The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
All of us are aware of the problem of darkness. Most of us, if not all of us, have stumbled or stubbed our toe in the dark, and it’s painful. Generally speaking, we all have a rather healthy fear of the dark — especially in unfamiliar places and in unfamiliar circumstances. Scripture speaks of spiritual light and darkness in the same way. And in 2 Corinthians 4:4, it warns us: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So what is darkness? Well, as defined: the absence of light. Blackness, obscurity, gloom, blindness — blindness robs the person’s ability to see any light at all. And darkness is the absence of light. Ironically, we can also be blinded by the light. Television commercials try to sell us special visors and sunglasses that filter out blinding glare that renders our sight useless, and often leaves us in some kind of discomfort or pain. If a light is too bright, pain is the natural result.
The Old Testament lesson and the Gospel lesson today, as well as the Epistle, all focus on a pivotal event in the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ: the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The events recorded in the Old Testament lesson, which shall be the focus of this sermon this morning, took place about 1,500 years before the birth of Jesus — before the Light of the world came into the world in fleshly form. The Israelites were camped at the base of Mount Sinai after their Exodus and rescue from Egypt, after their journey through the Red Sea. Moses had been drafted by both God and the people to be the go-between, the mediator between God and man, the children of the heavenly Father. Our reading began this way: “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” The light that emanated from Moses’ skin was a byproduct of being in the righteous and holy God’s presence — a residual effect, kind of like radiation. The presence of the Lord in this world, in the Old Testament, is often characterized as a great light. A book that’s rarely ever quoted in any sermon, and rarely ever studied — Habakkuk 3 — says this: “His brightness was as the light; rays flashed from His hand; and there He veiled His power.” God’s light, His righteousness, His power, His presence is light. John, one of the three that saw the Transfiguration, would later write this in his first Epistle: “This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Light casts out darkness.
The Jews have a special word to describe His glorious presence in a local place: Shekinah. It’s not a word in the Bible, but it means He causes to dwell, or He dwells in a place — signifying that an event of a divine visitation has taken place, that God has seen fit to come down to earth and there dwell upon it in all of His glory, which includes all of His light. It denotes a local dwelling, a specific time in a specific place, which is evidenced by the manifestation of His glory. And His glory is manifested by light. At the same time, the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent — that is, He is present everywhere — which is what Psalm 139 is all about. You can’t go anywhere where God is not. You cannot possibly hide from God, for He is everywhere, and all know it. God’s special and more personal presence is revealed to us in many, many historical accounts in the Bible, especially throughout the Old Testament. The first is God’s presence in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Another is His encounter with Moses in the burning bush, which burned but was not consumed by the great light of fire. In the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, God promised that His special presence, His local presence, would rest between the two sculptured images of the cherubim that adorned the right and left side of the Mercy Seat — kind of like an altarpiece; think of the candles on the end of our altar, each side. Anyone who would presume to come into God’s special presence, who did not follow very specific instructions, was subject to instantaneous death in that life of righteousness.
Today’s Old Testament lesson recounts how Moses had been up on the Mount of Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments for the second time. He shattered the first set of tablets when he came down and discovered the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. He smashed them on the spot, had to return to get them once again on Mount Sinai. Moses talked and saw the Lord God. When he returned to the base of the mountain to the people, his face shone like the sun with a very bright light. Verse 30: “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 talked with them. Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.” Notice: the veil comes after he actually delivers the sermon, and then he veils his face. Moses puts the veil over his face after he’s done talking to the people, so that they wouldn’t see or witness the light fading away underneath the veil. In this way, they would understand that the words of Moses, not his appearance, bore the authority of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. So as the face lost the luster, the concern was they would lose their respect for the words that Moses spoke. Each time Moses went up and came down from the mountain, the process repeated itself. And each time, the Lord God was both hidden and revealed to the children of Israel at the very same moment — the light demonstrating that God and His Word were present among them, and the light being hidden in the flesh of Moses — thus both enlightening and protecting the children of Israel from the Lord God’s holiness and glory. It’s a mask. And that’s kind of how Luther pioneers his Theology of the Cross and his Theology of the Masks of God. Thus Luther calls them masks, to shield sin-ridden human beings from His unapproachable light. These masks give us glimpses of the things that we can understand about God, but hide that which is simply too deep and too profound for us to understand. Luther wrote — thus Christ says to St. Peter: “What I am doing you do not understand now. You want to anticipate Me, and you want to teach Me what I must do to show that I’m God. But you’re making a big mistake,” writes Luther, “for it’s your duty to bear and endure My hand. Let Me do as I please, and afterward you will know and understand what I have intended all along.” This, then, is the way that the saints are governed, and the wisdom of the Church of God may prevail: namely, they are not scandalized by the counsels of God, or offended by the face with which He meets us. He is indeed the God of life, of glory, of salvation, joy, and peace — this is the face of the true God. He offers Himself to us as the God of wrath, of hell and damnation and death at times. This is in order that you may be humble, that you may endure, and that you may wait for the hand of the Lord and for the revelation of His face.
I’ve said it over the decades that I’ve been a pastor: God does His greatest work in suffering. It’s just hidden from us. We don’t see it. It’s like Moses putting the veil over his face. It might take a while for people to see, for example, that the Ten Commandments are really a path — not to prison, not to condemnation, but to joy and freedom rather than bondage. It might take a while for God’s children to see that the required sacrifices of the Old Testament and the days that are to be observed are a foretaste of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to come. It most certainly was a challenge to see the hand of the all-powerful and loving God during the time of bondage in Egypt for the children of Israel. Moses and his message were given a hearing by the people because of the signs and wonders he did in Egypt that induced the Egyptians to set them free. And by God’s power, Moses led the Israelites in the crossing of the Red Sea, where the Lord God finalized His deliverance from bondage in Egypt. God’s people have always been called to walk by faith and trust, rather than by human reason based on what they could see, and on the philosophies of the age.
There is yet another point to be made about Moses’ encounter with God. Often in the Old Testament, it refers to God manifesting Himself to people by sight or sound. We have various words for these — theologians like the words “theophanies.” An example of a theophany is the visitor to Daniel, Daniel 10:5–6. Daniel wrote: “I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl” — I thought that meant a body like mine, but that’s not what it means; it’s a mineral that’s translucent, it shines, see — “his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.” That’s a theophany. Other times it’s described as an angelophany — that is, “the Angel of the Lord said this,” or “the Angel of the Lord came” — and that occurs in both the Old and New Testament. And a number of theologians, by the way, in the last several decades, especially Lutheran ones, have come to realize, by a more careful study of both the Hebrew words and the text itself, that in reality these theophanies, or these angelophanies, are actually Christophanies — that is, they are the encounter between the Son of God, who would become the newborn Babe in Bethlehem, and human beings, men of God. It’s most likely Christ, 14 centuries before He was born in Bethlehem, that Moses is meeting with on Mount Sinai, face to face.
The reason the Old Testament reading was chosen for this Transfiguration is that Moses makes an appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration, one week before Good Friday. In Jesus and His Transfiguration, the light of God’s grace was shining more brightly than it shone on Moses’ face in the Old Testament. A cloud had to come down to shield what the three disciples could see — Peter, James, and John. Jesus knew what was waiting for Him in Jerusalem. He knew the witness that the disciples would provide would help propel the Gospel out into the whole world after the resurrection and the Ascension. So Jesus gave Peter, James, and John a revelation of Himself that would be both unforgettable and spectacular. There on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus’ appearance was suddenly altered — brightened, shining white as no one could bleach any cloth — and His face shone like the sun, and He was transfigured before them. Standing with Jesus: Moses and Elijah. The glorious light that emanated from Jesus’ face and body, and even His clothing — well, it was glorious. That would be the same Jesus that we prefer to deal with, right? Given our choice of seeing the Jesus on the cross of Good Friday, and seeing the Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, we’d all rather deal with the Jesus of Transfiguration than the one who’s dying in our stead. That would be our choice. People often struggle with what Luther calls the Theology of the Cross — which is really nothing more than Christian theology. All people naturally prefer a Theology of Glory, because it doesn’t bring any pain. It only brings success and wonderful things — at least that’s what it promises. But it’s a facade, because the Christian faith is the Theology of the Cross. That’s where the work of Christ is accomplished: the Savior of the world, the Redeemer, the one who obtains for you the forgiveness of sins. Likewise, the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures were only understood after Jesus’ suffering and death. Time and time again, Jesus taught them, knowing they would not understand until He rose on the third day from the dead. And then, even at that, He spent 40 days teaching them after His resurrection, so that they could see that the old things written in the Scripture were written of Him. After the events of Passion week, Peter, James, and John undoubtedly told their colleagues about what had happened on that mount on that day. Then they went out into the world preaching the full Gospel of Jesus Christ. Peter was one of the three who saw Jesus transfigured, and he wrote in his Second Epistle many years later: “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father” — that is, the light — “and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” John was also on the Mount of Transfiguration. He was given the vision to see what the new heavens and the new earth would look like, and he wrote this: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Jesus says to His church and to its members: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden… let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” So as the moon reflects the light of the sun, so you also, in word and deed, you reflect the light of the Son of God — the very light that is Jesus Christ, who is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. One day, one glorious day, you will shine in such a way that all the world will see Christ’s righteousness and glory in you. Paul, in the Epistle lesson: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image” — that is, the same image of Jesus Christ — “from one degree of glory to another.” Why? Because your sins are forgiven you, and you wear the righteous robe of Jesus Christ. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.