appearance began to change. Matthew says that his face "shone like the sun" (Matthew 17:2), and his garments started to sparkle with a brilliant, dazzling whiteness, like a lightning bolt suspended in midair, crackling with power. He stood there talking with Moses and Elijah, the symbolic representatives of the law and the prophetic tradition. Luke reports that they were discussing Jesus' death, which sounds like a rather morbid topic for such a high and holy moment. But even this was not enough to dim the light within that blazing circle.
Unlike Moses, however, when Jesus came down from the mountain, his face returned to normal. It wasn't that the glory faded from his face. It was more that God took it and tucked it inside him, perhaps to find out if people would still be able to discern that shining aura without the visual aid. To put it another way, instead of wearing the light, he actually became it. He wasn't merely reflecting God's glory, like Moses had. Now it radiated out from within him. And from then on, just beneath his humanness, there burned an unmistakable holiness.
If you ask me, something of this same holiness burns inside all of us. Only it takes a special vision to see it. A few years ago, the preacher John Claypool introduced me to an old book titled On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was a monk who lived during the twelfth century, and he became intrigued by the thought that some of his fellow monks seemed able to recognize holiness all around them. Even the most mundane of tasks took on a sacred significance. However, for some reason, other monks were blind to this dimension of life. They walked around as if they were wearing a veil. To them it was just the same meaningless chores and rituals, day after wearisome day. Bernard began to wonder what accounted for this difference, and after much study and prayer, he came up with a fourfold continuum of successive stages toward spiritual enlightenment.
Bernard describes stage one as the love of self for self's sake. The psychological term for this, of course, would be narcissism. It's where each of us begins the human journey. Infants and small children, for example, tend to be notoriously self-absorbed. It's always "gimme, gimme, gimme." And to be honest, some folks never really move much past this point. They remain imprisoned in the solitary confinement of their own egos. But, thankfully, most of us realize that there is more to life than satisfying our own basic needs, so we choose to keep growing.
The second stage is what Bernard calls the love of God for self's sake. Notice that there is now at least the awareness of an outside reality. However, the focus is still very much on ourselves. That is, we love God to the extent that the Almighty can help us to fulfill our own agendas. As a result, all of our prayers are sprinkled with personal requests -- "Lord, grant me this ... protect me from that ... allow me to have the desires of my heart." This is probably the stage that a lot of us get stuck at, but it can be terribly frustrating if we try to stay here. Ultimately, God's ways are not our own. God's timing was never meant to conform to our schedules, nor does God exist only to solve our problems and serve our plans. It's the other way around. To be sure, the love of God for self's sake represents significant progress over the childish narcissism of love of self for self's sake. But in the end, it's a relationship which is just as manipulative and utilitarian.
Bernard's third stage marks a quantum leap forward. He refers to it as the love of God for God's sake. It's at this point that we begin to appreciate that God has value, not in terms of what God can do for us, but simply because of who God is. When we reach this stage, prayer suddenly involves more than presenting the Almighty with a wish list, or trying to barter for a few extra blessings. It becomes a time filled with wonder and awe. After all, God didn't have to create any of us. The very fact that we exist in the first place ought to elicit endless songs of praise. To be able to accept our lives as a gift, without having to ask what other options are available, is to express this kind of love.
John Claypool tells the beautiful story of a time when his daughter was about four years old. He was hard at work in his study, when she quietly slipped in -- still in her pajamas -- and without a word, climbed up into his lap and laid her head on his shoulder.
"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," he said to her. "What can I do for you?"
She paused for a moment and then said, "I don't need anything right now, Daddy. I just wanted to be close to you, that's all."1
Claypool goes on to reflect that the preciousness of that moment was found in the fact that his daughter wasn't out on some utilitarian mission. Nor was she trying to soften him up in the hope of obtaining a future favor. Her sole agenda was the sheer joy of being with her father. And yet, how many of us ever come into God's presence with a spirit like that? Most of the time we're only interested in seeing if God would be willing to endorse our latest proposal. Even when we pray, "Thy will be done," we usually submit a few of our own recommendations along with the request. God listens patiently, of course. But I often wonder if what the Almighty is really waiting for is to have someone come with no other purpose than to say, "I just want to be close to you, Lord. That's all." To do so is to love God for God's sake.
You would think that this would be the highest level of spiritual enlightenment. However, for Bernard, it is only the third stage. There remains a fourth. Do you want to know what it is? The love of self for God's sake. It's when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us. It's the ability, not just to accept ourselves, but to celebrate our existence. A lot of us have never done that before, or if we have it's with great difficulty and reluctance. Sometimes we won't even allow another person to celebrate our existence. They'll pay us a wonderful compliment for something we've done, and we immediately begin to hem and haw. "Oh, it was nothing," we'll say. "Don't mention it." But why not mention it? In fact, why not affirm it? Why are we constantly discounting our own value? The book of Genesis says that when humankind was created, we were fashioned in God's own image. In effect, we are God's signature piece. Isn't that worth celebrating?
The Apostle Paul puts it like this, "All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (v. 18). In other words, no matter how tarnished the image becomes, there burns within each of us an unmistakable holiness. And every once in a while, we catch a glimpse of this glory. We look across the dinner table at a face we've seen 1,000 times before, only this time we behold something so vibrant, so incandescent, so shimmering with life, that we can't help but feel we've witnessed a transfiguration of sorts. Of course, the person's face may return to normal the very next moment, the same way Jesus' did. But that doesn't mean the glory faded. It's always shining just beneath the surface.
Jesus told us, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14) -- and it's worth noting the verb he uses there. He didn't say, "You could be the light," or "If you work at it hard enough, you might be the light." He said we already are the light of the world. Only if you can't see that in yourself, then chances are you'll probably be blind to it most everywhere else, too.
Bernard was absolutely correct. The love of self for God's sake is the highest level of spiritual enlightenment. It's when we finally recognize ourselves as glorious beings -- as a "treasure in clay jars," says Paul (2 Corinthians 4:7) -- that we begin to see the holiness all around us. It's almost as if a veil is removed, and the whole world suddenly starts shining with the new life of spring.
_____________
1. John Claypool, Stories Jesus Still Tells: The Parables (New York: McCracken Press, 1993), p. 16.
The Apostle Paul uses a slightly different analogy in this passage, but I think he makes a similar point. You see, for centuries the Jewish people had lived under the requirements of the old covenant. It was designed to give them an identity, so that they could serve as an example for the other nations. However, instead of lifting them up, all it really did was to show how often they fell short. In other words, the law could describe sin, but it couldn't deter it.
Of course, no one realized this deficiency at the time -- for the same reason, I suppose, that it's so difficult to tell if a tree is dead in the middle of winter. You only recognize something like that with the coming of spring. And for Paul, spring arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. It's the life he offered us in the new covenant that finally demonstrated how dead and barren the old covenant truly was. But the Israelites couldn't see that. In fact, adds Paul, "To this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside" (v. 14).
The veil of which Paul speaks is a reference to the story in Exodus 34, after Moses had had a conversation with the Almighty face-to-face. He didn't actually see God's face, mind you. Because it was believed in those days that no one could do that and live to tell about it. But Moses had been permitted to see God's back, and that was apparently close enough that some of God's glory rubbed off on him. When he came down from the mountain, he literally returned with glowing reports.
His face was shining, and as a result, the people were scared to death. This is understandable, considering what they had been doing while Moses and God were discussing the commandments. They had been busy trying to create their own god and compose their own rules. But they knew now, that, no matter how much they polished that silly golden calf, it was never going to shine as brightly as Moses' face. It was as if he had been given God's own personal spotlight, in order to bring a little of the divine presence right into their midst. No wonder the Israelites were intimidated. Some bowed their heads, others quickly buried theirs in shame, but no one was willing to face Moses, so to speak. He finally had to put on a veil, just to shield them from it.
The book of Exodus never really explains why he did this. Maybe he didn't want the people to be so frightened, or perhaps he was tired of them all staring and pointing at him. Whatever the actual reason may have been, Paul interprets this to mean that the afterglow of his visit with God was already beginning to fade. The way he saw it, Moses put the veil over his face "to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside" (v. 12). Only they didn't realize that it was being set aside, because "their minds were hardened" (v. 14). It's almost as if they were the ones who had been wearing the veil. And as far as Paul is concerned, they never bothered to take it off. "But when one turns to the Lord," he announces, "the veil is removed" (v. 16). For in Jesus Christ, we behold God's full glory -- the Shekinah in the flesh.
No one knows for sure whether Paul was thinking about the story of the Transfiguration when he wrote this, but he might have because it obviously fits. The mountain Jesus happened to be standing on was in Israel instead of Egypt, but it was clearly the same glory that enveloped him. As Peter, James, and John watched him pray, suddenly Jesus' entire appearance began to change. Matthew says that his face "shone like the sun" (Matthew 17:2), and his garments started to sparkle with a brilliant, dazzling whiteness, like a lightning bolt suspended in midair, crackling with power. He stood there talking with Moses and Elijah, the symbolic representatives of the law and the prophetic tradition. Luke reports that they were discussing Jesus' death, which sounds like a rather morbid topic for such a high and holy moment. But even this was not enough to dim the light within that blazing circle.
Unlike Moses, however, when Jesus came down from the mountain, his face returned to normal. It wasn't that the glory faded from his face. It was more that God took it and tucked it inside him, perhaps to find out if people would still be able to discern that shining aura without the visual aid. To put it another way, instead of wearing the light, he actually became it. He wasn't merely reflecting God's glory, like Moses had. Now it radiated out from within him. And from then on, just beneath his humanness, there burned an unmistakable holiness.
If you ask me, something of this same holiness burns inside all of us. Only it takes a special vision to see it. A few years ago, the preacher John Claypool introduced me to an old book titled On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was a monk who lived during the twelfth century, and he became intrigued by the thought that some of his fellow monks seemed able to recognize holiness all around them. Even the most mundane of tasks took on a sacred significance. However, for some reason, other monks were blind to this dimension of life. They walked around as if they were wearing a veil. To them it was just the same meaningless chores and rituals, day after wearisome day. Bernard began to wonder what accounted for this difference, and after much study and prayer, he came up with a fourfold continuum of successive stages toward spiritual enlightenment.
Bernard describes stage one as the love of self for self's sake. The psychological term for this, of course, would be narcissism. It's where each of us begins the human journey. Infants and small children, for example, tend to be notoriously self-absorbed. It's always "gimme, gimme, gimme." And to be honest, some folks never really move much past this point. They remain imprisoned in the solitary confinement of their own egos. But, thankfully, most of us realize that there is more to life than satisfying our own basic needs, so we choose to keep growing.
The second stage is what Bernard calls the love of God for self's sake. Notice that there is now at least the awareness of an outside reality. However, the focus is still very much on ourselves. That is, we love God to the extent that the Almighty can help us to fulfill our own agendas. As a result, all of our prayers are sprinkled with personal requests -- "Lord, grant me this ... protect me from that ... allow me to have the desires of my heart." This is probably the stage that a lot of us get stuck at, but it can be terribly frustrating if we try to stay here. Ultimately, God's ways are not our own. God's timing was never meant to conform to our schedules, nor does God exist only to solve our problems and serve our plans. It's the other way around. To be sure, the love of God for self's sake represents significant progress over the childish narcissism of love of self for self's sake. But in the end, it's a relationship which is just as manipulative and utilitarian.
Bernard's third stage marks a quantum leap forward. He refers to it as the love of God for God's sake. It's at this point that we begin to appreciate that God has value, not in terms of what God can do for us, but simply because of who God is. When we reach this stage, prayer suddenly involves more than presenting the Almighty with a wish list, or trying to barter for a few extra blessings. It becomes a time filled with wonder and awe. After all, God didn't have to create any of us. The very fact that we exist in the first place ought to elicit endless songs of praise. To be able to accept our lives as a gift, without having to ask what other options are available, is to express this kind of love.
John Claypool tells the beautiful story of a time when his daughter was about four years old. He was hard at work in his study, when she quietly slipped in -- still in her pajamas -- and without a word, climbed up into his lap and laid her head on his shoulder.
"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," he said to her. "What can I do for you?"
She paused for a moment and then said, "I don't need anything right now, Daddy. I just wanted to be close to you, that's all."1
Claypool goes on to reflect that the preciousness of that moment was found in the fact that his daughter wasn't out on some utilitarian mission. Nor was she trying to soften him up in the hope of obtaining a future favor. Her sole agenda was the sheer joy of being with her father. And yet, how many of us ever come into God's presence with a spirit like that? Most of the time we're only interested in seeing if God would be willing to endorse our latest proposal. Even when we pray, "Thy will be done," we usually submit a few of our own recommendations along with the request. God listens patiently, of course. But I often wonder if what the Almighty is really waiting for is to have someone come with no other purpose than to say, "I just want to be close to you, Lord. That's all." To do so is to love God for God's sake.
You would think that this would be the highest level of spiritual enlightenment. However, for Bernard, it is only the third stage. There remains a fourth. Do you want to know what it is? The love of self for God's sake. It's when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us. It's the ability, not just to accept ourselves, but to celebrate our existence. A lot of us have never done that before, or if we have it's with great difficulty and reluctance. Sometimes we won't even allow another person to celebrate our existence. They'll pay us a wonderful compliment for something we've done, and we immediately begin to hem and haw. "Oh, it was nothing," we'll say. "Don't mention it." But why not mention it? In fact, why not affirm it? Why are we constantly discounting our own value? The book of Genesis says that when humankind was created, we were fashioned in God's own image. In effect, we are God's signature piece. Isn't that worth celebrating?
The Apostle Paul puts it like this, "All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (v. 18). In other words, no matter how tarnished the image becomes, there burns within each of us an unmistakable holiness. And every once in a while, we catch a glimpse of this glory. We look across the dinner table at a face we've seen 1,000 times before, only this time we behold something so vibrant, so incandescent, so shimmering with life, that we can't help but feel we've witnessed a transfiguration of sorts. Of course, the person's face may return to normal the very next moment, the same way Jesus' did. But that doesn't mean the glory faded. It's always shining just beneath the surface.
Jesus told us, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14) -- and it's worth noting the verb he uses there. He didn't say, "You could be the light," or "If you work at it hard enough, you might be the light." He said we already are the light of the world. Only if you can't see that in yourself, then chances are you'll probably be blind to it most everywhere else, too.
Bernard was absolutely correct. The love of self for God's sake is the highest level of spiritual enlightenment. It's when we finally recognize ourselves as glorious beings -- as a "treasure in clay jars," says Paul (2 Corinthians 4:7) -- that we begin to see the holiness all around us. It's almost as if a veil is removed, and the whole world suddenly starts shining with the new life of spring.
_____________
1. John Claypool, Stories Jesus Still Tells: The Parables (New York: McCracken Press, 1993), p. 16.
