3/3/19 “Wearing the Divine” by Nancy Petty
Text: Exodus 34:27-35
Note: The song Landslide by Fleetwood Mac was sung prior to the sermon.
Green and white are the colors of Crest Junior High School. I wore those colors on both the basketball court and the softball field. Green and gold are the colors of Crest High School Chargers; and I wore those colors proudly, also, on the basketball court and softball field for four years. Although green has never really been my color, as a youth you would often find me wearing green. In the fall and winter, I usually had on my letter jacket – green with gold lettering. In the spring and summer, I was usually in a school t-shirt proudly sporting the Crest High green and gold.
But if asked my favorite color, then and now, I would tell you that it is blue. It always has been. All shades of blue. Light blue, dark blue, baby blue, powder blue, ice blue, morning blue, navy blue, sapphire blue. Growing up I wanted so badly for my birthday to be in September instead of October because the birthstone for September was sapphire. October was opal. My first car was a powder blue mustang; my second car was a baby blue Corolla. Growing up in rural western North Carolina, I especially liked watching the light blue sky as it danced over the Blue Ridge Mountains just before sunset. And one of my fondest childhood memories is riding my motorcycle for hours on end under the powder blue sky that hung over New House Road. Blue has always been my favorite color.
One particular day, in the spring of 1986, walking across the campus at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary I looked out over the landscape of the massive oak trees that stand on that campus and up into the sky that hung overhead and never before in my life had I seen the color green so gleaming nor the color blue so brilliant. It was as though all the greens and all the blues were lit up with a magical light. As familiar as I was with the colors green and blue, NEVER had I seen those colors so radiant.
To understand this magical day for me, you need the backstory. I had just left my Narrative Theology class taught by Dr Elizabeth Barnes. That morning, sitting in that class, I had had a revelation – a God moment. Whatever we were discussing, and I can’t remember exactly what that was, it hit me like a ton of bricks that the only unforgivable sin for me would be to NOT be the person God created me to be. And God had created me to be a same-gender loving person. You see, I had been struggling mightily that first year of seminary with how to reconcile my sexual orientation with my call into the ministry. I had kind of gotten to the place of believing that God loved me as I was, gay – kind of. But being gay and being a minister continued to pull at me. How would I/could I ever be out and work in a church? After all, it was the church that was constantly condemning me, and my people. The church proclaimed boldly and loudly, it was a sin to be gay. The Bible said so. Or at least that was the story the church was telling.
Even if I was okay with being gay, I was preparing for a vocation that, it seemed, was never going to make a place at the table for me. But on that day in 1986 walking among the green spring leaves on those hundred-year-old oak trees and under the crisp morning blue sky, I saw green and blue with new eyes. And in the dazzling light of that spring morning, I, and the world around me was transfigured. Those two colors that I had been so familiar with my whole life, were lit up like final fireworks on the 4th of July. Never had I seen the color green or blue the way I saw it that day. And never before had I been so clear about being who God created me to be. The definition of sin was transfigured for me that day. The only real sin I was in danger of succumbing to was not being who God created me to be. And in that moment I, and the world around me was transfigured. To be who God created me to be meant I had to be fully me. It was time to stop pretending to like boys and to start looking for the girl of my dreams. To be or do otherwise was to reject the divine – God – within me. I had been transfigured by the divine affirmation that the most important job I had in life was to be who God created me to be in all my fullness – spiritually, emotionally, physically, sexually, and socially. To be or do otherwise was to deny that I was created in the image of God – wonderfully and beautifully made. And in that moment – that really wasn’t a moment but a culmination of a lifetime of moments – when I was transfigured on the inside I saw with different eyes and the world around me became transfigured also. Transfiguration opens our eyes to see the brightness of God’s blues and greens, the diversity of God’s creation, the depth of God’s love for us and for the world.
“But like any moment of divine vision, you have to come crashing down to Earth sometime; after speaking with God, every prophet has to head back down the mountain.” And while we might be ready to wear the brightness of the divine, sometimes others are not ready to see our transfigured selves. And there were plenty of people not ready to see my transfigured self in 1986.
After that spring day, though, I never looked back. I didn’t know how God would make a way for me to ever work in a church and be fully me but in that moment I had to trust God, and I had to live my life knowing that being who God created me to be was not optional. I had to move forward knowing that it was my God-ordained duty to be me; to be me was to be a same-gender loving person. And in that acceptance, I was transfigured. No denomination could tell me otherwise. Hear me clearly, no denomination, no church, no institutions can tell you otherwise.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday – the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and before the first Sunday of Lent. The lectionary offers two transfiguration stories: Moses on Mt. Sinai and Jesus’ own transfiguration story as he prayed on the mountain with Peter, John, and James. This past week I became somewhat obsessed with the story of Moses’ transfiguration for two reasons.
The first reason has to do with the word “shone.” We read: “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 to God.” I learned that the word translated “shone” here has an interesting history. “The Hebrew word is qeren, a word often meaning ‘horn.’ And so when Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin in the 4th century C.E., he employed the Latin word for ‘horn.’ Jerome’s Vulgate version of the Scripture was the only version approved for use in the Roman church for many centuries, well up into the 20th century, in fact. Thus, [it was Jermone’s version of] the Bible that the great Italian sculptor, Michelangelo, heard, which lead him to create his wonderful statue of Moses, festooned with horns on his head.” It is also this version that inspired the drawing of Moses by the artist Chagall. (You can see both on the front of your worship guide.) Some argue that Michelangelo created his sculpture from a mistranslation. I’m not so sure about that, for in other ancient sacred literature, horns were a sign of having been in the presence of the divine, of the holy, of God.
As for me, I like to think that maybe Moses did have horns when he came down from the mountain because I like to think that when we are transfigured something significant about us changes. Maybe not horns growing out of our heads. Or our clothes becoming dazzling white. But if not something on the outside of us, surely something on the inside of us changes when we experience the presence of the divine – of God. The very definition of transfiguration is: a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state. When we wear the divine – when we live into those moments of fully being who God created us to be – we do look different. Our appearance is more beautiful and the divine light that is within us shines with exceptional brightness. For most of us, it will not be horns that mark the change. (Although, if I had the opportunity to see God face-to-face I’d be okay walking away with horns.) But more than likely our transfigurations will come on the inside. It will be our hearts that are transfigured: hearts with not just four chambers but hearts with unlimited chambers filled with unending love and beating with unstoppable compassion. More than likely it will be our eyes that are transfigured: changed into eyes that are able to look past the addiction and see a sister’s pain or a brother’s struggle. More than likely it will be our ears that are transfigured: changed to hear the cries of those hurting from poverty, from exclusion, from being marginalized because they don’t conform to the gender norms of society. Maybe those horns that Michelangelo sculpted and Chagall drew on the prophet Moses are to remind us that when we are transfigured it’s not always what we think it will be or look like. For wearing the divine – being fully who God created you to be – will without question transfigure you and us. It will change what we look like. Maybe not on the outside but, surely, on the inside.
I said there were two reasons that I became obsessed with the Moses transfiguration story. The second reason has to do with this veil that Moses would put on and take off. When I read the story the first time I was confused and thought I had read it wrong. It seemed to me the story had it backward. Just a chapter earlier when Moses asked to see God’s face, God responded, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” In scripture, it had always seemed to me that a veil was needed when one was in the presence of God. But here in the transfiguration story of Moses, Moses put the veil on when he spoke to the people and he took it off when he went in to talk with God. I couldn’t stop thinking about this reversal and what to make of it. What an awesome thought that we can stand before God unhidden, unveiled, revealing the fullness of who God created us to be.
As I have reflected on the taking off and putting on the veil I have had two thoughts. I resonate with the idea of not having to wear a veil or hide behind anything when seeking to be in the presence of God. We don’t have to put on anything special. We don’t have to clean up ourselves, wear our Sunday best or act any differently than we do on Saturday night. If we can’t be our unveiled selves before God, then with whom can we be? So I like the idea of no veil when talking to God.
But the story continues. It says that after Moses’ conversation with God, after which his face would be radiant and shining, he would put the veil on in order to protect the people from the divine radiance that might impede their hearing. I think this means that there was justifiable concern that the everyday man and woman would see this radiance and be distracted, and would risk mistaking Moses for God. These folks were known to worship shiny things, so I believe this was meant to be for the good of the people.
But this is one of those stories that has to be told not just in its own time, but in light of what is to come. If the Bible is the story of God’s covenant with God’s people, it is critical that we name this practice of veiling the radiance of God for what it was – paternalism. I don’t believe that God was afraid that common folk couldn’t bear the afterglow of an encounter with God. I believe that men believed that of other men. Powerful, privileged men felt they were “protecting” the masses from what they had been blessed to experience. Believe me when I say that I cast no judgment on Moses for that. I can believe both – that he did what he believed was right AND that what he did was not in the best interest of the people.
My experience is that transfiguration requires a complete removal of ALL veils. If I am hiding my own experience of radiance, I’m holding on to a veil that separates me from the full expression of the divine encounter. And if I’m hiding it in the name of protecting others, I’m most likely hiding myself – either to protect myself or my own power. That’s how I see the veil.
We stand today on the threshold of Lent. My invitation to you, in this holy season, is to wear the divine. I am not talking about the trappings of Lent – giving something up, ashes on the forehead, praying as performance, as Jesus would infer. No, I’m talking about transfiguration. Willingness to drop your own veils and to witness to the divinity that you and you alone carry in the singular miracle that is your life. I dare you, this Lenten season, to be audaciously you, to be flamingly you, to be nakedly you. We can stand in waiting for the miracle of transfiguration, or we can drop the veil and risk realizing we are already in the presence of God.
If, as the song says, “You’ve been ‘fraid of changin’” because you have built your life around wearing veils there is no better time than now to let them landslide to floor. Drop them all. Walk away from them and be the singular miracle that is your life. Wear the divine and be the you that God created!
