Moses led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt to a Promised Land in the east. They were pursued to the sea by Pharaoh’s army. But God rescued them across the sea. The people went to Sinai where Moses ascended the mountain to receive from God the Sinai covenant and the Ten Commandments, inscribed on stone tablets.
While waiting for Moses to come down from Sinai, the people
decided to worship idols. They persuaded Moses’ brother, Aaron, to make golden
calves for them. He caved in and did what they demanded. You may remember this
scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton
Heston as Moses.
In the movie, when Moses returned with the Commandments and saw
the people’s idolatry, he threw the tablets at the people. The tablets exploded
and made a huge sinkhole that sucked down all the unfaithful people but spared
the faithful ones. It was great cinema, but what the Bible says actually
happened was that a civil war broke out that claimed the lives of three
thousand people. Moses’ side prevailed.
Then God told the people to leave Sinai and go to the promised land, but he, God, would not go with them. “If I were to go with you even for a moment,” God said, “I might destroy you.” Moses asked God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’” (Exod 33:13-14).
Moses asked God to show him his glory. God did, but only a partial
glimpse. Showing Moses a place to stand, God said, “When my glory passes by, I
will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have
passed by. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back; but my face
must not be seen” (Exod 33:21‑23 NIV).
God then required Moses to chisel out stone tablets like the first
ones that Moses had broken when he had seen the golden calf. Moses was to bring
the tablets to the top of Sinai where God would restore the Commandments on
them. Moses did so.
29 Moses came down from
Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the
covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone
because he had been talking with God.
30 When Aaron and all the
Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, 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 spoke with them.
32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exod 34:29-35).
It is not wholly clear what the Scriptures mean by saying that
Moses’ face was shining. We use expressions like that ourselves,
metaphorically. Remember the children’s song, “We’re all in our places with
bright shining faces”? Brides are sometimes said to be “radiant” on their
wedding days. An old country expression for being attracted to someone
romantically was that you “took a shine” to the other. So perhaps that’s what
Aaron and the others saw in Moses’ face, just a special look. Perhaps.
But perhaps not. A close, personal encounter with the creator of
the cosmos is simply an experience of a different quality than anything else.
Besides, Moses’ own brother and the others were afraid of him when they saw his
shining face. Something unique must have been going on.
Moses had gone deeply into the presence of God with all its
dangers. “Show me your glory,” Moses asked of God. “No one may see my face and
live,” God told him. Narratively, the glory of the Lord had been on Sinai until
then. But God had just promised to send his own presence to go with the people.
In making Moses’ face to shine, the glory of God is narratively brought from
Sinai to the tabernacle built by the Hebrews. “Moses’ descent from the
mountain” with shining face “is a [narrative] device for the awesome coming of
heavenly glory to dwell in the midst of Israel” (NIB).
The most important events in stories of Jews and Christians alike concern the awe-inspiring entry of God into human history. The Bible struggles to find ways to speak about this awesome entry, and one of its preferred ways is “glory.” The apostle Paul used this story of Moses to buttress his own claim that the glory of God has become visible on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of John is clear that the glory of God is found in Jesus. God’s glory is located most precisely in the cross. As the events unfolded that led to his death Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). In the shameful, shattering instrument of the cross, God’s glory shines as an instrument for Christ’s resurrection. In the cross and the empty tomb, the so-called glory that was Rome and all earthly powers became minutely dim. Here indeed is the real transfiguration: that by the body of the one crucified and risen, the glory of God is seen by his suffering, death, and resurrection. And for the church, the present body of Christ in the world, God’s glory can be seen in nothing else but the way we live together as the physical body of Christ in the world today.
I have often wondered how Moses coped with his singular experience
of beholding God’s glory so intimately. It was no life of sweetness and light
to lead the children of Israel. Moses and the Lord alike frequently observed
that the people were “stiff-necked,” obstinate and stuck in their ways. It
turned out to be so apt that they called themselves the children of
Israel. They were not mature, as a group, in the ways of the Lord.
They complained a lot, starting barely after they reached the sea. They saw Pharaoh’s army coming after them and yelled at Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone?” (Exod. 14:11-12a). How quickly the days of slavery became treasured as the “good ole days!”
They complained about lacking water. When they got good water,
they complained about not having enough to eat: “In the desert the whole
community grumbled against Moses and Aaron,” Exodus 16 relates. “The Israelites
said to them, ‘If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat
around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out
into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’” (Exod 16:2‑3 NIV).
So God sent the people manna in the morning and quail in the evening. They
still weren’t happy.
It was rough being Moses. He occupied an office political as well as religious, but none of the people he attempted to lead had elected him. Moses was called by God and appointed as their leader. He was often fiercely opposed. He suffered all the criticism, rumormongering, hostility, and opposition that today’s elected officials know. Even after God gave the people bread and meat, it didn’t let up. At one place things got so heated Moses told God that he feared for his life (Exod 17:4). Just to be fair, Moses was not very diplomatic in his speech; people never had a problem knowing where he stood. He seemed to have had a demanding edge about him that irritated people. Well, so did Jesus. Just read Matthew 23, where Jesus called some people “sons of hell,” not something calculated to win their admiration.
Quite clearly, most Israelites didn’t want Moses at all. His
standards were too strict, perhaps. After all, Moses gave them Law, but what
they really wanted was license – anything goes. Eugene Peterson wrote that the
people really wanted Aaron, not Moses, because Aaron was compliant. He gave in
to their demands. If you wanted a golden calf, Aaron’s your man. Just wait
until Moses isn’t around, then see Aaron. Golden calves abound in religious
life, Peterson wrote, in times both ancient and modern. He cautioned religious
leaders against yielding to the pressure to become “quality-control supervisors
in a golden calf factory.”
I wonder whether Moses ever sent out his resume to neighboring
nations instead of putting up with all the petty backbiting and outright
hostility that he got for trying to do his job. It must have been tempting.
He’d had a professional life before he saw the burning bush. He was unusually
qualified for positions in civil government or business. Job offers there would
have been. But he stayed. Why?
It could only have been because Moses had been to the mountaintop.
It can only be because he had beheld in some special way the glory of God. And
that experience never let him go. At the end of the day Moses must have
understood that neither complaints nor compliments of others could primarily
determine his course. He could only do his best to do what God wanted. No doubt
Moses often felt severely incapable of doing so; in fact, he tried very hard to
argue God out of his call. I don’t see how Moses ever actually felt adequate to
his vocation. But he had been to the mountaintop and that experience had
changed him for good. “What was it like?” people must have asked him, then
waited while Moses groped for words. Finally, he might have managed only to
say, “It was glorious.”
Walter Brueggemann wrote that the glory from God is carried by odd, strange persons, Moses and Jesus being two prime examples. (Remember that when Jesus returned to his hometown and declared that the messianic prophecies were fulfilled by him, the people exclaimed, unbelievingly, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”)
So, Brueggemann wrote, “This [fact] is not [so much] a summons
that all should be ‘carriers,’ for those carriers are chosen only in God’s
inscrutable power and freedom. It is, rather, an invitation . . . to notice the
glory of God in those who refuse the golden calf, who stand in the breach to
see the glory, and who bring the tablets and let life begin again. God’s glory
is never far from God’s command, which authorizes the revamping of all of life.
There is dread in the coming of this glory, but there is also inordinate,
practical possibility. For all of his shining, Moses’ work is on earth,” with
his people (NIB).
“If you are pleased with me,” Moses prayed, “teach me your ways so
I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that these people
are your people.”
Transfiguration Sunday is about the glory of God and asks us
individually and collectively a pointed question: Does we shine with the glory
of God? When the world sees us does it know that the presence of God is with
us, imperfect as we are?
Epiphanies
may come, and then they go. Rarely does God slap us upside the head with
flashes of lightning and voices like thunder. Usually, God quietly simply
beckons us, tantalizes us, and sometimes God pulls back the curtain between
heaven and earth just barely enough to give us a peek, and then only
fleetingly. If ever such a such a glimpse is given to you, cherish it but don't
try to capture it. It’s a snapshot gift, just a glimpse, an intuitive grasp of
reality through an illuminating discovery.
We
treasure our glimpses of glory. But afterward we must go back to the valley to
follow Christ, because we can’t build shelters for Christ’s glory, we have to
live it out. Glimpses of glory do not answer all our doubts or tell us what to
do next. We can’t build our whole faith on sporadic glimpses any more than we
could compose a symphony from notes picked at random. There is more to Jesus’
story than that transfiguring night on the mountain. But it does make a
difference to have seen, even for a moment, the future, to have heard the
confirming, reassuring voice out of the silence.
This week is the beginning of Lent, the season of the cross. We shall begin a Lenten walk with Jesus down the narrow way of obedience, a way which leads on Good Friday to pain and death. Leave here today and you are on your way to that cruciform valley.
But
as you go to be a disciple wherever you make your home in the valley, know
this: In Jesus Christ, God's past has come to fruition, the law and the
prophets are fulfilled in him, God's Beloved. When we walk out those doors, it
will be an ordinary March day, with nothing visibly different from when we came
in.
But we
should be different. We might tell no one, though our faces may be shining
since we have, in a manner of speaking, come from the mountain. You will be
different, having seen God's future, having heard the words that keeps you
going as you take up your cross and follow Christ: “This is my son, my chosen;
listen to him!”
Let
us pray:
Lord
of life and light,
before
your humiliation and shame, on your way to the cross, you were transfigured
before us, the veil was lifted, and we saw your glory.
In
all the dark, difficult places of our lives, show us your glory. Give us the
grace to see you walking beside us, comforting us in our struggles, encouraging
us in our sadness. Take us to the mountaintop, help us to see.
With
you beside us, we are able to face evil and injustice with courage. With you
walking ahead of us, we are able to walk with confidence. Show us your glory,
....in
our sickness and pain,
....in
our bereavement and loss,
....in
our confusion and doubt,
....in
our loneliness and solitude,
....in our temptation and weakness,
This
we pray in the confidence that you are indeed God's only begotten Son, the
light of our lives, the one to whom we are to listen and follow in all the
moments of our lives. Amen.
