From Star to Dust
:For Wilderness Generation
Exodus 24:12-18
This Sunday is known traditionally as Transfiguration Sunday, when we listen to stories of transfiguration. We may be more familiar with Jesus’s story, which begins with, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ”It is transfiguration, because the light that was shone forth by him, changed the accompanying disciples’ perception of Jesus - they could never again see Jesus in the same way that they had always seen him. His physical being was transfigured, full of light, an “ebullient incandescence” (Remember? I used those words in the sermon two Sundays ago; and when I was practicing for that sermon, my sons said, “Mom is making up new words again!” and marched around, chanting ‘ebullient incandescence!”), the pure white light of joy. (from Richard Wagamese’s Quality of Light). Many preachers might choose the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on this Sunday, but the predecessor to that story is Moses. The transfiguration story of Moses is recorded in the book of Exodus we read this morning.
It is interesting that the stories of the transfiguration of Jesus and Moses are read today, one Sunday before Lent begins. January was the season of Epiphany and post-Epiphany which begins with the story of the star whose light guides shepherds and the Magi to find where baby Jesus sleeps in the manger. The delicate, gentle light from the star in the night sky becomes the dazzling, bright light on the high mountain that affirms Jesus’s true nature - the Son of God, with all his divinity and heavenly authority. And with this, the season that celebrates the light ends. If the Christian year’s first chapter’s subtitle is light, the second chapter’s is the desert, the Lenten journey. It is an interesting liturgical transition: the star of the diamond light falls on the desert, and becomes sand and rocks.
Today’s stage is in between - not the sky, not the desert, not the dusty ground, but on the mountains, in both stories of the transfiguration of Moses and Jesus.
At the time when Jesus lived, many people believed that he might be the second Moses or second Elijah, (like reincarnation!), both hugely influential prophet figures in the history of Israel. Moses in particular, who led the entire Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt to seek the promised land, after wandering in the desert for 40 years. The number of years, forty, is symbolic. That same number is used to describe Jesus’ time in the desert, spending forty days and forty nights fasting, in a vision quest to find his true relationship with the world and the Creator, overcoming the temptations of power, control, and safety. For us, the season of Lent emulates Jesus’s journey in the desert. Through the narrative thread of the symbol of forty years and forty days and nights, the stories of Moses and Jesus become parallel stories that mirror each other.
In today’s reading, God calls Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for the people’s instruction.” The story continues, “Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain… Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.”
Today’s story ends here, but the subsequent chapters, 33 and 34, continue that, on the mountain, Moses asks for God to reveal God’s presence to Moses, and while God refuses to show Moses their face, God agrees to allow Moses to stand in a cleft of a rock so that, when God passes by, Moses is allowed to see God’s back. The people see the ‘afterglow’ of the connection between God and Moses, as he comes down from the mountain with the ‘skin of his face radiant’. Moses’ glow is so intense that he wears a veil after his encounter with God.
So, clearly, Moses experienced transfiguration with the light of God. Moses and Jesus’ stories mirror each other in the number 40 and with the light, and yet there is also a stark difference between the two: in the Gospel story, the light is an “ebullient incandescence” - bright, dazzling, pure white blinding light - . In the Hebrew Bible, God declares, “I will come to the thickness of the cloud and meet you there.” The radiant light that glowed on the skin of Moses’ face after Moses’ encounter with God was just like the starlight in the midnight sky. When God passed by, the mountain on which Moses stood was covered entirely with the thickness of the cloud where, God said, he would meet Moses inside the darkness. The thickness, the darkness of the cloud was not in contrast to the light; the light’s presence was deepened and intensified in its de-candescence. I appreciate the moment of the new light being pregnant inside the matrix of darkness in our lives. We are more familiar with understanding and calling the Sacred and the Spirit as being ‘light’, but that can encourage racial overtones of ‘light as good’ and ‘dark as bad’ that is embedded in some Christian theology and metaphor. In Exodus, the inner stirring of God’s love and tender connection was protected inside the thickness of the dark, in the dusk of the cloud.
Let's ask, right here: Why do we read transfiguration stories every year, just before we start the season of Lent? Why should transfiguration stories be marked as the bridge between heaven - Epiphany’s star light - and earth - the Lenten desert rocks -? Why are we invited to visit and revisit the stories on the mountains - whether it is on the high mountain of Jesus’ time, open in every direction, or on Mount Sinai, submerged in the unpredictable weather of stormclouds. What could be the meaning of transfiguration for we who live in our own era, which still calls for peace that fights fear, for hope that fights despair, for right relations that fight false individualistic freedom, in this time when we, each of us, are called to engage in these fights as a spiritual warrior. In transfiguration stories read each year, in Christian churches, we are called to transfigure our world views and faith. We need the thickness of critical thinking in order to be pregnant with the light of new understanding, faith and confidence. Transfiguration must happen in our lives too.
So, here’s one more perspective for how to read transfiguration stories, TODAY.
The Generation in the Wilderness
In the Exodus story Moses is the biggest spiritual warrior - or hero - of that time, and he represents his generation. It is the generation that left Egypt and wandered in the desert for forty years. Now, here, forty is not just symbolic but also the necessary length of time for the Exodus (meaning the escape) because only a new generation, born in freedom, would know how to live in freedom. A queer scholar, Rebecca Alpert, defines Moses and his generation as a, “Wilderness generation”. The Wilderness generation are those who escaped captivity and moved to the wilderness, for whom it is not easy to forget the problems of their oppressed past. Trauma and colonization are deeply psychological; they are even remembered in the body – both body and mind remember. And this wilderness generation creates/receives the new covenant, a new commandment, a totally different, life-affirming code of living, declaring, “No more Pharaoh.” No more laws of Imperialism they lived under in Egypt. God’s commandment, God’s law, are based on totally different priorities and values: respect, living in togetherness, and caring for the weak, foreign residents, and strangers. “Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” It is the holy instruction to become a people of God, journey as a community in difficult times of uncertainty, fear, starvation, with no visible signs of success.
But, the most important part, I think, is that it is not the wilderness generation, as represented by Moses, who would cross the river Jordan and finally touch and smell the soil of the promised land. Moses led everyone to that land, but he, himself, was not able to cross the river Jordan. He died just before they were almost to the promised land. The lesson here is that whatever we in the wilderness generation do, ultimately our work is for opening up new possibilities, new hopes, a new tomorrow, for the new generation. “Only a new generation, born in freedom, would know how to live in freedom.” The new generation is able to envision and inhabit the worlds that are closed to the wilderness generation, and they will determine what their life will be like in the future, when we hope they will arrive in the promised land. Then, it is also true that each new generation becomes the wilderness generation - because they would define what the captivities and oppressions are in their time and context, and therefore, what true freedom would look like - the struggle is different for each generation, but it is present for all generations.
The wilderness generation, OR, each generation in their wilderness time, must know when and how they would transfigure themselves or allow themselves to be transfigured, to become spiritual warriors, not just for themselves, but ultimately and more importantly, for the new generation who are already here and who will come, always, tomorrow. When we choose to sacrifice our entitlement, and sanctify the tomorrow of peace, co-existence, well-being, we journey towards justice for new generations. TRANSFIGURATION is the call for all of us, before Lent (fasting and identifying today’s temptations and overcoming them), tasking our heart, mind, and spirituality to be transfigured with courage and ebullient incandescence, on the thick clouded mountain of our own time.
So, here’s a song for you, and us, — Transfigure Me! (Ha Na will sing it.)
Transfigure Me Christopher Grundy From Songs for the Holy Other (p. 73)
YOUTUBE video: please click here.
Transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, more like Jesus;
transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, Jesus my light. (Break)
Take me up to the mountain
shine your light down on me
’til the person you’ve always intended
is the person everybody can see
Transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, more like Jesus;
transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, Jesus my light.
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