Skin
Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
February 14, 2010
There is something odd at the end of a season, and today’s one of those odd days. Epiphany is ending, the whispers of Christmas are finally hushed and Lent and its forty days of austerity are running towards us only a Wednesday away.
It is hard to know how to end a season like Epiphany which has a clear beginning in the arrival of the Magi at the house of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem, but with no obvious ending. Over the centuries, the foggy events on the mountain of the Transfiguration seemed the appropriate boundary and entrance back into the wilderness. What the blown away disciples remembered most was the brightness of Jesus, in Saskatchewan terms the sun reflecting off the snow on a -30 C day. He was brilliant, meant to remind those familiar with the Scriptures of that other odd image of Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with his face so glowing, so brilliant, that he had to put on a veil to protect other people from being blinded by the light emanating from the skin of his face.
Moses has reason, for he is carrying those famous stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the second set, mind you. He already has smashed the first set upon seeing the frolic of the Golden Calf. Starting over, this time the tablet survived and Moses was just glowing. You’ve seen that unmistakable glow of another person’s face - your child, a spouse, a co-worker, a friend - when something has gone wonderfully right for them. We’ll see it countless times during the Olympics for sure.
So this glowing face is something we have experienced, but typical of Biblical images, this goes beyond what we have seen. Moses’ face shines so much he has to put on a veil of some sort for everyone else’s protection. This is not a Halloween mask to assume a different identity, nor is it a brown paper bag the fans of some very poor athletic teams put on to hide their identity. This has nothing to do with Moses’ identity; it’s the identity of the One he saw.
The ancient world in which Israel lived found other ways to describe such glowing faces. The Persians have always been in the face of one empire or another. The Greeks fought with the Persians, the Romans did too, and the Western world is still deeply at odds with Iran which chooses to think distressingly differently. In the great collection of myths and stories about the Persian kings, the Shanameh, still widely popular today, there is an untranslatable term called “farr.” When a king is in close communication with divinity, the king will be endowed with farr - his face will glow brilliantly. If a king never possesses farr or along the way loses it, the king is in trouble and soon will no longer be king. Farr seems to have been the origin of a universal gesture, for when a subordinate comes into the presence of a king with farr he cups or cocks his hand just above his eyes to shield them from the glare of the good king’s farr - the universal military salute to one who is your superior. Over millennia we have lost the concept that one is saluted because he is endowed with divine power; or maybe with many military and para-military organizations, we have not lost that idea after all!
Moses clearly had farr, but instead of expecting gestures of obeisance, he made the humble gesture of hiding his face in order to protect others from being blinded. This quaint, odd story seems of little relevance to us today; its survival in our scriptures may be laid to the values of a culture a long long time ago and far farr away.
Yet, like most of the stories in the Bible this one is not about Moses or his veil or the potential blindness of the Israelites, but about God. The same is the case with that mysterious event on the mountain, the Transfiguration of Jesus. Early Christian writers loved to make the connection between the two stories, figuring that what Moses saw in the face of God was Christ, but it was not the right time yet to reveal it to other people.
If there ever were a time to believe that God was completely with you, this was it. In slavery for 400 years, this insider/outsider Moses came forward to convince Pharaoh to let his people go, and with the help of a few terrible God-delivered plagues Pharaoh did, at least for a short while. The cavalry was sent after the Israelites, but the Red Sea parted and Israel was rescued. Not that Israel didn’t complain bitterly about how better things were back in the old country of Egypt, better than out here in the wilderness where the next meal was not waiting for them, although manna and quail, water out of a rock and other benefits that could only come from God were delivered to them. Now at the Mountain of God, Mount Sinai, their leader Moses was up there in direct conversation with God. Israel had become extremely comfortable with God, on a first name basis, someone you could take for granted from time to time.
When you are comfortable with God, you think you know God, and it’s not long before you begin to believe that the relationship works the other way around and you are the one in charge. After all, Moses was up there on the mountain too long with God, so they decided to make their own god - that Golden Calf looked better anyway - who would meet their needs more quickly.
Too many Christians believe they know God and know what God wants and certainly know what they want from God. The glow on Moses’ face, his farr, is the reminder that human beings can never know God completely. Once we assume we know who God is, we have the wrong god in mind. We are given a glimpse of God, so lightning quick that our brains can never process the information in any detailed, articulate way. All we can remember is the glow, the glare, the warmth. Even with just a glimpse, the point is to see how much it affected Moses, so much that we can no longer look at him.
On the mountain of Transfiguration the disciples were awed by what they saw, and then asked if Jesus wanted them to set up three tents. Can we preserve this for later on until we can figure it out? No, we have to go back down to the world and take this brilliant glimpse with us and act in its spirit. That’s why we worship every week. Because all we human beings are able to see is a glimpse, some days a brilliant light, and it is necessary to keep reminding one another what new insights and directions that light is pushing us to adopt. Like Moses, all we can do is come here to the mountain - we are not on the second floor for nothing - and listen. Assume you have not heard it all before; you don’t want to miss something that will make your life glow. Have you got farr?
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan