Old First Presbyterian Church, San Francisco

February 18, 2007
Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 34:29-35
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:1
Luke 9:28-43
“Gazing at Glory”
Rev Jeffrey Cheifetz

Exodus 34:29-35

29Moses 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. 30When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34but 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, 35the 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.

2 Corinthians 3:12 - 4:1

12Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. 4:1Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 

Luke 9:1-43

28Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said. 34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. 37On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. 40I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43And all were astounded at the greatness of God. While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples,

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I have always been drawn to watching sunsets, the night stars, and photos of galaxies. I love the views from the top of mountains, the vistas, the shapes of the earth running away into the purple distance. On cross-country plane flights I risk strained neck muscles as I look out and down at the wrinkles and bumps and colors of the earth far below.

As a young Christian, I enjoyed singing songs that portrayed God as high and lifted up and holy. Even today I like hymns and songs that emphasize the mystical, the experience of God’s glory/separateness/set-apartness - “Holy Holy Holy“ is one of them. I love music that sings of places I cannot attain on my own.

Speeches with ringing phrases rivet my attention, Martin Luther King Jr‘s speech in Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop….And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

President John F Kennedy’s inaugural address, delivered in 1961: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural address, delivered in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties.”

Texts from Scripture that force the mind to reach beyond the usual boundaries of imagination: Psalm 99: “1The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! 2The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. 3Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he! 4Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. 5Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he! ….7He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them. 8O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. 9Extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.”

The three readings for today speak of things beyond any two-dimensional view of this world and of humanity:

Exodus: “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. 30When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.”

2 Corinthians: “17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Luke: “29And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure (“exodus” in Greek), which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said. 34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!””

All of these speak to me of wonder and majesty and possibility and higher ethical and moral living and God and beauty. And I am happy to stay there with those words ringing in my ears, and those sights fixed in my mind’s eye, and I am always reluctant to return to the world of errands and piles of paper on my desk and bank balances and phone messages. But they are still there, and they demand my full attention. And the people who live on the street, and the daily news of the carnage in Iraq, and the pains and sorrows and joys of this congregation, and of people around the world - they are still there, too, demanding my attention, my struggle to comprehend, and my small attempts to do something constructive about some of it.

It’s not that the grand vistas and the spiritual experiences and the stirring words are worth less in the “real world“, for they are just as real as anything else. They have power to inspire, to reveal truth, to frame how we see reality, as we think beyond what is to what could be, should be, might be. And we know that without vision, we perish. Without a larger canvass on which to paint the shapes of our lives, we become smaller, our souls become shrink-wrapped by the pressures of our culture, we lose our peripheral vision. 

But notice that in all three texts, the words and visions are followed by experiences that are gritty, complex, and “down to earth“ in contrast: the people’s fear as they saw Moses, Paul’s insistence that the followers of Christ engage in ministry, the disciple’s lack of faith in the face of the boy’s desperate illness.

People’s struggles and needs, and the glories of spiritual experience, are integral to the life of the believer. Neither is more real than the other; they are folded into one another. If we take away the ecstatic, we end up with a two-dimensional, dreary world without spirit, without depth, without God, in which the purchase and consumption of products is the measure of who we are, and human beings are only objects and means to an end. If we take away the messy struggles inherent in the life we know on this planet, we end up with pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by pietistic religiosity divorced from the real lives of real people, a theoretical religion without compassion and without justice, that is rightly abandoned.

Moses would have none of that kind of split; he came down the mountain bringing the commandments to guide the people in the wilderness of the Exodus. Paul insisted that transformation of the inner being took place while doing day-to-day ministry according to one’s giftedness for the benefit of the community. Jesus came down from his mountaintop retreat to heal and exorcise and preach and teach in the valley of human need.

Where is our mountaintop? How do you and I lose ourselves in the glory of God? What do we see and hear that speak of a deeper reality beyond the co-called ordinary? When we experience it we love to stay in that place of unity and repose and peace that speaks of God’s desire for the world’s wholeness. We resist leaving that place, and yet, too soon, we know that we cannot stay there; there are meals to cook and clothes to buy, papers to sort through and repairs to be made, relationships to tend to, and jobs that pay the bills.

These will not wait. The yearnings of the soul will not wait. Both are true. They are part of the same reality, and both of them knock at our life’s door, and wave at the window, and jump up and down on the bed, seeking our attention. And we do our best to integrate them, for together they constitute the journey, the Way in which we walk. In our understanding of the Christian faith, God’s oversight of creation extends to infinity, and we are called to be good caretakers of that which we have been given.

The question becomes, how is God present in our busy lives, that we might have a large canvass, and that we might be of use in the messy particularities? My answer is that we cannot live fully and faithfully without enough star-gazing, singing songs that lift the spirit, prayer that gets lost in laughter and tears, reading the Psalms, journaling about our experiences, and long views from hilltops. We cannot live fully and faithfully without facing into the intractable difficulties of everyday existence - within our families, friendships, on the streets of our neighborhoods and of the cities of this planet. In both, we can direct our attention to God-with-us. In every heart-beat we can invite the power that created the galaxies to reside within us, that love, faith, and hope may reside ever more deeply within our thoughts, words, and actions.

During last month’s Session meeting, I invited those present to take five minutes a day - sitting, or walking, or in the midst of whatever they were doing - to allow these words from Psalm 46:10 to take root in them: “Be still, and know that I am God”. A simple thing to do, yet challenging, that consciously invites the God who created us to engage with all that we are and all that we have, that we might be brought to a deeper, more whole place. I offer this way to all of us gathered here today, as one way to experience the fullness of the Good News. If you like, let me know how that experience goes - I would love to compare notes with you.

Here is another way: as we receive the elements of the Lord’s Supper this morning, see them as what they are, bread and wine or juice, common things prepared by the hands of others. And, see them for what they are, symbols of Jesus’ life, a life offered in faithful service to the call of God in his life for all of humanity. And, receive them as though you are taking his life into your own. Invite his faith, his hope, his love, into the deepest recesses of your being.

Let’s be intentional about putting together the grand vistas and stirring visions with the everyday chores and choices. Let’s live into the reality of shining mountaintops and gritty streets, for in doing so we follow Jesus along the way.

And we will begin living into these words from 2 Corinthians 3:18: “18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Let us pray: