Sermons

Rev. Nancy Rockwell

Epiphany 6

14 February 2010

Shining

The story, in the Book of Exodus, has it that Moses, when he came down from Mt. Sinai where he had spent many days sitting and talking with God, had a shining face. So full of shine was his face, that the people were awed by it, and in the way of such things, they didn’t get too close to him. So Moses put a veil on, so he could get on with what he wanted to do, issuing commands and such. Among those was his command to build an Ark for the Covenant, the Ten Commandments he had brought back down the mountain. And the Ark the people built had a seat on top, called the mercy seat. Whenever they woke up and the Ark was covered by a cloud, they knew God was on the mercy seat, and Moses went into the cloud and talked, and when he came out, by golly his face was all glowing, all radiant and shiny again, and he had to put the veil back on for a while

We know this look. It’s the look of love. Popular songs sing about it, the glow of lovers. Hollywood makes movies about it. And you and I have seen it. Love and a cough cannot be hid, the saying goes. And it’s easy to spot those who are in love. The old story is saying that being in the presence of God enveloped Moses in love, and that Moses came back from the presence of God glowing like a love-struck teenager.

Paul talks about that story in his letter to the Corinthians, when he says we, too, will absorb that shining, that glow, when we grow close to God. Our face, too, will be radaint with God-shine, when we have let ourselves be loved by getting close to God.

Peter sees this shining in Jesus: he sees Jesus’ face suffused with light, and his clothing becoming all white. Peter’s reverence goes further as he keeps on watching -- in this shining in and around Jesus Peter begins to see other faces, the faces of Moses and Elijah, and he perceives that this glow is about some kind of transcendent communication, some reverent life that breaks through the barriers of bodies, time, even mortality. Of course, this is what lovers experience in each other, too.

At the end of Peter’s story, when they come down from the mountain they are on, Jesus meets a father with a child whose face is full of darkness and rage, contorted the text says, by the demons that are in control of him. This child is the very opposite of what Moses and Jesus became in the presence of God. This child is letting no one love him. The disciples are afraid of the boy and they are therefore powerless, but Jesus uses all the shining that is in him, in his face and aura, in his heart and mind, in his spirit and being, and he loves that boy. And the child is healed. So the purpose of love is to heal, according to Jesus. Love exists to heal the world.

Reverence

Hollywood tends to see the face of love, and its shine, only in new lovers. But most of us are able to see that shine in those who have loved for long years, too. It isn’t just being married that gives you that shine, it’s the aura of trust and communication, commitment and devotion that makes love evident in the old as well as the young, and between parents and children, teachers and students, doctors and patients, pastors and people. But you can be married a long time and not have it, it isn’t a guarantee of any relationship.

An essential part of this shine, in all these people, is reverence. The practice of reverence takes time, takes a willingness to turn aside, as Moses did, to the burning bush, to the Mountain of holiness, to the cloud upon the Ark, and drop your agenda and spend time there. So yes, the reverence that brings love between people is tied to the reverence we can all feel for the earth, and how that can ease our spirits.

The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably by a body of water, and pay attention for twenty minutes or more. With any luck, you will begin to see souls in pebbles, ants, small mounds of moss, an acorn on its way to becoming an oak tree. If you can see water, you may wonder what it is saying, and where it is going. You may even feel the beating of your own heart, which one theologian calls that miracle of ingenuity that does its work with no thought or instruction from you. You did not make your heart, any more than you made a tree. You may even find your attention extends to someone walking by, a stranger to you, yet now, because of the pebbles and the ants, you can also see the stranger’s soul. There is something he is working on in his life, the same way you are working on something in your life. You are related, even if you have never met. In this way, Jesus, full of shining and Belovedness, met and knew the child who was full of fury and darkness and anger.

Suffering. Deep suffering makes theologians of us all, says Barbara Brown Taylor. The questions we ask from deep pain are huge: Why? Why now? Why me? Why this? Brown Taylor says these questions are just as relevant when we are in pleasure as they are when we are in pain. Who deserves the way a warm bath feels after a hard day’s work? Or who deserves the smell of someone who loves you nd gives you a hug? Holding a sleeping child gives deep answers to many a question, and lying in the yard at night looking up at the stars can admit you to divine mysteries such as Peter saw Jesus entering into when his face was filled with shining, such as people saw in Moses after he had been in the clouds with God.

The daily practice of incarnation – which is being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh, of bodies, of life – is a pedagogy as old as the gospels. Why else do you think Jesus spent his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash each other’s feet and share food?

And life in the flesh, and love, are what bring us to Ash Wednesday, which leads us into Lent, when we confront our own mortality. We who take on the name Beloved follow Jesus into the wilderness, so that we too may be tested. Popular religion focusses on the spirituality of success, so much so that we do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits that may be gained from failure. When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages or alienate our children, it can be hard to shake the shame of getting lost in our lives. And yet most of us, when asked to name the times that changed us for the better, will point to these wilderness times.

Perhaps the father of the afflicted child, in later years, pointed to this anguished journey he made to the stranger, Jesus, seeking help. Perhaps he spoke of the shining face of the man who was able to help his son. How many of you have made anguished journeys, to MGH, to an adult child in trouble, to the bedside of a failing parent, to court, to counselors, taking with you your own despair and fear of failure, and perhaps someone over whom your despair and your love were falling. And whether or not you found a cure, healing does always come, in peace, unexpected laughter, the kindness of strangers, hope handed to you like a treasure, in words, medicine, a second chance, a ray of sunshine falling on your face. These then become shining moments in your life, snatched from the jaws of defeat. They becomes ways in which you enter into Belovedness and learn to see the beauty all around you, and the mystery, and God, even in stones. These are your stories, for you to tell, love stories, of your own flesh, and that of others, of your own opening like a flower into the light of this world, and of the mystery of God that runs through it all. Amen.