UCC Church of Charlotte

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Radiating
Exodus 34:29 35
Luke 9:28 43

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

Moses has been back up on the mountain, carving new tablets to replace
the ones broken in his anger at the people and their golden calf.  God
descends again to the mountain in a cloud to write again the ten
non-negotiable laws of the covenant.

Now we read that Moses comes down off the mountain where he has been
talking with God, and his face shines.  His face glows so much that
the people are afraid.  They back off.  The people were protected from
God’s holiness on the mountain by that cloud.  Only Moses could
approach.  And the glow of Moses’ face must be covered with a veil in
the site of the people, but when he ascends again to the mountain to
speak with God, he removes his veil.  God’s holiness has made Moses’
face shine.

Jesus on another mountain speaks to Moses and Elijah, the giver of the
Law and the exemplar of the Prophets, and his whole being shines.  And
as Peter seeks to enshrine this moment a cloud covers them, and they
are afraid.
In Moses’ day, the cloud protects the people from the shining of God’s
holiness.  In Jesus’ day, the shining of the holiness is seen as good,
and the cloud that covers them is a source of fear.  Something has
happened between these stories.

Holiness is expressed in the Bible in a number of ways.  These
expressions and interpretations were not all told at once.  They came
out of different experiences of God at different times, told and
interpreted again and again over time, in different circumstances.  So
we do not get one set and settled definition.  Like a cut diamond, we
get multiple facets which reflect and shine differently depending on
our angle of viewing.

Often holiness refers to the “set-apartness” of God.  God is not like
this stone or that tree or even this building.  God is separate from
these.  God can show up wherever and whenever God wishes, but God
cannot be corralled like livestock, inventoried like bricks, bought
and sold like bread.

Other times the Bible refers to holiness as the “purity” of God.  We
find this expressed in the laws of what is ritually clean and what is
ritually unclean.  To approach God in uncleanness is to defile the
relationship with God, to besmirch God’s name.

One of the more intriguing expressions of holiness is similar to how
we speak of radiation today.  A little might be okay, but too much
exposure will kill us.  When Moses asks to see God, he is given a view
of God’s backside, for to see God’s face would be too much and Moses
would die.  When the Ark of the Covenant was being transported, they
used long poles, so that the bearers would not touch the Ark.  Once,
when it was on a cart and the oxen were slipping, a man reached out to
steady it, touched the Ark and he died.  This expression of holiness,
like set-apartness and purity, says that it is so beyond us that we
cannot handle it or be in close proximity to it without dying.

Such expressions may seem like Hollywood special effects.  They may be
too supernatural and superstitious for us rational and scientific
modern types.  We explain feelings of unworthiness in psychological
terms like shame or anxiety.  We want therapeutic answers to our
feelings of dread or angst or loneliness.

Or we see the way holiness gets used as a political tool or a weapon,
proclaiming the righteousness of these and the damnedness of those.
American Christianity has become so entangled with politics that to
take a theological stand is to take a political stand and vice versa.
To try and discuss holiness in our current climate is fraught with
emotional and social and political baggage.

But Jesus also spoke of holiness, and Jesus saw it as a kind of
radiating force as well.  In Matthew, Jesus says “be perfect, as your
Father in heaven is perfect.”  And we cringe at the thought of our own
sins, our own mistakes, our own difficulties.  In Luke, the same
passage reads, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  Here
we find Jesus equating perfection (read also as wholeness or purity)
with mercy (compassion, forgiveness, as Marcus Borg points out, the
word literally means “wombishness”).

And in the stories of Jesus, there is no threat to God’s holiness by
the defilement of the world.  The holiness of God in Jesus defeats the
uncleanness, the impurity, the sickness, the isolation, the judgment
of the world.

And the holiness of God we see in Jesus radiates out to those he
touches, radiates out to the disciples.  So that it is not the glowing
of Jesus that frightens Peter and John and James, but the cloud that
then covers and dims the glow.

After descending the mountain, Jesus heals the man’s son.  The
disciples have tried and failed, and Jesus is frustrated by their lack
of ability.  He has shown them how.  In just another chapter he will
commission them to this work, sending them out on their own, but here,
after he has radiated the holiness of God up on the mountain, they
cannot do it.

I wonder if it is like the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan was
playing.  Sometimes his opponents would forget they were playing.
They would be there flatfooted watching Jordan fly through the air.
But sometimes his own teammates would forget and stop to watch him
shoot.  They would seem to forget that they had a role to play, that
they had skills and abilities, that they were, in fact, a team.

Ministry, being the church, living up to and into our calling, like
basketball, is a team sport.  With Jesus around, perhaps the disciples
forgot that they too have a role to play.  Jesus radiates the holiness
of God, and the disciples, rather than glowing with it or mirroring it
back, they stop and wait for Jesus to take care of it.

Which makes for an interesting question: what are we radiating?

Do we radiate the anxiety which the world radiates to us from all sides?

Or do we take seriously and personally the greeting of the church:
“the peace of Christ be with you”?

Do we glow with the forgiveness in which we stand that we might have
new life and try again and offer another chance at new life to those
around us as well?

Or do we glower with anger or resentment?

Do we shine with welcome and the joy of community to which all are invited?

Or do dampen our light so no one would suspect us of being one of
those crazy Congregationalists who shouts “woo-hoo” at seeing each
other in church or at the store or on the street?

We are called to shine, and to shine with the light of Christ, not to
let the clouds of fear or anger or despair or silent resentment cover
over our Christ-light.

When we shine like this, we too can see and offer the healing, the
resurrection, the hope and the new life we find to those around us who
are so in need of it.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.