SERMON Shining Faces

The Transfiguration of Our Lord C (07): Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43

There is something envy-producing about shining faces.

When I was in grade school (at least for the first two or three grades), we would start out every school day by singing -- I will spare you the singing part -- we started the day by singing, "We are all in our places, with sunshiny faces -- this is the way to start a new day!"

Now, while most of us had well-scrubbed faces, we did not always sunshiny well-scrubbed faces. And those of us who did not have sunshiny faces were usually envious of those who did.

Shiny faces (especially sunshiny faces) produce real envy (they can also produce real resentment, but that's another sermon).

We have just heard about two instances of shiny faces: Moses' --described in Exodus and by Saint Paul -- and Jesus' recounted by Luke.

In Exodus, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant -- the torah or "teaching" -- and the "skin of his face shone because he had been talking to God." Not only the people, but his brother, are afraid to come near Moses when he first comes down from Mount Sinai. Even so, as Moses gives God's word to God's people, Moses' face continues to shine. Only when he has finished speaking to God's people, does Moses put a veil (or perhaps a mask) over his face -- a veil or mask that he removes whenever he speaks to God or relays God's word to his people. And at those times, "the Israelites . . . see the face of Moses, [and] that the skin of his face [is] shining."

Now, everyone agrees that Paul is relying on the Exodus account in his letter to the Corinthians. You may have noticed, however, that Paul does not get Exodus exactly right. Moses' face was always unveiled and reflecting the glory of God when he spoke to the Israelites. However inaccurately premised, Paul's point is that, in God's Spirit, we, as Christians, are all becoming Mosses, and "seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."

More shiny faces.

And, in Luke, we have Jesus praying, on a mountaintop, with his three key disciples, Peter, John, and James. And while Jesus is praying, the appearance of his face changed and "his clothes became dazzling white." If another shiny face were not enough, suddenly Moses and Elijah appeared in glory speaking of Jesus' departure (the Greek word is exoduj /exodus) -- his departure that will take place in Jerusalem. So overwhelmed is Peter by what he has seen, that, after Moses and Elijah have departed, he wants to memorialize the event by erecting three huts or tents on the mountain, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. But no sooner are the words out of Peter's mouth than he, John, and James -- all three terrified -- are engulfed by a cloud that is itself God who tells them, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

Are their faces shining when the cloud leaves and they are once again alone on the mountain with Jesus? It is hard to image that they are not.

Now the Israelites were too afraid of the very real reflected glory of God that they saw in Moses' face to be envious. The nine disciples who do not accompany Jesus, Peter, John, and James to the mountaintop are not told about the transfiguration until after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Would they have experienced shiny face envy had they known?

I would have. And the envy would be not so much of the shiny faces but of the intense, mountaintop religious experience that generated those shiny faces.

And what about those experiences?

Well, in one sense they seem very alien to us. Moses and Elijah? Both dead for centuries. With Jesus? As told in Luke's gospel, it appears that all this may have taken place at night (remember what we heard? Peter, John, and James are "weighed down with sleep"), so maybe it was all dream? But God in a cloud? God speaking to Peter, John, and James. Even though something like 90% of all societies in the world today routinely and normally experience alternative realities in waking visions or trances -- in other words, in altered states -- ours is not one of those societies. So, in one sense, even though the transfiguration is recounted as something that happened during Jesus' ministry (and made perfect sense to Luke's first century readers), we have trouble imagining it.

But that doesn't mean that we find it and the intense religious experience that it represents unappealing. Anything but. For a few brief moments when I was in college, the religious experience as an altered state of consciousness was a serious area of study. Before there was the Grateful Dead (who were not part of the academic study!), there was Timothy Leary, and before Timothy Leary, there was Aldous Huxley.

I remember a camp counselor friend from a previous summer writing to me during my junior year urging me to get a copy of Aldous Huxley’s book the Doors of Perception and to read it. I did. As someone who was immersed in religion courses, I found myself sold on the religious experience described. A few months later some divinity students at Boston University were given psilocybin (a psychedelic) before the school's Good Friday Service -- an experiment that resulted in intensely heightened religious experiences and shiny faces for the subjects involved. I was envious.

Along with others, I was envious, but, as we know, all that kind of sanctioned experimentation ended rather abruptly with a secular psychedelic movement that caused both use and experimentation to become illegal.

But the envy of shiny faces and the altered states has never abated. We may no longer think Aldous Huxley was on the right track, but many of us are nonetheless fascinated by Christian mystics like a St. Hildegard of Bingen or a Teresa of Avila or a Julian of Norwich. In some Christian churches, this interest is never envy. In some churches, an altered state shiny face is the ticket for admission. Unless you speak in tongues, unless you have had an out-of-body experience, unless God has talked to you directly, unless you are baptized by the Holy Spirit, unless you have been to the mountaintop you cannot call yourself a Christian.

And some would suggest that is what Paul is saying to the Corinthians in the passage we just heard from today's second reading. But is he?

I don't think so.

I don't think so because both the account of Moses' shining face in Exodus and the transfiguration narrative in Luke point to God's use of mountaintop experiences for purely utilitarian reasons. Stone tablets don't just drop out of heaven. God has to hand them to someone. Moses is elected. Jesus has to make sure that persons who are going to assume the leadership of his church after the ascension have a glimpse of the Big Picture before he leaves and that they know that Jesus is from God. And Peter, John, and James sensed that (even if they did not fully understand) because the author of Luke tells us, "they kept silent and in those days told no one of any of the things they had seen." It was only after the resurrection that their mountaintop experience and witness of the transfiguration became important.

The Israelites did not have to climb Mount Sinai with Moses because God spoke through Moses. It was God's Word that mattered, not the mountaintop experience that generated that Word. And in the transfiguration we hear about today, what really matters is not the vision (wonderful as it may be ). What really matters is the Word of God, first to Peter, John, and James that they listen to Jesus, and then, equally as important, to the unclean spirit possessing the epileptic boy whom Jesus heals.

The real mountaintop religious experiences are primarily for the problem cases and special assignments. The altered states are mere icing on the cake. The transformation that Paul is describing in his letter to the Corinthians takes place within the community of believers, not on a mountaintop. It is a transformation that, in Paul’s words, leads God's people, "[to] act with great boldness" and "commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God." The real action is here, not on the mountaintop. And, in the end, the real transfiguration is here and not on the mountaintop. And it is not a one time event. As it has for 128 years, it takes place in the community of believers -- in this community of believers -- every time we come together to hear God's Word, share the sacraments, and act in Jesus's name.

So are there grounds for shiny face envy?

Look around. We are all in our places, here because of God's gift of grace. Look again -- dare I say it? -- We are all in our places with God's shinny faces.

God be praised! Alleluia!

Amen.

February 18, 2007

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church