The Last Sunday of the Epiphany
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Exodus 34: 29-35, Psalm 99, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9: 28-43
Lightning and clouds on a mountain – words from God. Not just casual words, but something more – Sacred words, God’s very presence in fact.
Words of instruction and direction – take them to heart and you’ll know how to live! And bright light, blinding light that needed a veil.
Which mountain? It could be either the Mount of the Covenant – and the Words – the very presence of God – carved on tablets of stone (Exodus) were carried from within a cloud by Moses, whose face had to be veiled because it shone so brightly with the reflection of God’s light, or the Mount of the Transfiguration – where the Words – the very presence of God – carried from within a cloud, and bright light surrounded the object – or, rather, the subject – of their attention.
It’s hard not to see the connection with the Exodus story of Moses and Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Covenant law on the tablets of stone, isn’t it? The invitation to see in Jesus the giving of a new Law whose vehicle isn’t static stone but flesh and blood. Jesus, the gospels tell us, is the new tablet coming down from the mountain.
And will Jesus find people dancing before a golden calf, surrendering their integrity, abandoning their faith, their commitment to God, or will he find, instead, people ready and waiting, open to the new possibility that Jesus represents? Will he find people still doubting the power of God and so unable to participate in it for the building up of the new community of God, or will he find those who hearts have been opened by their encounters with that love so transparently present in Jesus?
The first trip down the mountain Moses found a golden calf, and faithful people who had lost their way, and he lost his temper.
For Jesus, the first trip down the mountain revealed a similar failure of faith – “I begged your disciples to cast [the demon] out, but they could not.” the agonized father cried. They, too, had failed when the moment of testing had come. And Jesus lost his temper, complaining in words that were as applicable to the Israelites at the foot of Sinai as to the disciples at the foot of Transfiguration Mount: “You faithless and perverse generation”!
The contrasts would have been obvious too. The readers of this story would have known that Moses ordered 3,000 Israelites executed as a result of their betrayal of God – death followed apostasy.
What did Jesus do after proclaiming a similar apostasy? He healed a child. What – in the end – lies at the heart of God is not anger but love. What lies at the heart of our faith is an invitation into that love, and away from that anger, and to see that love not in the context of a written text but of a living, breathing person.
We struggle through our lives trying to grasp that truth, covering our failures with bravado, hiding our shame at our betrayals, fearful that we’ve placed our trust in things that are somehow less than we had hoped that they would be. Is it the Golden Calves of our lives that hold meaning, or the Living Tablet of God’s Love?
Pairing the Transfiguration story with the healing of a child is telling us what’s really important – not a slavish adherence to a code of behavior (which is not to say that codes of behavior aren’t important!), but the embrace of one another in God’s love – remember that line Victor Hugo? “To love another person is to see the face of God”. In the end, despite the distractions of lightening, and clouds, and mountains, this is a story about love we hear today: God’s love for us, and our love for one another.
But these paired stories don’t end there. Moses broke the first set of tablets, he broke the living Words of God inscribed on stone. All those hearing the story of Jesus would remember that Moses had to go up the mountain a second time. And they would have wondered, how Jesus the Living Tablet would fare as his story continued to unfold.
We know that answer. God’s Living Word would also be broken – also as the result of the words and actions of apostate, insecure, frightened people. But this time the mountain to be climbed was made of wood and pieced together with nails. And a spear would be instrumental in drawing the first part of this new ascent to an end. This time the delivery of the God’s Word took a detour through a tomb.
And the end of this story is different. This time the Word-That-Is-Love is out there ahead of us, as Luke will later remind us: ““Why do you look for the living among the dead?” He is not here. He has risen.” (Luke 24:5)
Or, as Matthew puts it: “He’s out there ahead of you”.
St. Paul absolutely understood the meaning of the Transfiguration and it’s connection to the Mt. Sinai tablets. Listen again to what he said:
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And 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.”
Our story is bound up with Jesus. Our story – and it’s meaning – is not to be found in the seducing Golden Calves of our contemporary world but in the ways we can seek to heal all those symbolized by the possessed child of today’s gospel .
Our story is not to be found among the dead, but with the living Spirit of God; in the place of open-ended possibility; in the moment of encounter with God’s love; in each other. Amen
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