The seeing and hearing of God
Commentary
Some commentaries and many sermons treat the narrative of the transfiguration as a literal and fleeting metamorphosis, a bit of Divine special effects. This unimaginative and one-dimensional way of treating the story will leave many a thoughtful listener at the least perplexed and at most tuned out.
I suggest another approach. We know that the gospel writers were more than biographers or mere reporters. They were literary artists as well as theologically sophisticated interpreters of the significance of Jesus, a significance they understood only and fully when they looked at his life through the prism of the resurrection. Part of the mystery of our experience of the Risen Lord is the experience of transfigured seeing as we look at his earthly life and are grabbed by a glimpse of true glory. The veil imposed upon vision by our cultural values is suddenly shattered.
Frederick Faber's old hymn phrases it so well.
God's glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways.
And of all things on earth,
Least like what men agree to praise.
Does an approach like this assist us in the task of helpful exposition? The transfiguration narratives placed where they are in the synoptic gospels represent the tradition's way of insisting that we hear and see Jesus through the prism of the resurrection. The ancient wisdom of the church places these gospel accounts on the threshold of Lent so that in the way of the cross and words of Jesus we might through seeing and hearing behold the glory of God.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Exodus 34:29-35
In pagan religious ceremonies the priest often put on a mask to intimidate the worshippers. Moses speaks face to face with God when he is in the pulpit. When he is out of the pulpit he puts on a veil in deference to the people who were awed by the Divine glow on his face. The intent of the ancient writer was to assert that Moses was neither a shaman nor a deity but a human person who served as mediator between God and the community.
It is suggestive that Moses did not know that his face shone. It would not be an abuse of the text to enlist it in a discussion of true goodness which is always unconscious goodness. Once we are self-consciously good we cease to be good. The story is told of a pastor who during a sermon bemoaned the decline of the number of good people in the world. A parishioner greeting him at the door after the service said, "Come now, Pastor, things are not that bad. You, for example, look like a good person." "I know," said the pastor, "but there are so few of us." Ugh!
Moses himself had a lapse in humility by the waters of Meribah and was denied entrance into the promised land (Numbers 20:6-13). That's the trouble with a halo; when it slips it becomes a noose. Moses' face shone when he spoke with God. In the epistle reading Paul will suggest that there is a kind of glory whose image we can reflect. By the way, the veil that Moses wore is not to be confused with the ministerial mask that we sometimes slip into wearing.
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Paul's logic in this reading is difficult to follow and a bit confused. He reads into the Exodus story much more than is stated there. Here it is the people who listen who have the veil. Paul is obviously writing out of a Jewish interpretive tradition to which we are strangers. By verse 18 his thought takes a clearer and suggestive turn. There is grist for a sermon here, a sermon that can relate both to the shining face of Moses and the narrative of the transfiguration.
I recall a college professor who at semester's end concluded his last lecture to us with the admonition, "Remember, you are making your face!" He believed that we make our faces by what we are on the inside. We know something about the concern we have with our faces. We check them out in the mirror at least once or twice a day. Adolescents worry about real or imagined blemishes and imperfections. Our culture idolizes the pretty face and the wrinkle-free face and so a vast amount of money is spent each year on creams and lotions to beautify the face. One can really appreciate the freedom from this cultural pressure of the fellow who wrote:
In beauty I know I'm no star.
There are others more handsome by far.
But my face I don't mind,
I'm behind it I find.
It's those out in front that I jar.
Can we say that what we are on the inside has a powerful influence on the face? Can our faces say something about us? Irving S. Cobb once said of someone, "Every line on his face is the line of least resistance." Are there stories written on our faces? A gypsy fortune-teller revealed that it was not cards or tea leaves that he read, but faces. Speaking of his customers he said, "From the lines, squints, scars and wrinkles it is as though they stripped themselves naked and walked into the room." We are all mediators of something.
A television commercial not too long ago promoting a facial application featured a lady in a mud mask who tells us when she removes the mask and looks in the mirror, "You will see a glowing actress on the stage." It was not a mud mask that put the glow on the face of Moses. In simple profundity the writer tells us that the face of Moses shone because he talked with God. Paul writes along the same lines about the change in our image that is the work of the Spirit as with faces liberated from the veils imposed by our cultural values we will be transformed by the glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus.
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)
Luke uses Mark as his source, but adds a comment about the drowsing disciples who came awake in time to see the glory but missed the conversation about the "exodus" Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem. That is par for the course for the disciples who habitually screened out the cross talk of Jesus. They missed a conversation they would not have understood anyway. In the culture around them cross and glory just didn't go together. (Do the disciples here bear any resemblance to Easter Christians who skip Lent and Holy Week?)
Keeping in mind the interpretive approach suggested in the introduction, the narrative is the vehicle for proclaiming two basic affirmations about Jesus revealed through his life, death, and resurrection to the awakened eyes of the post-Easter church. He, not Elijah, is the end time person and his authority is greater than that of Moses. Remember that Elijah ordered the slaughter of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). Luke throughout his gospel takes pains to separate Jesus from traditional expectations that included violent retribution. Jesus is a different kind of deliverer.
Peter wants to preserve the moment by building some sort of booth for Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. He does not understand that the three are not on the same level. Jesus needs no supporting presence. He is the sign of God's living presence. Out of the clouds comes the exasperated voice of God, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to Him!" It is by seeing Jesus as he comes to us in history and hearing his words that we see and hear God.
In verses 37-43 Luke gives us another example of transfigured seeing. The day by day activity of Jesus is a sign of God's presence. This is the way God was showing himself, not through a violence-prone Elijah.
I suggest another approach. We know that the gospel writers were more than biographers or mere reporters. They were literary artists as well as theologically sophisticated interpreters of the significance of Jesus, a significance they understood only and fully when they looked at his life through the prism of the resurrection. Part of the mystery of our experience of the Risen Lord is the experience of transfigured seeing as we look at his earthly life and are grabbed by a glimpse of true glory. The veil imposed upon vision by our cultural values is suddenly shattered.
Frederick Faber's old hymn phrases it so well.
God's glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways.
And of all things on earth,
Least like what men agree to praise.
Does an approach like this assist us in the task of helpful exposition? The transfiguration narratives placed where they are in the synoptic gospels represent the tradition's way of insisting that we hear and see Jesus through the prism of the resurrection. The ancient wisdom of the church places these gospel accounts on the threshold of Lent so that in the way of the cross and words of Jesus we might through seeing and hearing behold the glory of God.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Exodus 34:29-35
In pagan religious ceremonies the priest often put on a mask to intimidate the worshippers. Moses speaks face to face with God when he is in the pulpit. When he is out of the pulpit he puts on a veil in deference to the people who were awed by the Divine glow on his face. The intent of the ancient writer was to assert that Moses was neither a shaman nor a deity but a human person who served as mediator between God and the community.
It is suggestive that Moses did not know that his face shone. It would not be an abuse of the text to enlist it in a discussion of true goodness which is always unconscious goodness. Once we are self-consciously good we cease to be good. The story is told of a pastor who during a sermon bemoaned the decline of the number of good people in the world. A parishioner greeting him at the door after the service said, "Come now, Pastor, things are not that bad. You, for example, look like a good person." "I know," said the pastor, "but there are so few of us." Ugh!
Moses himself had a lapse in humility by the waters of Meribah and was denied entrance into the promised land (Numbers 20:6-13). That's the trouble with a halo; when it slips it becomes a noose. Moses' face shone when he spoke with God. In the epistle reading Paul will suggest that there is a kind of glory whose image we can reflect. By the way, the veil that Moses wore is not to be confused with the ministerial mask that we sometimes slip into wearing.
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Paul's logic in this reading is difficult to follow and a bit confused. He reads into the Exodus story much more than is stated there. Here it is the people who listen who have the veil. Paul is obviously writing out of a Jewish interpretive tradition to which we are strangers. By verse 18 his thought takes a clearer and suggestive turn. There is grist for a sermon here, a sermon that can relate both to the shining face of Moses and the narrative of the transfiguration.
I recall a college professor who at semester's end concluded his last lecture to us with the admonition, "Remember, you are making your face!" He believed that we make our faces by what we are on the inside. We know something about the concern we have with our faces. We check them out in the mirror at least once or twice a day. Adolescents worry about real or imagined blemishes and imperfections. Our culture idolizes the pretty face and the wrinkle-free face and so a vast amount of money is spent each year on creams and lotions to beautify the face. One can really appreciate the freedom from this cultural pressure of the fellow who wrote:
In beauty I know I'm no star.
There are others more handsome by far.
But my face I don't mind,
I'm behind it I find.
It's those out in front that I jar.
Can we say that what we are on the inside has a powerful influence on the face? Can our faces say something about us? Irving S. Cobb once said of someone, "Every line on his face is the line of least resistance." Are there stories written on our faces? A gypsy fortune-teller revealed that it was not cards or tea leaves that he read, but faces. Speaking of his customers he said, "From the lines, squints, scars and wrinkles it is as though they stripped themselves naked and walked into the room." We are all mediators of something.
A television commercial not too long ago promoting a facial application featured a lady in a mud mask who tells us when she removes the mask and looks in the mirror, "You will see a glowing actress on the stage." It was not a mud mask that put the glow on the face of Moses. In simple profundity the writer tells us that the face of Moses shone because he talked with God. Paul writes along the same lines about the change in our image that is the work of the Spirit as with faces liberated from the veils imposed by our cultural values we will be transformed by the glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus.
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)
Luke uses Mark as his source, but adds a comment about the drowsing disciples who came awake in time to see the glory but missed the conversation about the "exodus" Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem. That is par for the course for the disciples who habitually screened out the cross talk of Jesus. They missed a conversation they would not have understood anyway. In the culture around them cross and glory just didn't go together. (Do the disciples here bear any resemblance to Easter Christians who skip Lent and Holy Week?)
Keeping in mind the interpretive approach suggested in the introduction, the narrative is the vehicle for proclaiming two basic affirmations about Jesus revealed through his life, death, and resurrection to the awakened eyes of the post-Easter church. He, not Elijah, is the end time person and his authority is greater than that of Moses. Remember that Elijah ordered the slaughter of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). Luke throughout his gospel takes pains to separate Jesus from traditional expectations that included violent retribution. Jesus is a different kind of deliverer.
Peter wants to preserve the moment by building some sort of booth for Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. He does not understand that the three are not on the same level. Jesus needs no supporting presence. He is the sign of God's living presence. Out of the clouds comes the exasperated voice of God, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to Him!" It is by seeing Jesus as he comes to us in history and hearing his words that we see and hear God.
In verses 37-43 Luke gives us another example of transfigured seeing. The day by day activity of Jesus is a sign of God's presence. This is the way God was showing himself, not through a violence-prone Elijah.
