When one encounters the divine, one is changed.

And yet, still we seek encounters with the divine.

What is prayer, after all, if not an opening of one’s self to the divine? And a hope for some kind of change . . . for something to be other that it is.  (Though, I suspect, more often than not, what we hope for when we pray is that someone or something else will change. Not us. Not me!)

 When one encounters the divine, one is changed.

 We need only look to our texts this morning to see that is true for Moses and Jesus, who both encounter the divine and are transformed.

We are dealing, once again, with metaphor, so don’t get all tangled up in trying to read these stories in a literal way. Think in terms of metaphor. How else can one speak of mystery? How do we use the limits of language to explain the unexplainable?

Moses encounters the divine in our text from Exodus, when he descends from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in his hands.

In Judaism, a mountain is often a place of revelation.

This is not the first time Moses has a revelation.

 It’s not even the first time Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the Law of God in his hands.

The first time he descended to find that Aaron and the Israelites had made a golden calf and were worshipping it. Moses, in his disappointment, broke the tablets of the covenant and then had to do some pretty fancy advocacy work in a dialogue with God to convince God not to destroy the people.

The point of the story is the grace of God toward the people in whom God hopes to be a holy people. Thos ungrateful, undisciplined, unruly and unwise people.

Moses goes back up the mountain to receive new tablets of the covenant. God’s grace abounds when God once again establishes a covenant with these stiff-necked people in spite of the fact that they have already proven that they can’t keep the covenant. The dialogue between God and Moses is worth reading in chapter 32 – 34  of Exodus and contains something along the lines of: “You know, God, the people do sort of have a point, I mean they really haven’t grasped that you can be trusted yet, and how can they trust someone they don’t’ really know. We’re slow learners. You have told us that you will go with us, but, well, we don’t know who it is who is going with us. You won’t tell us your name. I tell you what, show me your glory and tell me your name.”

God puts Moses in the cleft of a rock and passes by so Moses can see God’s glory, but not the face of God, and proclaims a name that is more  a statement of God’s nature. God reveals that God is a God -- above all -- of steadfast love. So God’s power is in God’s loving nature.

Which is entirely disarming, if you think about it. What is more disarming than love?

God’s power is in giving away God’s self in love. ( Take note: we, who are created in the image of God are challenged  to see that the ultimate power is the power of love. We are shown here, along with God’s glory, what true power is, and it doesn’t look the way the world thinks it does. It is not strength or weapons of mass destruction or focused in fear. It is found in steadfast love, in the willingness to forgive and trust in and give second, third and more chances to even those who have hurt or wounded us.)

So, Moses, who has this time seen even more of God revealed – sees even more fully what divine love means-- treks down from the mountain and he is a changed person, but he doesn’t know that his face shines with the reflection of the glory of God. Love changes us. Love transforms us. Others can even see it in our faces. We face the world in a different way.

Now, I have read these texts many times and have heard them preached many times, just as I have preached them many times, but this time, I realized I haven’t really been paying attention. I thought what it said was that Moses come down from the mountain,  his face was shining, and that scared the people, so he put on a veil before he went to talk with them, and wore it for a certain number of days, until the shininess of his face faded.. But that’s not what it says!

Sharla Hulsey, a minister in Iowa, encouraged me to read the text with fresh eyes:

“Here is what it really says:

 “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.  But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them.  Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Holy One had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.  When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the Holy One to speak with God, he would take the veil off,” until he came back out and had told the Israelites what God had said, and then he would put the veil on again.

 Do you see the difference?

Moses came down from the mountain, shining bright with the reflection of the glory of God.  Before this, the glory of God lived on the mountain only, and none of the people had access to it.  Then Moses went up to the mountain, and he saw God’s glory; and he brought it down from the mountain and made it available to the people.  Each time he went in to talk to the Holy One, he came out and spoke to the people, with his face shining with the glory of God.

He did not veil his face immediately, not until after he had spoken to the people on God’s behalf. He brought not just the law but the glory of God’s love to the people.

It is after this that the Israelites build the Tabernacle, the movable sanctuary where the people worship God from this day until the Temple is finished in Jerusalem under King Solomon.  From this point on God’s presence—that marvelous presence the Bible struggles to describe with words like glory—is available to the people, right there in their midst; seen and experienced in one another.  And eventually, so the Gospels tell us, we are able to see that same glory in Jesus. “

Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, and there in prayer, meets God.

Once again, that is the purpose of prayer. To encounter the divine. To open ourselves to God. But for Jesus, the experience visibly transformed him.

Remember: metaphor and mystery:

An encounter with the very source of steadfast love has to change us. Love always changes us, doesn’t it?

There is some Jewish history here that may help us understand the metaphorical meanings of this text. In Jewish apocalyptic literature, it was anticipated that in the final manifestation of the reign of God, persons would have transformed bodies in the luminescent white of the heavenly world. The change in Jesus’ face and his clothes becoming dazzling white signal that Jesus is momentarily changed into the body he will have in the complete manifestation of the reign of God. In other words: in the midst of the broken, old age, God gives the three disciples (and us) a preview and assurance of the age that is breaking in, even in our midst . . .  glory be!

 So, while we know that prayer is transforming, the question is: who is really transformed here? Jesus has for the most part led a humble, ordinary human life. At the same time, he is at the center of God’s moving in the world in a new and transforming way, a divine event toward which (scripture says) all creation has been moving, and by which all creation is moved that much closer to the completion of the reign of God, the kin-dom of heaven. Jesus’ own closest friends and disciples have had glimpses and seen hints of this extraordinary mystery – and just a few verses before, Jesus foretold his death and resurrection. But this, the transfiguration is their first glimpse of resurrection glory.

I doubt that they could grasp the significance of this mystery. Who could?

Peter’s reaction seems very typical of Peter. He’s a practical kind of guy. He wants to set up tents for Jesus and the distinguished visitors. We tend to think Peter ‘just doesn’t get it.’ But that may not be totally true. For the tents, the booths, and the festival with which they were connected, were used by the prophet Zechariah as an image for the eschatological world when God and the community would forever live or ‘tent’ together. Peter, it seems, believes that the eschatological Feast of the Booths is at hand.

So, in one sense, he did get it. But just not fully; not in the radical sense. What he didn’t get was that the dwelling place for the divine was not in be tents. It was in human beings. In Jesus. In the disciples. In you and me.  God has been trying to ‘get in’ or ‘get through’ to us from the beginning.

God’s glory shone in Moses’ face and was close enough to transform God’s people.

It was not just Jesus’ who was meant to be transformed at the Transfiguration: it was all of us.

We are meant to be transfigured into living more fully into the steadfastly loving people we are -- as created in the image of God -- a people as willing as God to give ourselves away in love for others.

It matters not what we have done,  who we have been, how far we have lived from God and from our true selves, it matters not what idols we may have worshipped – it is never too late – we are never too far from God’s claim on our lives. The same God who forgave the Israelites, and continued to love them into being more fully who and what they were meant to be is calling us, pursuing us, in love to be love.

When one encounters the divine, one is changed. Transformed. Not lost, but found, Transformed into being more fully who one was meant to be in the first place. But that is change. And it is risky.

Before the transfiguration, when Jesus predicts his death and resurrection, the disciples are naturally confused and upset. During the transfiguration, when they see Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus, they begin to put things together.

Luke is the only one of the gospels that tells us what the three discuss: Jesus’ imminent ‘departure’ at Jerusalem. Some translations say they talked of Jesus’ “passing” or his “decease.” “Departure” sounds to me like taking a train or plane – it certainly sanitizes what Jesus’ told them: that he was to be killed.

The actual Greek word is ‘exodus,’ and is not only so much richer, but ties this text to our Hebrew scripture.

The journey to Jerusalem and the events that will transpire there aren’t about death so much as life. The story isn’t about the imprisonment and execution of one man as it is about the liberation and redemption of humanity. The Exodus of the people of God from captivity, which was begun by Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets – in Jesus is finally brought to fruition.

We hear again the blessing heard at Jesus’ baptismal anointing: “This is my Beloved” as it is echoed on the mountain, as Jesus’ begins the journey to Jerusalem.

When one encounters the divine, one is changed.

Change means a death of sorts to the way it was before. We cannot have the new life promised without the death of the old.

If we are to be transformed, we too, must be willing to die. To let go.  To move on. Maggie Ross writes:

“Too often we think of the Transfiguration as a feast of light only, one that dazzles like the sun reflected off the mothering sea. Too often we seek to fix our feet in light alone, unrealistically or pridefully thinking that our transformation has reached a point where we will not be burned by uncreated light.  . . .

The story of the Transfiguration is surrounded by darkness: it is no mere ecstatic vision. It is surrounded by losing one’s life to gain it, by denial of prophets, by being tossed between fire and water by the fits of our sins writhing under the light of God, and in the end by the glory of the crucifixion.

Mere ecstatic vision is vain and ephemeral, and if like Peter we wish to fix our feet in that light, we will perish.”

This is the last Sunday in Epiphany, the last Sunday before the season of Lent begins. It is called Transfiguration Sunday because of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop.

This Sunday is also the last Sunday a number of well-loved people will be worshipping at Mt. Auburn. Claire is moving to New York to pursue her own faith journey as a serious Zen student. Joy and John Amidon are moving to Vermont to be nearer family. Steve Wade and his family are seeking a church closer to home.

There is a sadness in this congregation this Sunday – it feels, for all the joy of the Dixie Land music – like a valley. Like a death of sorts We are going to miss all these folks terribly. And it is hard to speak of mountain top experiences when we are in the valley.

And yet, life does hold both – the mountain-tops and the valleys.

The journey of faith leads us through the valleys to the mountain-tops and back down to the valley as well.

There is new life waiting for John, Joy, Claire and Steve and his family.

And there is new life for us, too, as we continue to open ourselves to the movement of the divine in our lives and in our life together, and open ourselves to being more fully reflective of the steadfast love of God in all we do. There is joy in knowing that nothing – nothing – not even miles and miles and miles – can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

When one encounters the divine, one is changed.

Thomas Traherne,  penned these words in the seventeenth century: describing  the effect of encountering the divine in these words:

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because people are in it who are every one sole heirs as you. Till you can sing and rejoice in delight in God. as misers do in gold, and Kings in scepters, you can never enjoy the world.

Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love people so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house: Till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory, than if it had been made but today morning.”

When one encounters the divine, one is changed. The divine beckons us to take off our shoes—and enter in. Thanks be to God.