🐮 Transfiguration

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43. 

Transcript

0:22

Exodus 34 verses 29 through 35. Moses came down from Mount Sinai as he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 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 Lord 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 Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off until he came out. And when he came out, and told the Israelites what had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining, and Moses would put the veil on his face again until he went in to speak with him. Psalm 99. The Lord is Queen. Let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake. The Lord is great in Zion. He is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is she. Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Extol the Lord our God. Worship at their footstool. Holy is she. Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel also was among those who called on her name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them. She spoke to them in the pillar of cloud. They kept her decrees and the statutes that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them. You're a forgiving God to them but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Extol the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain for the Lord our God is holy. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 12 through chapter 4 verse 2. Since then we have such a hope we act with complete frankness. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the Old Covenant, the same veil is still there. It's not unveiled, since in Christ it is set aside. Indeed, to this very day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed in the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord. The Spirit. Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We have renounced the shameful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word. But by the open statement of the truth, we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. The Gospel of Luke chapter nine verses 28 through 43. Now, about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray, and while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Suddenly they saw two men. Moses and Elijah talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it's good for us to be here. Let's set up these tents for you, for Moses, and for Elijah. Not realizing what he was saying. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, This is my child, my chosen. Listen to them. When the voice had spoken, Joshua was found alone, and they kept silent, and in those days no, no one any of the things, told no one any of the things that they had seen. On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met them. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, Teacher, I beg you, look at my son. He's my only child. Suddenly, a spirit seizes him and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth. It mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not. Jesus answered, You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here. While he was being brought forward, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God. Good morning and welcome to First Formation. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. Our readings today come to us from Exodus 34, Psalm 99, 2nd Corinthians 3 and Luke 9. And this today would otherwise be the 8th Sunday in Epiphany or E8 and the cow is for year C, which is Luke the oxen. Anyway transfiguration is One of these points in scripture that are like kissing cousins They're drawing our attention deliberately back to something and here we get there's no ambiguity It's Moses is on the hill on Mount Sinai being transfigured and sometimes Which I think it's funny It says his fault his face shown and somehow sometimes what? When ancient well, I'll say old like antique Which is like the first 500 years after christ. Anyway, sometimes they would depict these shining rays of light as Horns because they didn't want to take up the whole page. And so the horns, that moses hides behind for some people that can be interpreted as a Reflection of the mark of cain not necessarily light but something else a warning a safeguard, but Moses here receives something like light that he just so bright that it shines from his face. He wears a veil out of accommodation for other people around him. And this happened at Mount Sinai, and I'm going to get back to the location because it's important in a moment. But I do want to. Make as abundantly clear as possible. It's not just Moses what the Christ in Joshua the son of Mary Does according to Saul who wrote 2nd Corinthians or probably wrote it Saul's whole Prerogative is look This is for everybody. This isn't just cool kids going up to the high places. This is for everybody because Moses comes down off the mountain. But what Saul says is with unveiled faces, we'll see the glory of the Lord. The veil that Moses held out of accommodation will be removed that nobody's feelings are going to get hurt or nobody's going to be flustered. When we look around and see everybody shining, right? Like the shining, like they had power in Stephen King's novel. Nobody's going to be embarrassed and no one is going to feel a kind of way when we all shine when, nobody has to teach one another about the Lord, because we all know the Lord, this is scattered throughout the prophets and in Luke's gospel, the transfiguration the rule of threes is being applied pretty heavy handedly. So not only do we have Jesus, or I'm sorry, Moses. And Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, we have Mary's child, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, who is both a lawgiver and a prophet. And the political thing is a judge, but we'll get to that in later episodes or later readings. And then of course, we also know that Christ is there with John, Peter, who was it? John and Peter, John, and James. So another Trinity, another three. So Peter, John, and James who are fully human, who are not. The born child of God they are reflecting almost as if in a mirror brightly, the three that they are looking at Moses, Elijah, and Joshua, like that's his name. That's it. That's the point. Joshua is Moses's assistant in the sixth book, the first book following Torah, the first book following the Pentateuch. And it's do you get it? There's three of them. There's three of us. We're entering a new age with that Joshua, Mary's son, is the bridge between, and Saul is like the interpreter of the bridge, right? Three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, anyway. To the location. Now this is where my particular interests come in, because I think that we lose so much of the Bible if we're uncomfortable If we don't get our hearts and minds right about military service, not the progressive thing of the military is bad or the conservative thing, that's all good, but like the military is the military. It has a function that it's supposed to do. And it's not supposed to be everybody, or even the majority of everybody, but those who are able, usually men, because they couldn't give birth, and they were pretty well, able, bodily. Anyway, in Exodus, we get the name of the location, and it's important, Mount Sinai. That is where the law comes from. Now, we don't have it recorded in any of the Gospels, but let's pretend it really happened, and let's pretend sources through oral tradition have assigned a location to where the transfiguration occurred. And there's argumentation that supports it, there's argumentation that, it doesn't go all the way, but the consensus, or the tradition, is that this happened on Mount Tabor. And if you don't know your locations, as much, Mount Tabor. is the same place where Gideon Gideon has his battle, and I believe it's where Deborah, or near where Deborah, yeah, sorry, it's the battle against Midian, not the battle that Gideon leads, but the oldest battle from the oldest part of the old agreement. In Judges four and five with Deborah Barak and Jael, another three. Mount Tabor is where a important battle took place, a, a mythically foundational battle for the Hebraic imagination at Mount Tabor. The battle against the Midianites, the day of Midn, where a woman. oversaw a man commanding military forces that were ultimately successful at the efforts of a woman, Jael, whose name means mountain goat. You might, other names, or Sisera. Who was the king of Midian. I'm sorry the general to the king of Midian. And so this is like through and through military language. And if you think that I'm going out on a limb as soon, the first time that Moses comes down from the. The mountain of the law, the Sinai, the moment he comes down, what happens? They hear a noise in the camp like war, and it is Aaron leading the Israelites in idolatrous worship of a false god, of a constructed god, of an idol. Made out of gold to look like a piece of livestock. And what, what happens? The Levites are rallied around Joshua and Moses, and they cut down with a sword, a third of all Israel. I don't know if you call that like cultural suicide or I don't know, but there was bloodshed. at Mount Sinai when Moses was transfigured. Mount Tabor is where the oldest battle in their ancient history that is historically reliable where it supposedly happened, Mount Tabor. So the, if you don't get the military right, if you have a disordered understanding of the place of the military within a healthy society, you will miss so much of the Bible. Because the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, an attempt at a coherent moral philosophy of the universe. And if you think, if you're uncomfortable with violence and so you never read or never dive into Joshua and Judges, you will not understand Israel. If you can't, it doesn't matter any more than if you won't. And the name that the early church had for people who could not or would not absorb all of the Old Testament As much as there is to absorb the early church called those people Marcionites because Marcion had the bravery to say, look, I just don't see that God, I don't see Jesus as God in the Old Testament. We don't need the Old Testament. Now, whether you say that because you believe it. Or you say that because you can't figure out what to do with the violence of the Old Testament. Both are functionally the same. If you ignore the hardest parts of the Bible, you are a Marcionite, or a Neo Marcionite. If you can't look at the violence, The colonizing violence of your own spiritual forebearers, you do not have a share in their inheritance. You cannot understand and love the God who birthed Mary's son with Mary. You cannot understand that God without just, rolling in the Old Testament. And if the Old Testament is a bad word for you because of the violence, you've got some rolling around in shit to do. I'm very sorry. Because if you think you're too high and mighty or you're so smart that you just can't figure this out. I have particular people in mind so I should probably cut my rant off, but so much of the Bible is, makes so much more sense when you take the military off a pedestal or you pull it up out of the trenches that you think that it's resigned to. When you treat soldiers, veterans, dependents as human beings and you invite them into the act of interpreting scripture, you will be floored at what you learn.