Keeping The Glow On
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
Frank Peretti created a stir with the publication of two books, This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. He claims that his books are a creative fictional treatment about the spiritual warfare that is going on in the world. He believes that Christian people have the authority to exercise spiritual control over the things and forces which detract from the promise of what the Christian faith can be. In an interview about the nature of his books, he remarked how Christians have lost the ability to think seriously about the problems they face. He was concerned especially about the encroachment of popular culture into the life of the church. He is greatly distressed by the fact that we have raised an entire generation of what he described as "consumatons," people who have come to the conclusion that their main purpose in life is to consume things. Consumatons also believe that the most important thing in their lives is what they have just purchased.
Peretti says that this generation is so oriented to entertainment and television that if they were standing overlooking the Grand Canyon to take in the glory of the creation, they would do so for all of thirty seconds. Then they would whip around and ask if there is anything else and if the canyon does anything. What Mr. Peretti has to say rings true with many current conversations or observations about lifestyles now in vogue. Certainly it would be true that if people like the consumatons Peretti describes were to have been at the Mount of the Transfiguration of our Lord, they would have missed the glory of that occasion. In contrast to consumatons, in the First Reading for today we hear of people who wanted to keep the glow of a revelation of God's glory as Peter did at our Lord's transfiguration.
The Parallel Experiences
One can readily understand why the First Reading today was chosen as a companion for the account of our Lord's transfiguration. In the Holy Gospel, Moses and Elijah appear with our Lord in his moment of glory. Elijah is there because by tradition he was an expected messianic figure since he had been assumed into heaven in a blaze of glory. Moses was there because tradition had it that the messianic figure would be a Second Moses or Moses Redivivus, Moses Revived, because his grave had never been found. Also Moses experienced a transfigured appearance when he met with God in the mount. Like Jesus, the two companions who come to comfort Jesus and talk to him about his impending death and resurrection were experienced servants of God. Moses and Elijah had been through the fires of tribulation and trial, but they had also been touched by God's glory. No one else would have been better prepared or equipped to offer encouragement to Jesus as Jesus readied himself for the ordeal of going to Jerusalem to die.
All three persons, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, had their meetings with God in mountaintops. In the First Reading we hear how Moses met with God in the mountain. Elijah met with God in the mountain where he heard the still small voice of God to assure him that God was still present in Elijah's life and ministry. These special, unique, and revelatory experiences were intended to give comfort, approval, and meaning to ministries designed to witness to the presence of God in the lives of God's people. These revelations were never intended to be spectacular and sensational moments of when and how God comes only in glory. We shall see from the First Reading that the purpose is quite different from that. To be sure, it is good that the purpose was different. Otherwise, we should never be able to handle all the glory that is involved. We shall learn from the experience of Moses and his people that it is not easy to handle God's glory.
The Context
The incident recited in the First Reading for today was not the first time that Moses had gone up into Mount Sinai. As it is recorded for us here, Moses had been in the mountain other times. He had received the revelation of the covenant God made with the people with the giving of the commandments. All that was revealed was preceded with the introduction, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." The agreement that followed was based on the fact that God had made his claim upon Israel. God had established them as God's people by this act of delivery, this act of redemption and healing. What followed was based on the assumption that God would do for them what only a god could do for people. Then followed not only the giving of the Ten Commandments, but also the ordering of the lives of the people through social, ritual, and liturgical regulations that covered their living together as a unique people of God.
When Moses failed to return from the mountain, the people lost patience and they committed their infamous folly of making a golden calf fashioned like the idols they had seen in Egypt. Moses came down from the mountain and rectified that situation by destroying the two tablets of stone in which he received the covenant. He also destroyed the idol of the people. In hot anger Moses literally made the people digest the idol by drinking the pulverized gold spread upon water. Once more Moses went up into the mountain and received the word from God inscribed upon two new tablets of stone. On this occasion, Moses had remained in the mountain forty days and forty nights during which time he neither ate bread nor drank water.
The New Situation
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai after this session with God, the situation was completely different. The people were most receptive when they saw Moses with the two tablets of stone on which the covenant was inscribed. The people recognized that Moses had been involved in a revelation for their benefit, and they were ready to listen. However, Moses did not sense that, because he had been in the presence of God, the skin of his face was radiant and shining. This created a problem. The people were afraid to come near Moses. That is rather interesting. Normally, people cannot get enough of the spectacular. We especially like shining things. We are attracted to the glitter and shine that make things so rich and valuable. However, this was in a man's face, the face of a man who had been in the presence of God. The distraction that caused for the people may have been simply that it was hard to listen to the man when he was shining at them like a bright headlight.
It is difficult for us to visualize this scene for ourselves. However, the inference of the record here is that the people were also afraid, because as sinners they were as much ashamed to be in the presence of this man who had been with God, as if they had appeared before God themselves. For sinners to be in the presence of God is highly intimidating. That is not God's fault. Nor does God want it to be that way. The problem is that we feel exposed for being the sinners that we are in the presence of the Holy One. That phenomenon has existed since the time when God had to hunt for the fallen creatures in the Garden of Eden, who were hiding in the bush, because they had failed to trust God. We all know the feeling. We do not even have to have done something wrong, and we feel flustered in the presence of someone who overawes us with a shining presence. We do not develop inferiority complexes. We recognize that we are inferior. In the case of the people confronting the shining countenance of Moses, the people sensed their spiritual inadequacy and their sin.
The Remedy
Moses did not allow the people to welch out on their responsibility to hear what had been revealed to him from God because they were so spiritually shy. Instead, at first Moses had a conference with his brother Aaron, the priest, and the leaders of the congregation. We do not know what the gist of that conversation was, but Moses must have questioned them about their reticence and asked them just how difficult it was for them to be in his presence. They must have concluded that the situation was manageable, and it was very important for the people to hear what Moses had to communicate to them. At any rate, when they broke up their conference, they gathered the people together for a session in which Moses revealed what had been given to him by God. The people adjusted to the situation and heard Moses out. When Moses finished this session, he donned a veil to carry on his normal duties and his contacts with the people.
From then on, whenever Moses went in to confer with God, he removed the veil. When he returned to the people to share once more what he had received from God, the people could see the phenomenon of the shining face. After that Moses would put the veil on again. The ritual was preserved. Undoubtedly, the routine must have been strengthening for Moses as an assurance for carrying on his prophetic office. It also must have been comforting for the people to know what Moses shared with them had divine authenticity. What began as a frightening experience for the people became a welcome ritual.
Paul's Version
Sooner or later the ritual had to end. The Apostle Paul writes of that issue in what we now know as the Second Letter to the Corinthians. In that letter, Paul writes a considerable amount about the nature and authority of ministry. He had been forced to defend his ministry in the congregation at Corinth, because some had challenged his right to exercise any authority over them. Paul made the argument that the members of the congregation themselves were living proofs of the validity of his work. Then he employed the experience of Moses and the people at Mount Sinai as a paradigm of the more enduring experience of the revelation God had furnished in our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul counted it remarkable that the giving of the covenant at Mount Sinai along with the law was clothed in such glory. He said if that revelation which included the law, a ministry of condemnation, abounded in glory, how much more would the revelation which God has made of love and life in the Person of the Lord Jesus be a ministration of glory.
For Paul, the revelation in Christ surpassed the former glory at Mount Sinai. Paul noted that Moses kept wearing the veil, because he knew that glory was going to fade away and die, and Moses did not want the people to see the end of that glory. So it was that later the veil in the temple was to be a symbol for the people of that glory that had been revealed at Mount Sinai, and that the presence of God was assured, but the glory remained behind the veil. So the wearing of the covering on the heads was also to be a reminder of that fact, according to Paul. For Paul, it was significant that the veil over Moses' face, the veil in the temple, and the veil on the heads of people were also symbols that the greater glory was yet to come in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:7-14). Paul was that forceful and energetic figure who had been so immersed in the Hebrew tradition as a well trained and effective rabbi. By his own experience in moving on through the radical spiritual conversion on the Damascus Road and his careful study of the life of Christ in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures, Paul understood that the glory revealed in the Person of the Christ was the greater glory. Yet for its moment the revelation of glory at Mount Sinai was glory indeed.
Hold On To It
One can appreciate how precious the revelation of glory at Mount Sinai was for Moses and the people. It was that way for Peter, James, and John in the Mount of the Transfiguration. Peter wanted to memorialize the moment by making a shrine. That is normal for people to create memorials to moments of glory. We do that as a community, as a state, and as a nation. We fix certain moments in our history as being essential to understanding ourselves, what we are, and how we got here. Families have ways of recalling the important events in their lives. The marking of anniversaries of more than just birthdays can be very important in helping families to stress achievements and special acts of love and service.
However, what is more akin to the revelation at Mount Sinai is what we may experience as a spiritual moment in our own lives. People can talk about a range of activities or happenings that have occurred in their lives to give them inspiration, incentive, courage, or help. That does not always happen within the rituals of baptism, confirmation, or marriage. Those provide their memorable effects. Yet the deeper sense of the divine may happen out of the blue. It may come through a song, a special word, a striking moment. It could be the experience of a sunset, a cloud formation, or some other vision within nature that provided the moment to contemplate God's glory. Whatever personal reflection one has is usually something a person wants to cling to, refer to, or dramatize in some way. It is a matter of trying to keep the glow on.
The Best Glow
What the Apostle Paul had to say to the Corinthians about the transfiguration of Moses was to recognize it as the ministry of glory that it was. Now, however, he says that God has removed the veil for us. We do not have to be afraid or intimidated by the revelation of glory. It is the spirit of God who has removed the veil and given us the freedom to look and to act. The veil has been removed from our faces, and by grace we have been privileged to recognize the glory of the Lord. Paul adds that not only are we able to see the glory of the Lord revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, but also we know God's glory. We recognize the glory. However, we see the glory as though looking in a mirror, so that the glory of God is reflected in our faces, in us. The point Paul makes is that we do not have to look for the glory of God as though it were hidden, strange, and miraculous. We should know that we can see the glory of God in the face of your Christian neighbor, because we know the glory of God revealed in Christ Jesus.
Paul writes that as God said, "Let light shine out of darkness," God "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Paul is saying that what God has done for us is to permit the glory that was so evident both at Sinai and the mount of our Lord's transfiguration to be present in our lives. We keep the glow on right within our own lives as we live in the assurance of God's presence in our lives. It is by faith we know the love of God has been confirmed for us in the revelation to the ancient people Israel and in our Lord Jesus Christ. So it is that we pray in that matchless prayer of the Church on this day, "O God, in the transfiguration of your Son you confirmed the mysteries of the faith by the witness of Moses and Elijah. Make us with the King heirs of your glory, and bring us to enjoy its fullness, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Peretti says that this generation is so oriented to entertainment and television that if they were standing overlooking the Grand Canyon to take in the glory of the creation, they would do so for all of thirty seconds. Then they would whip around and ask if there is anything else and if the canyon does anything. What Mr. Peretti has to say rings true with many current conversations or observations about lifestyles now in vogue. Certainly it would be true that if people like the consumatons Peretti describes were to have been at the Mount of the Transfiguration of our Lord, they would have missed the glory of that occasion. In contrast to consumatons, in the First Reading for today we hear of people who wanted to keep the glow of a revelation of God's glory as Peter did at our Lord's transfiguration.
The Parallel Experiences
One can readily understand why the First Reading today was chosen as a companion for the account of our Lord's transfiguration. In the Holy Gospel, Moses and Elijah appear with our Lord in his moment of glory. Elijah is there because by tradition he was an expected messianic figure since he had been assumed into heaven in a blaze of glory. Moses was there because tradition had it that the messianic figure would be a Second Moses or Moses Redivivus, Moses Revived, because his grave had never been found. Also Moses experienced a transfigured appearance when he met with God in the mount. Like Jesus, the two companions who come to comfort Jesus and talk to him about his impending death and resurrection were experienced servants of God. Moses and Elijah had been through the fires of tribulation and trial, but they had also been touched by God's glory. No one else would have been better prepared or equipped to offer encouragement to Jesus as Jesus readied himself for the ordeal of going to Jerusalem to die.
All three persons, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, had their meetings with God in mountaintops. In the First Reading we hear how Moses met with God in the mountain. Elijah met with God in the mountain where he heard the still small voice of God to assure him that God was still present in Elijah's life and ministry. These special, unique, and revelatory experiences were intended to give comfort, approval, and meaning to ministries designed to witness to the presence of God in the lives of God's people. These revelations were never intended to be spectacular and sensational moments of when and how God comes only in glory. We shall see from the First Reading that the purpose is quite different from that. To be sure, it is good that the purpose was different. Otherwise, we should never be able to handle all the glory that is involved. We shall learn from the experience of Moses and his people that it is not easy to handle God's glory.
The Context
The incident recited in the First Reading for today was not the first time that Moses had gone up into Mount Sinai. As it is recorded for us here, Moses had been in the mountain other times. He had received the revelation of the covenant God made with the people with the giving of the commandments. All that was revealed was preceded with the introduction, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." The agreement that followed was based on the fact that God had made his claim upon Israel. God had established them as God's people by this act of delivery, this act of redemption and healing. What followed was based on the assumption that God would do for them what only a god could do for people. Then followed not only the giving of the Ten Commandments, but also the ordering of the lives of the people through social, ritual, and liturgical regulations that covered their living together as a unique people of God.
When Moses failed to return from the mountain, the people lost patience and they committed their infamous folly of making a golden calf fashioned like the idols they had seen in Egypt. Moses came down from the mountain and rectified that situation by destroying the two tablets of stone in which he received the covenant. He also destroyed the idol of the people. In hot anger Moses literally made the people digest the idol by drinking the pulverized gold spread upon water. Once more Moses went up into the mountain and received the word from God inscribed upon two new tablets of stone. On this occasion, Moses had remained in the mountain forty days and forty nights during which time he neither ate bread nor drank water.
The New Situation
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai after this session with God, the situation was completely different. The people were most receptive when they saw Moses with the two tablets of stone on which the covenant was inscribed. The people recognized that Moses had been involved in a revelation for their benefit, and they were ready to listen. However, Moses did not sense that, because he had been in the presence of God, the skin of his face was radiant and shining. This created a problem. The people were afraid to come near Moses. That is rather interesting. Normally, people cannot get enough of the spectacular. We especially like shining things. We are attracted to the glitter and shine that make things so rich and valuable. However, this was in a man's face, the face of a man who had been in the presence of God. The distraction that caused for the people may have been simply that it was hard to listen to the man when he was shining at them like a bright headlight.
It is difficult for us to visualize this scene for ourselves. However, the inference of the record here is that the people were also afraid, because as sinners they were as much ashamed to be in the presence of this man who had been with God, as if they had appeared before God themselves. For sinners to be in the presence of God is highly intimidating. That is not God's fault. Nor does God want it to be that way. The problem is that we feel exposed for being the sinners that we are in the presence of the Holy One. That phenomenon has existed since the time when God had to hunt for the fallen creatures in the Garden of Eden, who were hiding in the bush, because they had failed to trust God. We all know the feeling. We do not even have to have done something wrong, and we feel flustered in the presence of someone who overawes us with a shining presence. We do not develop inferiority complexes. We recognize that we are inferior. In the case of the people confronting the shining countenance of Moses, the people sensed their spiritual inadequacy and their sin.
The Remedy
Moses did not allow the people to welch out on their responsibility to hear what had been revealed to him from God because they were so spiritually shy. Instead, at first Moses had a conference with his brother Aaron, the priest, and the leaders of the congregation. We do not know what the gist of that conversation was, but Moses must have questioned them about their reticence and asked them just how difficult it was for them to be in his presence. They must have concluded that the situation was manageable, and it was very important for the people to hear what Moses had to communicate to them. At any rate, when they broke up their conference, they gathered the people together for a session in which Moses revealed what had been given to him by God. The people adjusted to the situation and heard Moses out. When Moses finished this session, he donned a veil to carry on his normal duties and his contacts with the people.
From then on, whenever Moses went in to confer with God, he removed the veil. When he returned to the people to share once more what he had received from God, the people could see the phenomenon of the shining face. After that Moses would put the veil on again. The ritual was preserved. Undoubtedly, the routine must have been strengthening for Moses as an assurance for carrying on his prophetic office. It also must have been comforting for the people to know what Moses shared with them had divine authenticity. What began as a frightening experience for the people became a welcome ritual.
Paul's Version
Sooner or later the ritual had to end. The Apostle Paul writes of that issue in what we now know as the Second Letter to the Corinthians. In that letter, Paul writes a considerable amount about the nature and authority of ministry. He had been forced to defend his ministry in the congregation at Corinth, because some had challenged his right to exercise any authority over them. Paul made the argument that the members of the congregation themselves were living proofs of the validity of his work. Then he employed the experience of Moses and the people at Mount Sinai as a paradigm of the more enduring experience of the revelation God had furnished in our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul counted it remarkable that the giving of the covenant at Mount Sinai along with the law was clothed in such glory. He said if that revelation which included the law, a ministry of condemnation, abounded in glory, how much more would the revelation which God has made of love and life in the Person of the Lord Jesus be a ministration of glory.
For Paul, the revelation in Christ surpassed the former glory at Mount Sinai. Paul noted that Moses kept wearing the veil, because he knew that glory was going to fade away and die, and Moses did not want the people to see the end of that glory. So it was that later the veil in the temple was to be a symbol for the people of that glory that had been revealed at Mount Sinai, and that the presence of God was assured, but the glory remained behind the veil. So the wearing of the covering on the heads was also to be a reminder of that fact, according to Paul. For Paul, it was significant that the veil over Moses' face, the veil in the temple, and the veil on the heads of people were also symbols that the greater glory was yet to come in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:7-14). Paul was that forceful and energetic figure who had been so immersed in the Hebrew tradition as a well trained and effective rabbi. By his own experience in moving on through the radical spiritual conversion on the Damascus Road and his careful study of the life of Christ in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures, Paul understood that the glory revealed in the Person of the Christ was the greater glory. Yet for its moment the revelation of glory at Mount Sinai was glory indeed.
Hold On To It
One can appreciate how precious the revelation of glory at Mount Sinai was for Moses and the people. It was that way for Peter, James, and John in the Mount of the Transfiguration. Peter wanted to memorialize the moment by making a shrine. That is normal for people to create memorials to moments of glory. We do that as a community, as a state, and as a nation. We fix certain moments in our history as being essential to understanding ourselves, what we are, and how we got here. Families have ways of recalling the important events in their lives. The marking of anniversaries of more than just birthdays can be very important in helping families to stress achievements and special acts of love and service.
However, what is more akin to the revelation at Mount Sinai is what we may experience as a spiritual moment in our own lives. People can talk about a range of activities or happenings that have occurred in their lives to give them inspiration, incentive, courage, or help. That does not always happen within the rituals of baptism, confirmation, or marriage. Those provide their memorable effects. Yet the deeper sense of the divine may happen out of the blue. It may come through a song, a special word, a striking moment. It could be the experience of a sunset, a cloud formation, or some other vision within nature that provided the moment to contemplate God's glory. Whatever personal reflection one has is usually something a person wants to cling to, refer to, or dramatize in some way. It is a matter of trying to keep the glow on.
The Best Glow
What the Apostle Paul had to say to the Corinthians about the transfiguration of Moses was to recognize it as the ministry of glory that it was. Now, however, he says that God has removed the veil for us. We do not have to be afraid or intimidated by the revelation of glory. It is the spirit of God who has removed the veil and given us the freedom to look and to act. The veil has been removed from our faces, and by grace we have been privileged to recognize the glory of the Lord. Paul adds that not only are we able to see the glory of the Lord revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, but also we know God's glory. We recognize the glory. However, we see the glory as though looking in a mirror, so that the glory of God is reflected in our faces, in us. The point Paul makes is that we do not have to look for the glory of God as though it were hidden, strange, and miraculous. We should know that we can see the glory of God in the face of your Christian neighbor, because we know the glory of God revealed in Christ Jesus.
Paul writes that as God said, "Let light shine out of darkness," God "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Paul is saying that what God has done for us is to permit the glory that was so evident both at Sinai and the mount of our Lord's transfiguration to be present in our lives. We keep the glow on right within our own lives as we live in the assurance of God's presence in our lives. It is by faith we know the love of God has been confirmed for us in the revelation to the ancient people Israel and in our Lord Jesus Christ. So it is that we pray in that matchless prayer of the Church on this day, "O God, in the transfiguration of your Son you confirmed the mysteries of the faith by the witness of Moses and Elijah. Make us with the King heirs of your glory, and bring us to enjoy its fullness, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
