The Glory…and the Silence
Scriptures: Exodus 34:29-35, Luke 9:28-36
Every once in a while our scriptural texts lead us into an area that feels more like fantasy-land than a way of helping us to deal with our day-to-day realities. The shining face of Moses? A Jesus so transformed that the disciples hardly even recognize him? Sounds like something supernatural. Feels like we’re in an episode of “Smallville” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (if you want to go back a few years) doesn’t it? Now, as I’m sure you know, I enjoy fantasy as much as the next person – we did go to see “Avatar”, after all – but when it comes to interpreting Biblical stories that are supposed to help us as we face decisions during the coming week, is a dose of fantasy really what we want? (There’s a program that probably not too many of you watch on Fox-5 on Thursday nights that I like to settle down with after we get home from choir practice called “Fringe” that deals with the paranormal. At the end of the episode a week ago the female FBI agent, who has supernatural powers, saw a glow surrounding the key male character, which identified him as being from an alternate universe. I couldn’t help but think about the end of this episode when I started reading the Exodus passage for this week – Moses with his glowing face. Didn’t exactly help me get in the right frame of mind for writing this sermon.)
So, what do we do with this shining face of Moses and this changed appearance of Jesus? I must admit that I’ve always had some trouble dealing with what the liturgical calendar calls Transfiguration Sunday (it’s also called Transformation Sunday in some church traditions), because it asks us to make too many suspensions of disbelief. The easy thing, I suppose, would be to say that encountering God as Moses and Jesus do on their respective mountains is quite naturally going to lead to having a glow that is perceptible to anyone who sees them. But you and I both know that we will have to dig deeper than that.
First of all, let’s look at where this Sunday is placed in the liturgical year. It’s the end of Epiphany – that season where the emphasis is on light – how the light of God is coming into the world. And it’s anticipating the beginning of Lent – that season where the initial emphasis, anyway, is on darkness – leading to the ultimate darkness of Good Friday. So, what Transfiguration Sunday seeks to do, from a liturgical standpoint, is demonstrate the changes that need to come in us as we move from light into darkness and back out to the glorious light of Easter by looking at the change that occurs in Jesus.
This passage in Luke comes after several passages in which Jesus is talking about discipleship – about calling his followers to the paths that they will take – including the one we dealt with last week in which Peter and James and John are directed to leave everything and follow him. He has asked the disciples several leading questions: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And when they answer “John the Baptist”, “Elijah”, and other prophets, Jesus ups the ante: “But who do you say that I am?” And then it is that Peter makes his confession: “The Messiah of God.” At this point, anyway, Peter gets it.
Remember, the Jewish people had been waiting for a Messiah for centuries. This was a powerful moment for all of them. Jesus realized that, and so initially he told them not to tell anyone that they understood who he was. But now going up onto this high mountain (it is not specifically named) Jesus is revealed in a way that affirms the truth of Peter’s confession – here is the validation of Jesus as the Messiah.
All of this is intended by Luke to confirm Jesus’ identity. And so the trip up to the mountain top and what happens there is a continuation of this confirmation. What happens on this mountain top is the beginning of the road that will take him to that other hill – to Golgotha. As we will discover in the Lenten series beginning next week, we are following in the steps of Jesus – and the journey begins here.
It is therefore significant, as well, that there is a voice here from within the cloud saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” – just as there was a similar voice at Jesus’ baptism. This not only suggests a pivotal event here, a new turning point in Jesus’ ministry, it also links these two religious experiences of baptism and transfiguration as part of the definition of who Jesus is and what he is about.
But this story isn’t just about Jesus. It is equally about these three key disciples – our representatives in the story. Just as in the Garden of Gethsemane later, they really want to go to sleep, but here the glory of what they are viewing keeps them awake. And what a vision! Appearing with Jesus are the two greatest figures of Israel’s tradition – Moses and Elijah – representing all of the law and the prophets throughout that tradition. Moreover, this whole experience draws heavily on images and symbols from the Hebrew scriptures: fire and cloud, as well as metaphors of light and wind. These were how those Hebrew scriptures described the presence of God.
Yes, I know, we’re back in the realm of the phantasmagorical again, aren’t we? What’s being described is something we’re more likely to see in a dream than when we walk outside onto Eastern Avenue, isn’t it? But I’d like you for this moment to suspend your disbelief (we’ll get back to reality soon enough) and participate with Peter and James and John in what they are seeing – what they are envisioning. For Peter and the other disciples this was a real and valid experience. It is truly awe-inspiring. It is worthy of adoration. It is – well – a place where you’d like to take off your shoes and stay for awhile.
Which, of course, is the disciples’ reaction: “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah……” Right. Now, lovable old Peter doesn’t get it any more. The one who saw who Jesus would be and foretold who he would become for the nations wants to hunker down and just bask in all this shining glory.
We’ve known moments like this, haven’t we? That’s why they call them “mountain top experiences” – a brief instant – a kind of “time outside of time” – that has such a splendor that we never want to lose it. It doesn’t have to be fantasy. It can be very real – or, at least, very real to us – just as it was for Peter and the other two.
So, here is the very epitome of a mountain top experience. Yet, almost as soon as they began to bask in all this glory, our text says, “a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.” All this bright light and shining and glory and now all of a sudden darkness, fog, fear. The shadow of death surrounds the glory of the light…as is appropriate for the beginning of Lent. Yet, as we know in the time-frame from Good Friday to Easter, the darkness has to be there for there to be light. And, indeed, it is from out of the cloud that the voice comes calling the disciples truly to be disciples: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
One other element is important in this particular passage that we shouldn’t let slip by. It is significant here that Luke is the only Gospel that tells us that Jesus went up the mountain to pray. Prayer is key for us, as it was for Jesus, as we seek for our moments of experiencing the glory. How often, when we’re facing a decision or wondering where a life-path is going to take us, that we say we’ll pray about it. But then how many of us actually do that? The quieting of our spirits and an openness to God’s guidance is central to any mountain top experience.
Maybe that was the problem with the disciples: they didn’t stop for that moment to be with Jesus in his time of prayer. If they had, perhaps Peter wouldn’t have been so quick to want to build tents or tabernacles and stay there.
That’s our impulse, too, isn’t it, when smack up against the glory of God: to act, to build, to babble as Peter does (isn’t that a marvelous little aside in Luke about Peter: “not knowing what he said”?). But perhaps God is calling us to a different response. As Kate Huey puts it, “Those of us who think that every situation requires us to DO something, however well-intentioned our efforts, are called back to faithfulness (and perhaps simplicity) by the voice of God in the story: ‘This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!’ As usual, however, Peter is very much like us. We often try to talk our way into understanding, to process an experience so that we make its meaning part of who we are.”
No, sometimes the response is, and should be, just silence. “And they kept silent,” is the final word about the disciples response. Peter and the others had seen the glory of God as manifested in Jesus, but they didn’t fully understand what it meant, and so finally they came to an understanding that for now they needed to remain silent before this glory. At Gethsemane, on Golgotha, and especially at the empty tomb a fuller understanding would come.
Silence can sometimes be painful. Those of us who have not grown up in the tradition of the Quakers, or Society of Friends, can get fidgety and uncomfortable when periods of silence in worship run on too long. In Ingmar Bergman’s film Hour of the Wolf there’s a moment when Johan Borg and his pregnant wife Alma look at his watch while they wait for a minute to pass. For an audience member it’s an excruciating moment, and you think that it’s taking much too long. But if you go back and time it, in actuality only 60 seconds have elapsed. Their silence while waiting for this minute to go by allows us to experience their fear – a fear that will become ever more manifest as the movie moves along. For Bergman in most of his movies silence is a precursor of fear. And in our mediated society, with televisions constantly blaring and the sounds of the city everywhere, we find how difficult it is to be truly silent.
But at the same time silence can be an awe-filled appropriate response to the presence of glory. We recognize this in worship when after a particularly moving anthem or liturgical dance we seek to offer our silence rather than our applause. Sometimes a manifestation of the glory of God leaves us speechless and motionless – and this is its intent. That was a wonderful phrase we said together in our invocation earlier in the service: “the silence of spiritual speechlessness”. What makes you speechless? What causes you to realize that the presence of God in your life not only brings you to your knees but requires of you only your silent assent?
David Albert Farmer tells this story about his own life, with which I rather imagine many of us could identify: “When my first son was born, I was speechless. Actually, I was in shock; speechlessness was only one symptom of my condition. The doctor held him up by his heels until he squalled, and then he was trying to hand him to me. I gather I was standing there with my mouth hanging open. The scene is imprinted indelibly in my memory. I came back into the real world when a nurse said, ‘Well if you’re not going to use that camera hanging around your neck, Dad, let me.’…. That was one of the most moving moments of my life. There were absolutely no connections operating between my brain, my larynx, and my mouth. I was amazed, awed, and scared out of my wits. I had feelings and impulses that I still can’t put into words, and that magical moment was a little more than 26 years ago. I remember it rather often, but especially on his birthdays and when I’ve seen him march across two stages so far to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance to have his name called and a diploma placed in his hand.”
The disciples should have been silent before Jesus rather than ask for three tabernacles. They should have remembered what the Preacher said in Ecclesiastes, that there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai he understood that he had been silent before God, and now it was the time for him to speak to the Israelites in order to give them the commandments that God had given him. The face of Moses is not shining because he has seen God; Moses is shining because God saw him. This is one reason why, as the book of Exodus tells us, “whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with God, he would take the veil off, until he came out…..” Moses wants God to see him – warts and all, as we like to say – so that he can reflect back to the people the shining reality of God.
Moses and Jesus both show us how when God sees us we then reflect to those we meet the glory and grandeur of our God. God offers us the gift of transfigured eyes in order that we might see as God sees. God makes us to shine just as Moses and Jesus shone. That’s the real meaning behind transfiguration. We are intended to be God’s new people, letting our light shine so that all may see. May God shine brightly in your life; may both your speech and your silence reflect that light; and may the darkness that we now begin to enter at the start of Lent be overwhelmed by the power of that brightly shining.
Amen
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of ChristLas Vegas, NV
February 14, 2010
The Glory…and the Silence (Exodus 34:29-35, Luke 9:28-36)
Exodus 34:29-35
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. 32 Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. 33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.
34 Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (ESV)
Luke 9:28-36
28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. (ESV)
