It was a special day, a spiritual day, the passage from childhood into young adulthood. I was just shy of my thirteenth birthday and I was excited. For six months we had sat through boring classes memorizing the catechism, taking notes, trying to be good at God. After all, the closest thing I knew to God was my teacher, who happened to be my daddy. And I didn’t want to disappoint either God or Daddy! Yes, back then confirmation was a big deal. Nobody ever dreamed of missing a class. We memorized all 196 questions in the Shorter Catechism. And we were not allowed to take communion until we were officially confirmed.
The week before the Maundy Thursday Confirmation Service, my mom and I went shopping. She bought me my first pair of stockings, my first pair of heels, and yes, my very first (and I believe last) girdle. Right before we left for church, she handed me two more small packages. In one was a perfect gold cross accompanied by tiny pearl earrings. But the other package was the most grown up gift of all. There, nestled in cotton, was my first tube of lipstick and an elegant ivory compact filled with pressed powder. Yes, indeed, if I was going to be an adult, I had to do adult things. Powdering my nose and removing the childish glow from my face seemed to be the first place to begin.
In retrospect, the message of those early sixties rituals seems bizarre. Why was it that in order to be a grownup in the church or in the world I had to be sucked in, propped up, coiffured, powdered, and adorned, replacing the natural look with the powdered look? At a moment that is meant to invite intimacy with God, I was instead donning layers of adult pretense in order to play adult games. I think that if I had it to do all over again, I would much rather bask in the natural glow of Moses than mimic the made-up machinations of Barbie.
If there was such a thing as an Oscar for the best actor in scripture, Moses would be at the top of my list. But when I imagine Moses, Charlton Heston is the last person I see. My Moses is a bit like Lou Grant — you know Mary’s boss in the old Mary Tyler Moore Show. In my mind’s eye, Moses is paunchy, bossy, bald, irreverent but he is also honest and real to the core.
By the time we meet Moses in this morning’s scripture passage he has been through the mill. A stuttering shepherd and an ex-murderer, he has been commandeered by God, sputtering from the bowels of a burning bush. Tossed into the maelstrom of God’s crazy plan of salvation, Moses ends up confronting Pharaoh. Then he survives nine plagues — flies and pus and boils, frogs and blood and locusts — only to lead a ragtag band of slaves through a temperamental sea into the desolation of a bitter desert. But what comes next makes the pus, the flies, and the burning heat seem delicious. There in the barren sand, all those people turn into beasts — whiny, bitter, stiff-necked children — who blame Moses for the misery and the despair of their unfinished lives.
Moses, it turns out, is no prince himself. He mumbles when he should be eloquent. He whines and complains about all his whining and complaining people. He regularly feels terrified. And when he does not feel terrified, he seethes with anger. Through it all, he carries on a verbal tug-of-war with this jerk named God who somehow dragged him into this mess to begin with. And yet, these two — Moses and God — turn out to be quite a team. Together they nourish the people, feeding them with manna, quail, and water springing from a rock. They take turns getting angry and then calming each other down while the people play their tiresome people games. Finally, God and Moses manage to get some rules written down on a stone tablet only to have them destroyed when Moses flings them aside in a fit of anger.
You see, when Moses comes down from the mountain eagerly hugging the Ten Commandments to his breast, what he finds is a drunken orgy. His faithless followers are worshiping a golden calf and honoring that which is material and immediate. They are forsaking that which is mysterious and holy. Yahweh is even madder than Moses and immediately threatens to destroy all these sorry sinners. But wait a minute! If God destroys the people, that means God destroys Moses! The greatest stutterer of all time suddenly becomes eloquent. Moses pleads with God to save, not destroy, the people. Lo and behold, God listens! Yes, Moses manages to change God’s mind! The journey continues — the journey of God’s people stumbling along, but with God’s fresh blessing, trying to become God’s holy presence in an unholy world.
All of this is the background for today’s epic scene. Through all of this turmoil and trouble, all of this toil and turbulence, Moses has grown weary and worn. He is balder, lamer, wider through the middle. But he has also grown wiser, more comfortable, more familiar, and more intimate with God. Yes, as companions traveling together through the travail of God’s people, Moses and God have become friends. They have spent a lot of time together, talking things over. And though God always remains the “holy other,” God is, nonetheless, available and generous, changing Moses more and more into the person he was created to be. Indeed, such intimate companionship with God has polished Moses with a particular patina of the holiness of God — the glowing image of God shining out of the very heart of who Moses is.
The text tells us that when Moses comes down from the mountain the second time, clutching version two of the Ten Commandments, his face literally shines. Why? Because he has been talking to God. But — and this is important — Moses does not know it. You see, far from pretense, far from politically motivated posturing, Moses is just being his fresh and real self. That means his God-drenched self, his shining self, and his authentic self. Yes, by talking with God again and again and again — by arguing, debating, asking, listening, pleading, begging, praying, and learning — Moses has slowly, over the years, become transformed — yes even transfigured. He has been changed from who the world says he should be — into who God has uniquely created him to be. And this completely authentic and utterly unique Moses literally shines.
Early in my career I attended a weeklong young pastor’s seminar, designed to keep restless pastors from bolting from the ministry. Those who created the event knew that after five or six years of stumbling through parish ministry most of us would have had our eyes opened. Far from the ethereal vision of pious pastoring that we clung to in seminary, what we all had discovered was reality. What ministry is really about is whiny, needy pastors serving whiny, needy people and in the wilderness of all this humanness there can be the impetuous urge to desert the desert. That is why the young pastor’s seminar was created. After an intense few days of discussion, worship, and study sessions, the leaders invited us to share one final exercise. Each of us sat in the middle of the group, and for ten minutes heard words to describe who we were — what the group had perceived were our strengths, as well as our weaknesses. It was absolutely awful. For ten minutes I heard someone described that had no connection with the person I know myself to be. Not only was the Susan Andrews they described a total stranger to me, I didn’t even like her!
That was the day, after hours of private tears, that I decided that all the masks and all the pretense, all the shoulds and all the oughts, all the pleasing other people at the expense of pleasing God — all of it had to go. Why? Because the person I was created to be, the person I can be, the person I need and want to be, was, at that point, buried beneath deep layers of fear and obligation and control. I realize that the person I really am — the person I am still struggling to become — is sometimes hard to take — for me as well as for others. But I have also learned that unless I am authentically myself — a self created to be unique in the image of God — I cannot serve God or God’s people the way only I am meant to serve them.
Today’s story is about intimacy and it is about authenticity. Moses’ face begins to shine and continues to shine when he finally submits to God. When he finally submits to God’s intimate, insistent, gracious, pervasive presence in his life, he shines. And the more he talks to God, the more he interfaces with God, the more he engages God, the more he struggles with God, the more real Moses becomes. The more authentic Moses becomes, the more Moses, Moses became. And so it is with us. In an old Hasidic tale, Rabbi Zuysa says, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zuysa?’ ”
Several generations after Moses, we find another man on a mountaintop talking fervently, intimately, comfortably with God. And his face too is shining. But it is not just his face. It is his whole body, his clothing, his entire being, glowing with the power of God. The transfiguration of Jesus happens just as Jesus is about to turn his face toward Jerusalem, toward Calvary, toward the crush of the cross and the terror of the tomb. Seeking his unique place in the creative work of God, Jesus receives stunning confirmation of who he really is. Out of the cosmos a voice echoes the original blessing of baptism: “This is my Son, my Beloved. Listen to him.” And in the mystery of that holy/human moment, God becomes permanently, and irrevocably, grounded in our humanity.
My friends, as we now travel with Jesus off the mountaintop, back into the wilderness of Lent, may we cling intimately to God and to one another. And scrubbing all the pretense from our lives, may we shine with the natural and abundant grace of God.
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.