Delivered February 10, 2013
This is Transfiguration Sunday on the
Christian calendar. In the gospel lesson Jesus went up on a mountain in Galilee
with three of his apostles, and he was transfigured before their eyes. The
story says that he began to pray. “And
while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes
became dazzling white.” He shone with the glory of God. But I am not going
to preach on that story. I am going to preach on the OT text for today, which
talks about Moses on Mount Sinai also shining with the glory of God, and also
about the Epistle Lesson which interprets that text.
In the story in the Book of Exodus, Moses
had gone up the mountain to receive the Law of God – the Torah. He returned
from the mountain with two tablets of the covenant that was being made between God
and the Hebrew people. When he came down from meeting with God on the mountain,
the story says that his face was shining with the glory of God. The shining
face of Moses scared the willies out of the Israelites. So much so that Moses had
to put a veil over his face so that they would not have to see the glory of God
shining from his face. That is the story we are going to look at this morning,
and I want to connect this to our lives.
1. First, what is this glory that
shone from Moses’ face and was so powerful that it had to be veiled? It was the
presence of God. The idea in the OT story is that Moses had spent so much time
in the direct presence of God on Mount Sinai that the glory of God rubbed off
on him. If I put something close to my woodstove for any length of time, then
it will get hot. If a person spends very much time in the presence of God,
he/she gets hot with the fiery glory of God. It is like the glory of God is
contagious; it rubs off on people who spend time with God.
In Hebrew the glory of God is called
the shekinah. It is normally depicted as a shining light representing the spiritual
presence of God. In the OT it is seen as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar
of fire by night. It came upon the tabernacle in the wilderness and later upon the
temple in Jerusalem. These images of light, cloud or fire are ways of
communicating the idea of the presence of God. The Hebrews believed in an
imageless God, like Christians do. God is invisible. God is Spirit and cannot
be depicted as an image of any type. Any type of image is considered to be an
idol, which was forbidden in the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from
the mountain here. A commandment that the Hebrews were already breaking by
building and erecting a golden calf to worship even while Moses was getting the
commandments.
The Hebrews had a worship problem.
All the other nations around them had statues of their gods and goddesses that
they could worship. But one cannot make an image of an imageless God! How do you depict the presence of One who is
invisible? It is done with light – light shining in a place or in a person. We
often see this pictured in Christian art and icons as a golden halo surrounding
the head of a person. This is attempting to communicate the presence of the
invisible holy God in and through a person. The same glory shines forth from
angels in the Bible and in the burning bush, which called Moses to his ministry
to free the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt. Moses’ face shone with the glory of
the presence of God. And Jesus shone with the same glory in his transfiguration
on the mountain, only more so because Jesus was not just a prophet like Moses,
but was the Son of God.
This same glory is present around us
here, if we have eyes to see. The well-known Psalm 19 says:
The heavens declare the
glory of God;
And the firmament shows His
handiwork.
2 Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals
knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of
the world.
All of
creation declares the glory of God if we just have ears to hear. The earth and
the heavens shine with God’s glory, if we have the eyes to see. As Elizabeth
Barrett Browning wrote in her famous poem, “Earth’s crammed with heaven; and
every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his
shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck
blackberries.” The glory of God is the presence of the holy invisible God.
2. But people don’t see it or don’t
see it very clearly. To use the words of our text, there is a veil hiding the
glory of God from human eyes. What is this veil that keeps people from seeing
the glory of God? Our OT and NT passages answer this question.
This is
the veil of fear. The story of Moses in Exodus makes it clear that the Hebrews
were afraid to see the glory of God shining from Moses’ face. They refused to
come near him or talk with him until he put a veil over his face to hide the
glory of God. Fear keeps people from seeing the glory of God. What is it that
people are afraid of? We are afraid of being undone. I love the passage in
Isaiah 6 where the prophet has a vision of the holy God on his throne. His
reaction is this. He says, “Woe is me,
for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of
hosts.” When we come into the presence of God, we are undone. We fall apart
spiritually. The Bible repeatedly says that God is a consuming fire and no one
can stand in the presence of God.
We are
tiny fragile little selves – egos, personalities, which we have formed over
decades of living. We are little bubbles of self-consciousness filled with self-importance
and self-deception. God makes us in his
image at birth and then we get ahold of it. We plaster over God’s image with a
façade constructed according to our own thoughts, fashioned according to our
own likes and dislikes. We don’t know ourselves. We have no idea who we really
are. We don’t know who we are in God, so we have pieced together an alternate identity
– an understanding of ourselves based on what our parents told us about us while
we were growing up and what our society tells us and what we have decided we are.
These egos of ours are castles in the air.
It is no
wonder that so many people have so many emotional and mental problems and that
depression is so widespread and that mental illness is such a problem. And that
people erupt in violence. It is a terribly difficult job to keep this charade of
our self-identities going – this image that we present to the world and try to
convince ourselves of. Some people have public personas that are huge lies. We
hear of celebrities who live a lie. The most recent being cyclist Lance
Armstrong, who whole career was a lie. Then there was the story of the Notre
Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, who got wrapped up in some elaborate hoax about a
dead girlfriend. I have no idea what is
real and what is not in that story, and I don’t want to know. There are so many
other stories like this. My point is that our lives apart from who we are in
God are elaborate fictions.
When we
meet God, this mental and emotional fabrication falls way. We are undone. The
veil is thrown back and we see ourselves as we really are. And it scares us and
we want to pull that veil back down again between us and God to protect
ourselves from the truth of who God really is and who we really are. In the
presence of God we are revealed as nothing but temporary clumps of earth formed
and kept alive for a few decades for one purpose – to be the image of God, to reflect
the glory of God. Our purpose is to glorify God. And when we see that we have
not done that – that we waste our lives on trivial
pursuits that have no eternal value, then we are afraid.
We are afraid that we are not who we thought
we are. We are afraid of losing ourselves in God. That we will no longer be
ourselves if we stay in the presence of God. And that fear is justified. In the
presence of God we cease to be anything substantial at all. The apostle James writes “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and
then vanishes.” In the presence of the eternal absolute God, we are
nothing, and it scares the heck out of us. And so we quickly pull that veil back
down between us and God, so we can carry on our lives the way we want them to
be.
Another
way of looking at this veil that hides the glory of God is that it is a veil of
ignorance. That apostle Paul speaks about this in our Epistle Lesson. “Moses, [who] put a veil over his face so
that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was
passing away. 14 But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil
remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken
away in Christ. 15 But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their
heart.” Paul is saying that when
people read the Word of God, they do not understand it. There is a veil over
their minds and hearts.
One of humanity’s
root problems is ignorance of God, even when we read the Bible’s description of
God. That is what Paul means when he says, “But their minds were blinded.” In other words popular theology is
messed up. Our mental pictures of God are wrong. That is why atheism is making
a comeback. They are right in much of what they say. The humanly fabricated God
that many people believe in does not exist. We have rejected God and remade God
in our own image. We don’t have to make a statue to be an idol worshipper. We
worship mental images of God and call them God. Scriptures say who God really
is, but we don’t get it. We read what we want to read and hear what we want to
hear.
Let me
give you an example. Sometimes I will preach a sermon and someone going out the
door - or perhaps sometime later - will mention how much something I said meant
to them. They will repeat what I said in the sermon. But I didn’t say any such
thing! I said one thing, and they heard another. We hear what we want to hear.
We read in the Scriptures what we want to read, not necessarily what is written
there. That is what Paul is saying people were doing with the OT. “For until this day the same veil remains
unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament.” They were reading through a
veil, and it is hard to make out words correctly through a veil. It is hard to
make out God’s Word through veiled hearts and minds.
3. How
is this veil to be removed? Again the apostle tells us. Verse 16 - “Nevertheless when one turns to the
Lord, the veil is taken away.” We have to do exactly what we are afraid to
do and do not want to do – turn to the Lord. The hymn says: “Turn your eyes
upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow
strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.” When we turn to the Lord
we turn away from ourselves. We lose ourselves in Christ. As Paul says, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who
lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son
of God who loved me and gave his life for me.” Jesus says, “For whoever desires to save his life will
lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Exactly what
we feared the most will happen when we turn to Christ. We will lose ourselves.
We will cease to be and Christ will be all in all. But in losing ourselves, we
discover who we really are - mortal creatures made in the image of the immortal
God. We are nothing in ourselves, and yet in Christ we become everything. Our
earthly lives are finished, and our eternal lives have just begun.
By
“turning to the Lord” I am taking about much more than believing some doctrines
about Christ or going through some ritual about Christ or having some religious
experience about Christ. I have nothing against those, but I am talking about
something more. I am speaking of spiritually, mentally – with heart and soul
turning away from our lives and turning it all over to Christ. My father-in-law, whom
we just buried last Saturday had a favorite term: In Christ. No matter what you
said, he would add the words “In Christ.” I love you … in Christ. Goodbye … in
Christ. In the final years of his life this became his constant refrain. The
last words of any conversation you had with him were always “in Christ.” That
is the way our lives should be – everything said and done in Christ.
4. This
brings me to my final point which is living the unveiled life. Paul writes: “16 Nevertheless when one turns to the
Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face,
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the
same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” One of my two year old grandson Jonah’s
favorite songs is “This little light of mine. I’m goin let it shine.” That
describes the Christian life. We are to let the glory light of God shine in and
through us.
Paul
says that this is liberty. 17 Now the
Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” This
is freedom from the drudgery and slavery of life outside of Christ. People
think that being religious means to give up one’s freedom. And the truth is
that religion can be bondage. But true spirituality in Christ is freedom. Free to
live life guided by the Spirit of the living God. Without Christ we are in
bondage to our thoughts and emotions and bodily sensations. In Christ we still
have all those thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations, but they are a
sideshow to the main drama which is Christ living in and through our lives.
These
verses say that living the unveiled life means that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord.” These are amazing words when one reads carefully what it says. We
are beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. A mirror reflects back our
image to ourselves. When the veil of fear and ignorance is lifted, we look in
the mirror and see not ourselves but the glory of the Lord! There have been a
number of movies made where a person will magically switch bodies with someone
else, or go back in time to be their younger self in their younger body. After
the transformation they look in the mirror and no longer see themselves staring
back. They see someone else or their younger self. Paul says that when the veil
is taken away we look in the mirror and see the glory of God! What an amazing
idea! Our distorted image of ourselves is replaced with God’s glory. The image of God in which we were made is now
able to be seen! We become mirrors in which God is reflected. When we are
cleansed of sin by Christ, the mirror is clean, the veil is removed.
Then
Paul says, “18 But we all, with unveiled
face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed
into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” The more we turn to the Lord and
behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, the more we are transformed
into this image. We become less and less ourselves and more and more Christ.
Our man-made, self-made image fades away, and is replaced by Christ. The image
is transformed from glory to glory, meaning with ever-increasing glory. And it
is the Spirit of the Lord that does this! May this be a reality in our lives.
May we see ourselves as we were created to be – the image of God. And may
people look at us and see the image of Jesus Christ unveiled.
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