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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From February 18, 2007 "Don't look straight at it or you could blind yourself," my father warned us kids. "It" was a mid-summer solar eclipse happening later that day. "Don't look straight at it." Dad was emphatic. I wanted to obey my father, I really did. But then I went outside, curious. Was the world looked any different on the day of an eclipse? The sun tugged at me like a magnet. Against my will, it pulled my eyes its direction. I looked away quickly but not quickly enough. My eyes sizzled like the breakfast bacon my mother cooked up on Sunday mornings. * * * * * * * * * * "While [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white." I don't know how the disciples managed to look straight at Jesus like that. God's glory is intense, after all. Heck, just its reflection can be too much for some. That certainly was the case for the Israelites. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with stone tablets to share, God's glory was still shining off Moses' his face. When the Israelites saw that they ran off every which way. And because this was exactly the opposite thing Moses wanted, he wisely took to veiling his face whenever he returned from his encounters with God. Just so people wouldn't freak. You have to hand it to the disciples. Jesus' face that day wasn't anything like Moses' after his God time. What Peter, John, and James encountered wasn't just reflected glory, like so much midday sun glinting off the sea and straight into their eyes. This was the real deal. The full strength glory of God shining out from Jesus' beautiful face, glory so brilliant that it even bleached the color clean out of his clothes. I wonder. If the disciples hadn't been so sleepy while Jesus was praying, maybe they could have caught that glory coming upon him. It might have reminded them of when they were fishermen, up before dawn, watching the sun peek over the eastern horizon to inch its bright way into the new day. Who knows how it happened, that stunning brilliance? When the disciples opened their sleepy eyes, there it was: God's glory in, uh, all its glory. Jesus' face looked nothing like early morning's light; it was all noonday sun. Only even brighter, bolder, more intense. Call it two miracles in one. First, the glory itself. Then the gift of being able to look straight at it and not run away. Then two miracles quickly became three. Through the blaze of glory Peter, John, and James caught sight of Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet standing there with Jesus. What they had done and said, Jesus was. As they looked on, the disciples could also hear the godly three discussing Jesus' departure, his upcoming mission in Jerusalem. People down below in the Holy City would try to extinguish Jesus' brilliant God-light. But they would fail. That light would break forth again and in a whole new way. As the disciples looked on and listened in, there was still one more mountain miracle waiting to happen. "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" God said wrapping them in a cloud; God meant them to be more than spectators to the spectacular. But it would be a long time, a long time before Peter, John, and James would understand, really understand what had happened there on the mountaintop with Jesus. A long time before they would see Jesus' glory shine out like that again. A long time before they could really hear what Jesus was saying to them. It would be a long time before the disciples would realize how the way they saw him that day was the way he was from the beginning. That this burning, this shining, this glory was who Jesus was all the time - for all time. It would take the journey to Jerusalem and Jesus' path to the cross. It would take those days afterward that felt like time had stopped. It would take a tomb found empty and a Messiah who was alive again before the disciples would recognize that glorious display of glory again. It would take all that and then some before their own glory fires caught. But God made sure these fires did rise up, so that even those who had never encountered Jesus could see Christ's glory shining from the disciples' faces. From their lives, too. When it comes to glory, a little bit goes a long way, I think. Most of us are like the Israelites, I suspect. We are overwhelmed by the intensity of God's glory, even its reflection. Maybe that's why Peter rushed in right away with his offer to make dwelling places for Jesus and his mystical companions. Maybe Peter felt this glory needed containment. That it needed to be confined. Held at bay. Otherwise there was no telling what might happen. The whole world could catch on fire. Or he could. Just the thought of encountering God's glory can be too much for us sometimes. I think that's why we're often reluctant to really give ourselves over to God in prayer, as Jesus did on the mountaintop. It's why we are inclined to avert the eyes of our hearts when we come before God. Why we are reluctant to return Christ's gaze when we bow our heads and bend our knees. I think we carry into prayer a secret fear that if we get too close to God we might catch fire. There is that risk, to be sure. At some point in his life, French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal found himself once in the presence of God for two full hours. For the rest of his days he would say that it was the most precious and significant moment of his life--but that was all he would say. It wasn't until Pascal died and his manservant was arranging his things that a parchment Pascal had worn like a hidden amulet was discovered. What was it? It was Pascal's description of his mystical experience of God. In capital letters at the top of the page was the word FIRE. And then these words, "joy, joy, joy, tears of joy--." (Ordinary Graces, p. 25). Maybe it's not God's glory we're afraid of, God's fire of love. Maybe it's that we're afraid of the light already inside us. We each have a divine spark, remember. Holy embers burning deep in our souls. When we pray, perhaps we secretly fear that God will fan into a flame the spark of the spirit that quietly glows inside us and that we will then burn so high and so bright that nothing will ever be the same. Spiritual writer Marianne Williamson has something to say to us about this. Her words are famous in certain circles but are often attributed wrongly to Nelson Mandela. Perhaps you've heard them before: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (Return to the Light). Let's be careful here, though. What Williamson and every other enlightened teacher, including Jesus, wants us to know is that we're talking essence, not ego. It's our essence, our true nature--our Self with a capital S--that is meant to shine. Not the faces you and I offer the world. Not the false self that masquerades as me. Just before Jesus went to the mountaintop, Luke tells us, Jesus had a conversation with his disciples about this very thing. Although he used different language than essence and ego. Right after Peter correctly identified Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus said this: "If any of you want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who want to lose their life for my sake will save it." (Luke 9: 23-24). What Jesus wants us to lose is the dry stuff of our little selves and big egos. That's why the ashes of Ash Wednesday this coming week. That cross on the forehead reminds us that we are not who we think we are. It humbles us, that cross does. It invites us to surrender our egos, our false selves so that God can show us who we really are in and through Christ. Why does God want us to know who we truly are? For the same reason Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. needed to know. For the same reason Jesus our Christ did. We need to know who we truly are so that we can go down into the valleys below, down into the shadows there, and know that no matter what we find there, nothing can extinguish the fire-life God has placed inside us. Just as nothing can extinguish the Good News we have been given to carry, like a torch, into a world so in need of its transforming, transfiguring light. The fire that is in us? It burns always, always, always for God. Why? Because God wouldn't have it any other way. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the Interior Life; Lorraine Kisly, ed. |
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