Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36; II Cor. 3:12-18
“And all of us, with unveiled faces…are being transformed…” (II Cor.3:18)
“Here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation.” This side of glory, maybe that is the best we can hope for. (F. Buechner quoting Paul Tillich, Now and Then p. 27)
trans – a prefix meaning: across, beyond, through, so as to change; on or to the other side (transact, transcend, transcribe, transfer, transfigure, transform, transgress, translate, transmit, transplant, transpose, transport)
Things change. A different way, another angle, change in light or sound or location can make all things new. Life invites change, movement, new possibilities, new perspectives. People change. All things living and most things non-living change, evolve, are reshaped over time. This is good. This is natural. It simply is. Change must happen. It must happen if there is to be life. So why do we work so hard to keep things and people as they were? Why such resistance? Why is change so frightening? And why do we so often fail to see or resist the Holy One, the Holy Spirit, God within us who gently invites and patiently waits for our transformation?
Like the story of Yellow and Stripe, the caterpillars in Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus, we tend to resist taking the risk of letting go of our present state of belief and behavior because it is all we know, even if we are stuck and not growing or going anywhere. To undergo the risk of transformation requires letting go of what was, in order to become what will be. It’s unknown. It requires trust. It invites us into the sacred mystery.
Today is called “Transformation Sunday”. It is usually the Sunday that connects the seasons of Epiphany and Lent. It is the turning point in the Gospel story when Jesus’ healing and teaching ministry begins to create opposition, and his face it turned toward Jerusalem and its consequences. The lectionary scripture passages recite the stories of Moses’ and Jesus’ transfigurations. (Read the Exodus and Luke passages.)
Notice the similarities of the stories. The location of both stories are on mountains. There is an encounter with the Holy Presence, with God. Clouds or fog or ‘something’ seems to blur the human vision from seeing in its usual way, inviting a new seeing. There is conversation with God; a voice from heaven heard by humans. The holy encounter of light and radiance and splendor changed the appearance of both Moses and Jesus. They had a brilliance about them. They had shining faces. In both stories people seeing this transformation respond with awe and fear. The Israelites were afraid to come near Moses. The disciples were “terrified as they entered the cloud”.
In The Cloud of Unknowing, an unknown author from the 14th century writes of entering into the transformative place within the spiritual life; of hearing with new ears, the ear of one’s heart, or seeing with ‘the third eye’ as some mystic refer to it, not seeing or judging with what our own eyes see, with blurred vision, but with the eye of God within. It is frightening because the unknown is scary. I wonder if in this present generation we might reclaim the natural reality of the unknown as an opportunity, with anticipation? Scientifically or technologically we want to nail everything down to certainty. How about being willing to enter the adventure of the journey or path into the unknown? Isn’t that exactly what all the heroic explorers of the New World, the Frontier, and outer space have done? Why not join the voyage of inner space, Spirit spaces and places, where God might invite new discoveries of our selves, of life, of God?
We love mystery novels and movies, but we don’t want to be in mysterious times of life. The unknown, or the holiness, or the invitation to change, stops our forward movement. We want to hold onto what was. Or, like Peter who wanted to build some dwellings and just stay in the holy moment, we want to stay put and not have to go back down the mountain, changed or seeing God or Jesus differently. Or coming down the mountain we don’t know how to explain what happened or is happening within, and so we remain silent about it, not knowing how to put holy mystery into words. Or like the Israelites, we need to have the ‘changed one’, the one with the shining face, “veiled”. Their change is too much for us to handle. Or, in reading these stories and other mystic encounters with God, we never imagine that we too might be invited to step into transformative experiences.
Celtic spirituality speaks of “thin places”, where the veil between divine and human, heaven and earth, is so sheer that moving from one to the other seems to have no boundary prohibiting passage; that union and fusion is likely to occur. Perhaps that is what happened to Moses on the mountain, first when he saw the burning bush, and also when receiving the law of God. Elijah also, who went to the same mountain as Moses, encountered God in sheer silence, covering his face in awe and fear. Or many others, in many times and places had mystic, transformative experiences with the Holy One, wherein ‘mountain top’ experiences didn’t happen only on mountain tops: Mary Magadalene in the garden on the first Easter; the 2 on the Emmaus Road encountering Jesus in the breaking of the bread; Peter on a roof top in Joppa; Joan of Arc in visions; Julian of Norwich in the ‘showings’; John of the Cross in the dark night of the soul; Martin Luther King, Jr. having been to the mountain top in his own dream.
All of us are being transformed. The question is, are we attentive to this transformation? Are we participants? or are we too afraid to allow ourselves entrance into mystery? holiness? even when it is all around, inviting us to wake up to sacred presence.
Paul the Apostle had a major transformative experience on the Damascus Road (see Acts 9). Attuned to the Spirit of God, he likely had many other times when he sensed thin spaces, the mystery of the Holy Presence. And so in encouraging and offering holy wisdom to the struggling, bickering church in Corinth, Paul writes that we are all merely human, we yet have a treasure in these earthen vessels (II Cor 4). We are not perfect, but we are invited into glory, into mystery, into God. We are all being transformed, the good, the bad, the ugly. We are invited to stand with unveiled faces in the holy presence of God.
“When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 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; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (I Cor. 3:16-18)
Freedom, no boundaries of separation from God; naked, shining faces reflecting God’s glory; being changed, transformed into Godliness, God’s image, bit by bit, into glory, beauty, resplendence…. for all of us. Scary? Yes. Good? Wonderful! And humbling, that we too might encounter God’s holy presence, that we too might be like God. Do we want to? Are we open to God’s holy encounters? Encountering God are we willing to be changed? Can we expose ourselves to God? Can we expose our new shining, transformed expressions to family and friends who may be uncomfortable with our transforming? Will we be willing participants in God’s work of our transformation?
In waking, in sleeping, on mountains or in valleys, on our daily sacred journeys may we all be alive to the transforming work of God in us all. (And that is a reminder that God is also at work in my neighbor. Can I encourage and support their transformation in the Spirit?) May we all stand with unveiled faces and see and be seen by God who is always at work in us to bring us into fullness of Life.
Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down,
fix in us Thy humble dwelling, …
….visit us with Thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.
Finish, then, Thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be;
let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee;
changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place…
…lost in wonder, love, and praise. (Charles Wesley, 1747)
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