| The Rev. Catharine W. Montgomery | The Last Sunday After Epiphany |
| Grace Memorial Episcopal Church | the Transfiguration |
| February 3, 2008 | Year A, RCL |
The appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain. There is a word for this glory fire - Shekinah…It is a wonderful word…If you say it over and over it begins to just roll off your tongue and if you look at it written out and keep repeating it, it takes on a luminous quality. The word itself sounds like ‘shine’…Shekinah…It is a Hebrew word that means the presence of God - the glory of God. Fire and cloud are the way the writers of the OT describe God’s descending to encounter mankind.
Think about the Old Testament stories of God and fire… God sealed his covenant with Abraham with a fire moving between the halves of sacrificed animals. The Shekinah of God first appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The Shekinah was seen in a cloud and pillar of fire that led the Israelites in the desert. In our lesson for today they have reached Mt. Sinai and God intends to give them the commandments. But first something unprecedented is going to happen. Just before our passage for today, God calls Moses and the seventy other leaders to come part of the way up the mountain. “They saw the God of Israel, and under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself…” (24:10-11) In God’s presence they ate and drank and did not die. That in itself was a miracle, because later the dangerously holy God told Moses that no one could see his face and live (Ex. 33:20). Then God called Moses to come up higher on the mountain and the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah, settled on Mount Sinai - the cloud and fire covered it for six days.
Then on the seventh day….Wait! six days…seventh day….suddenly we are reminded of the seven days of creation…. God spoke to Moses and Moses was with God for forty days and nights and lived to tell about it. Moses did not leave the mountain unscathed - the glory of the Lord rubbed off enough on Moses that his face shone so brightly that the people were afraid to come near him. His face was so bright he had to put a veil over it when he told the people what God was commanding them to do. These astonishing OT stories tell us that the most holy God comes close and desires a relationship with the people he has created. God makes a covenant with them...“I will be your God and you will be my people,” says the Lord.
Move with me now to Matthew’s Gospel where we find Moses again. Six days after Jesus foretells his death, he takes Peter, James and John with him up a high mountain. As they looked at Jesus, he was transfigured, transformed - and his face shone like the sun… his clothes were dazzling white. Later, Peter writes that he and James and John were eyewitnesses to this astonishing event. Moses, the bearer of the Law and the great prophet Elijah were talking to Jesus, and they heard the voice of God again proclaiming that Jesus is his beloved Son. And we see that the glory of God in the Old Testament - the Shekinah - is the same glory of God shining through this man Jesus. The response of the disciples was fear.
Dr. William Willimon in his reflections on this passage points out that time after time in the New Testament when the disciples witness the power of God in Jesus they are afraid. We understand fear. We live in a world that is full of fear and anxiety about what could happen next. There is much to make us afraid. But the fear that the disciples feel is not ordinary fear…it is the fear of Jesus Christ – the dangerously holy God. Fear of the one who just before the episode on the mountain says he is going to suffer and be killed and yet tells his disciples to not be afraid.
Willimon made some interesting observations about fear and church and human nature. If you think about why people do not go to church – they give lots of reasons – they don’t like organized religion. The bible is too hard to read. Worship is too stuffy or boring or they don’t like the hymns. Or it is too much like a social club or churches don’t do enough mission….or they do too much mission work - or God forbid…. they don’t like the minister…. lots of reasons to not show up on Sunday morning. Willimon suggests that the scene of the disciples trembling in fear in the presence of the most Holy God on the mountain is the main reason why people avoid church.
It isn’t that folks don’t have a clue about what we are doing, but because they suspect they do know what is going on here. “Church is about God. Church is about the possibility of a threatening, though life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ. Church is about seeing God’s way and will in our world – a way very different from our ways – and then having to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to walking that way (and following Jesus).” (Willimon, William H. , Pulpit Resource vol. 36, No. 1, Year A, January, February, March, 2008, pgs. 23-24.)
Is the Christian life threatening…Is God dangerously holy? Are these words we want to use when speaking of following Jesus? Yes….. the threat and the danger lie in the fact that in the presence of God we will be changed. At Council Bishop Katharine said our mission as Christians is to make the holy reign of God visible in this world. That is a fearful demand because it calls us to do what Jesus did…help people who are suffering…cast out demons…give relief to the poor…bring the outcasts into community with us and take care of the world God has given us. It all begins with a change in the heart. When a heart is cracked open to the Shekinah glory of God anything can happen. Amen