The Rev. Joseph Farnes
Feast of the Transfiguration
August 6, 2023
All Saints, Boise
The elements of the mystical life are at the heart of today’s Feast of the Transfiguration. Very few holy days take precedence of the regular Sunday celebration, and the Transfiguration is one of them.
We generally get this same Bible reading on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, which is the Sunday before Lent starts. In that context, the Transfiguration is a glimpse of Christ’s glory before we journey with Christ through the desert, to the cross, and to his empty tomb on Easter. On that Sunday, the Transfiguration is a guidepost, a mountaintop experience that gives us a long view over the horizon of what is to come.
But the Transfiguration is also celebrated on August 6 as its own feast day. We get to sit with the miracle of the Transfiguration and to understand it as it is, rather than in relationship to Lent. We go with Jesus up the mountain alongside the other disciples, and are drawn into the mystery of God.
Today we also get a piece of the book of Exodus with Moses going up the mountain to spend time with God. And then Moses re-appears on the mountain with Jesus in our Gospel reading. Moses is not just some “famous old dude” – today, he serves as our guide to understand the magnitude of the Transfiguration. When Moses comes down the mountain after conversing with God, his face shines. It’s radiant. And the Israelites are afraid. Something has happened, and something has changed about Moses. Moses has to call them to come closer, and finally Moses begins wearing a veil on his face to hide the glowing. This encounter with God has left Moses changed, and this change causes the Israelites to fear. It’s strange. It’s a sign of God’s power and presence, a sign of God’s holiness. The Israelites fear the Lord, and they fear Moses because of the very visible change in him from his encounter with God.
In art, sometimes you’ll see Moses depicted with horns. This is due to a translation that St Jerome made when translating the Old Testament into Latin. Biblical Hebrew was not written with vowels – just consonants. You had to know what the vowels should be. And the words for “shine” and “horn” have the same consonants but different vowels. Qaran vs qeren. So St Jerome had to make a judgment call. Which was it? There are actual historical arguments about it – the Greek translation of the Old Testament had went with “shine” but there were ancient sources that gave credence to “horn.” So which was it?
Seems to me that maybe Jerome went with the translation that explained better why people were afraid. Shining is one thing – sounds like he’s shining with an angelic halo! – but horns? That’s scary. Who wouldn’t be afraid of seeing your leader come down from the mountain where he’s been talking with God, and finding that Moses has now sprouted horns? Scary! Who wouldn’t keep their distance, or even run away?
But it leads to a great question: What would we do if we were to encounter God, or to see an unmistakably strange sign of God’s powerful presence? We reasonably like to think that we’d do marginally better than Peter in today’s Gospel reading, that we wouldn’t blabber on about making three homes up on the mountain for Moses, Jesus, and Elijah. We’d hope that we’d have something good and wise to say.
But the reality is that we might go in the opposite direction – literally! We might run if we saw something so transcendent, so unmistakably divine. Seeing Moses and Elijah who’d been long-gone, seeing Jesus, the guy we just had lunch with suddenly transfigured into a shining form, who wouldn’t consider running away in fear?
This is what the German scholar of religion Rudolph Otto called, the “Mysterium Tremendum.” It’s an encounter with the divine that makes us fully and completely aware of our smallness in the scope of things. Suddenly our everyday existence is upended with the strangeness of the divine beyond our comprehension. And thus, we are face to face with the mystery that makes us afraid, the tremendous mystery that makes us tremble.
We’re face to face with God – not with the idea of God or the feeling of God – but face-to-face, unmistakably face-to-face with God who created the entirety of every single thing that ever has been and ever will be. Face-to-face with God.
This is what that Biblical language about the “fear of the Lord” is getting at. It’s not ultimately fear of punishment, fear of God’s anger. It’s that existential, deep-down trembling in our smallness in the presence and awareness of God’s immensity. We might still want to run away, but it’s because our minds can’t take this kind of awareness. We run away to the safety of the everyday world we normally walk in.
To return to German scholar Rudolph Otto, that isn’t the end of the story. Otto adds, “Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans” – yes, it’s the mystery that causes us to tremble, but it’s also something that we are drawn to. We’re pulled in. We’re drawn in. We’re fascinated – not in the modern usage of the term where we’re intellectually curious, but in the way that we just can’t look away. Like we’re enchanted, a spell cast upon us, a spell we might call love. We are small, infinitely tiny before the Creator of the universe, and yet that same Creator’s love draws us in.
To encounter God face-to-face is heart-poundingly real. Trembling, nervous, fearful, desiring, looking, admiring. All of that, all at once.
Moses had long encountered God. He met God in the burning bush before the Exodus, and Moses had gone up the mountain to receive the commandments. Just a chapter earlier in Exodus, Moses and God talked together as one would with a friend.[i] That intimacy and closeness changed Moses, and it showed to others. This relationship with God changed Moses, and where Moses went, you saw a glimpse of the power of God.
And Peter – he sees Jesus glowing, he sees Moses and Elijah. He doesn’t quake with fear then. He knows it’s Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. It’s comfortable and safe, even if it’s strange. It isn’t until the divine cloud surrounds them that the real magnitude of the situation dawns on Peter and the others. This isn’t a happy reunion of Biblical bigwigs – this is an encounter with the fullness of God. And yet, they do not flee. They are afraid – and they are also drawn to stay, to listen.
These are elements of the mystical life. God is God, and we are not – our smallness makes us tremble. God is God, and draws us ever closer in love – who are we, that God should choose to love us so? God is God, and God will never let us go – all creation is thus made holy, and made to rejoice in God.
[i] Exodus 33:11