Lifting the veil

Readings

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany; we have come through a season of revelation – the gospels have given us a series of stories about Jesus being revealed as much more than a regular baby, a regular man. The story of the wise men bringing gifts for a king, priest, and sacrifice, John the Baptist baptizing Jesus as God’s voice booms out of the sky and the spirit descends on him like a dove, the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, and now Jesus himself is transfigured into light while three of his disciples sit stunned.

Epiphany... revelation... reveal... to un-veil

All these events lift pull back the veil of ordinariness and show that there is much more to Jesus than people normally saw.

Imagine the top of a mountain; it’s night time, the stars are out, making their own light, and the moon is out, reflecting a fraction of the light of the sun. Four men are climbing slowly up; when they reach the top, three of them sit down, lean on their hands, but one begins to pray. That one is Jesus.

While Jesus was praying, Peter, James, and John, even though they had been on the verge of nodding off, suddenly saw something very unexpected happening to their teacher. Light began to radiate from his face and from his whole body. His face, his skin, even his clothes were shining – not the pale green of a firefly, but bright white like the light of a welding torch - they could hardly look at him - his face was like lightning.

Then they noticed Moses and Elijah also standing there, talking with Jesus. The three sleepy guys were totally awake and focused at that point, their eyes fixed on the three figures. What is going on?
The disciples all knew the stories about Moses and Elijah and how they interacted with God - how Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to get the law and talked with God – face-to-face, like you would a friend, and how, when Moses came down the mountain, the stories all said the skin of his face was shining; it freaked people out so much that he started wearing a veil until the light faded and he looked normal again. The disciples knew the stories about Elijah, who at the end of his life didn’t die but was swept up into a chariot of fire and carried away by God. 

They all knew the stories, but now the stories were standing in front of them talking to each other.
Even though God loves us, and even when we believe God loves us, we can still be afraid of God’s great power. But in Christ, God made himself small, so we wouldn’t be as afraid to approach.

It’s like an adult stooping down to talk to a small child, eye to eye, rather than towering over them and booming down words they don’t understand. Jesus is God, stooping down so we can see him eye to eye and not be afraid. But he is also still God – “Light from Light, true God from true God.”
Even though God loves us, and even when we believe God loves us, we can still be afraid of God’s great power. But in Christ, God made himself small, so we wouldn’t be as afraid to approach.
It’s like an adult stooping down to talk to a small child, eye to eye, rather than towering over them and booming down words they don’t understand. Jesus is God, stooping down so we can see him eye to eye and not be afraid. But he is also still God – “Light from Light, true God from true God.”
It’s like an adult stooping down to talk to a small child, eye to eye, rather than towering over them and booming down words they don’t understand. Jesus is God, stooping down so we can see him eye to eye and not be afraid. But he is also still God – “Light from Light, true God from true God.”

Peter started to blurt out something irrelevant and inappropriate at that point – but while he was talking, a cloud started coming down onto the mountain, and the three disciples all froze. Some of the other stories in the Bible talk about God’s power descending over Mt. Sinai, causing the whole mountain to shake and smoke, when Moses when to receive the law, and many of the Psalms use images of raw natural power, such as storms, to describe God’s power. If you’ve been in any kind of big storm, you have a sense of how immense just natural power is, much less supernatural power.

“They were terrified as they entered the cloud” -  I bet they were.

God isn’t just powerful, though; God is also kind. Out of the cloud, God takes into account the disciples limitations in what kind of communications they can and can’t decipher; so God speaks to the disciples in words they can recognize: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

The cloud, though frightening to the disciples, veils God’s glory to a point that they can bear it – but this veil also reveals enough for them to recognize God’s presence for what it is.

A veil partly obscures and partly reveals what’s behind it. Sometimes the veil is to protect the one who wears it from other eyes, and sometimes it protects the eyes of those who are looking. Moses’ veil was to protect the other Israelites, who were disturbed by his shining face and afraid to come near him. When God wanted us not to be afraid to come near him, he veiled himself in our humanity. “Veiled in flesh the God-head see; hail the incarnate Deity.” Jesus is Emmanuel – God with us. 

The Transfiguration further unveiled Jesus’ identity as both God’s Son and the Son of Mary – human and divine, connecting us in our humanity to God in God’s glory.

The Epiphany, or revelation – or “unveiling” of Christ also reveals an alarmingly beautiful promise of who we are becoming as Christ transforms us. As you receive Christ’s body in the Eucharist, his body becomes part of your bodies and is transforming you from the inside out, increasing your capacity to both hold and reveal God’s glory. You may still look ordinary, but keep in mind, there is a lot of mystery in the world that we can’t see yet, but it’s there.

There is more dark matter in the universe than visible matter, for instance. There is a lot more empty space in an atom than mass. Some of the most fundamental aspects of our natural world remain a mystery even after several hundred years of intense scientific exploration. We still can’t really say what light even is, for example. We kind of know what makes light. But fire is also mysterious and unpredictable; we use electricity all the time but still fundamentally don’t know what it is exactly. We run into trouble trying to define even the most basic things, but mystery in ordinary things is a good thing to explore.

As the Mr. Rogers’ says, “It’s good to be curious about many things...”

For example, when I was reading about Moses’ shining face and how it continued shining after he left the presence of God and gradually faded away, it reminded me of phosphorescence – light without heat. I wondered if skin had the capability of emitting light. I don’t know; I’m just curious. Whether or no, it’s still a useful metaphor: if we want to continue to shine with God’s light, we need to regularly be in God’s presence or the light will fade. I also thought about the way phosphorescent material “resonates” (it’s the nearest thing I could think of, although resonance refers to sound) with the light that shines on it; something about the material gets activated by light and begins then to emit light. It’s interesting to think that something in us resonates or gets activated by God, and that part in us begins then to shine with a similar light.

As we heard in today’s Epistle 

“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...”