In the Cloud

Exodus 24:12-18         The Lord said to 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 their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.” Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Matthew 17:1-9 Six days later, 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. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

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My little dog, Chuy, thinks that every time we go out for a walk around the block it’s a whole new experience.  Every time we pass that one fascinating mailbox, it’s like he’s never seen it before.  Every time a motorcycle drives by, Chuy lunges forward as if to say, “what is that extraordinary thing, I have never seen anything like it before!” It’s annoying, but also kind of cute. 

I think when Peter, James, and John followed Jesus to the mountain they were like Chuy – although maybe a little cooler about it – they didn’t leap up in the air with their tongues hanging out.  But like Chuy, they thought they were witnessing something that had never happened before.

Well, it was strange, wasn’t it?  When Jesus took Peter and James and John to the mountain, they saw him transfigured – transformed somehow.  It’s not clear exactly what this transformation was.  The best they could do was to say that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.  He was almost too much, too intense, to look at.  His appearance was otherworldly.

And at the same time, Moses and Elijah appeared before them, on either side of Jesus.  We asked at the roundtable, how did they know it was Moses and Elijah.  They didn’t have experiences like this every day, in fact, probably never before.  So how did they know what they were seeing?  Possibly, they recognized them from their childhood picture Bibles.  Or they might have been wearing nametags that said, “Hello, my name is Elijah,” and “Hello, my name is Moses.”  But the truth is, we don’t know how they knew.  They just knew.

They probably just knew intuitively, by the way they were feeling.  You know that feeling you get all over when you encounter something awesome, or awful, something otherworldly.  Something that defies logic but is, nonetheless, real. 

And they thought, Wow.  Nothing like this has ever happened before.  But, actually, it had.  Moses, had he wanted to, could have told them all about it.

Many hundreds of years earlier, the Lord called Moses to come up on the mountaintop, and he went.  He took his disciple, Joshua, with him. They waited.  The glory of the Lord shone like a cloud covering the mountaintop.  They waited six days, then on the seventh day, the Lord called Moses, and Moses entered the cloud.  Pretty extraordinary stuff.  But it’s not all.  This wasn’t the first, nor the last, time God showed Godself.

Earlier in the Exodus story, God made arrangements with Moses for the people of Israel to have an opportunity to hear from God directly.  It was taken very, very seriously.  The people had to be consecrated.  Then a perimeter had to be set up to prevent them from getting too close.  And when the day arrived, the third day, God spoke from the mountaintop directly to the people of Israel.  

It turned out to be more of a relationship than they were interested in.  They were terrified.  They told Moses, “In the future, you go talk with God.  You go and listen to what God says, come back and tell us everything God says we should do, and we will do it.  But for the love of all that is good, please do not make us go near God again.”

And so Moses held private conversations with God after that, in the cloud.  The cloud by which it seems God had come to them throughout their journey from Egypt.  In the Exodus story, they say God showed them the way to where they were going with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  The cloud and the fire are the images of the mystery and the awesomeness of God.

As the story goes, Moses would have frequent conversations with God, on the mountain, in the cloud.  Later on, he began to take on an eerie, and apparently disturbing, glow when he came back from these meetings.  His face shone.  It was so upsetting to the people that he began wearing a veil over his face so they wouldn’t have to see it.  It was closer to the divine than they were comfortable with.

Moses, apparently, had grown comfortable with his role as the liaison with God through years of practice.  The first encounter he had with God was the burning bush – an awesome, awful thing.  He was helplessly drawn to it, and as he approached he heard the Voice: remove the sandals from your feet, for you are standing on holy ground.  From here on, Moses could not escape the role that God had chosen for him as the one who would bring his people to freedom.

Moses did lead the people of Israel out of slavery and through the wilderness and into the covenant with God that would guide them up to this very day.  Thanks to Moses’ private conversations with God in the cloud.

Flash forward from that wilderness experience many hundreds of years, to Jesus and his disciples.  Far away from everyone else, in a wilderness on top of a mountain, the scene repeats.  Moses even makes an appearance. 

Peter, James, and John stood below them a bit, just like Joshua had stood below while Moses conversed with God.  Wide-eyed and slack-jawed.  They had never seen anything like this before.  But once he pulled his face together and was able to speak, Peter says something brilliant: Let’s build some little houses up here, shrines that people can visit.  Let’s take this feeling and capture it, bottle it, commodify it, sell it or give it away –

It’s hard to know exactly what Peter was thinking here.  Perhaps it was just nervous rambling, without any clear intention.  Then the bright cloud came over them and they heard the Voice, essentially telling him to stop talking and listen.  Listen to the beloved Son. 

In the cloud, Peter and James and John were given the opportunity to see that God had drawn near to them, pretty much without their even knowing it.  This same God of their ancestors who were too afraid to stand in God’s presence; the God of Moses and Elijah; the God who had led them safely through the wilderness and delivered them to the promised land; the God who did not abandon them ever, through exile and persecution, even attempted genocide at the hands of many peoples, even up to the 20^th century, as we well know. 

You see the connections?  What happened with Peter, James, and John and Jesus has happened before.  The cloud, the voice, the shining face.  The mountaintop.  The six days, the forty days and forty nights.  We are meant to know that this is directly connected to the God of Israel. 

The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is important for telling us that this is the Christ, the incarnation of the God of Israel.  Everything about the story is meant to make the connection between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament.  That for us, and for our salvation, God came down and took on flesh, becoming truly human.  To show us God’s intention for us – to live in communion with God, through Christ.  It is an extraordinary epiphany.  God is here, and God’s love is becoming more expansive – it now includes us. 

We know this from the cloud, that incredible mountaintop experience.  But this knowledge becomes working knowledge when we come down from the mountain.  The knowledge of God’s expansive love becomes purposeful when we take it out into the world.

This is what was wrong with Peter’s brilliant idea about building shrines on the mountain.  He wanted to capture it, keep it; either stay there with it, or carry it around like a bubble of euphoria.  He wanted to stay in the cloud.  But that’s not the purpose of the cloud.

After Jesus led Peter, James, and John down from the mountain, they were approached by a man who fell on his knees before Jesus.  He begged Jesus to heal his son who was afflicted with epilepsy.  And so Jesus did.  This is the purpose of the cloud – to touch, to heal, to bless, to love.

There is no staying on the mountain and reveling in the glory.  The meaning of this communion with God is found in the connections we make with others.  When Jesus heals and consoles, when he teaches and uplifts, he is living out the perfect relationship with God.  He asks us to follow his example. 

There is a tendency for Christians to segregate ourselves, creating exclusive communities, clouds of other people like us.  We find it easier to be with people who share our values and beliefs and practices and preferences.  It’s a lot of trouble to get to know people who have different values and beliefs and practices and preferences.  But, for the sake of the world, for the love of Jesus, it is essential that we start going to the trouble.

There is a lot of hate in our land these days.  Much of it has been directed toward our brothers and sisters, the Jews.  We have seen Neo-Nazi groups come out of the shadows.  We have heard about multiple bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers, places where people go for water aerobics and youth basketball, and send their kids to preschool.  We have seen the vandalization of an historic Jewish cemetery in St Louis. 

We should not fail to notice that the first ones to come forward to help the Jews in St Louis were the Muslims.  Just as, when the Muslims lost their mosque in Victoria, Texas a few weeks ago, the Jews were the first to come forward and help.  Where are the Christians?

The Christians were late to the game in Texas.  Late to the game in St Louis.  The truth seems to be that Christians in America are slow to condemn acts of hate against another group, and that is disturbing.  That is something that needs to change.

Friends, we must get out of our Christian cloud and enter the mix where we encounter others who pray differently but love the same as we do, because God loves them all.  We must shed our complacency about our faith, and let go of any notions that we are the persecuted ones, get out of our Christian cloud and respond to a world in need of love.

The mountaintop is pretty great.  And the cloud is amazing.  But let’s not spend too much time there, because there is much work to do on the ground.

Keeping It Simple, Part 4: Be Perfect?

1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23  According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Matthew 5:38-48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

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For four weeks we have been spending time with Jesus at the sermon on the mount.  And we have been reading from Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.  Our focus while reading these scriptures is on getting down to the basics, trying to keep things simple in our faith and our life.  So what are these simple facts that we can live by?

We began with being united in Christ.  The challenge of looking at someone with whom you disagree – maybe violently – and seeing in that person a beloved child of God.  Then we talked about being an example.  When we encounter hate, our Christian calling asks us to resist with love.  The world seems to love violence, but as Christians, we are called upon to show an alternative way.  The way Jesus put it in his sermon, being salt and light in the world, because when we do that, we bring a little bit of the kingdom of God into this world.  Others might respond and do likewise.

Last week we talked about being honest, and that means, first and foremost, being honest with yourself.  Once we have courageously looked at our own flaws with open eyes, and forgiven ourselves, we can work on creating more authentic relationships with others.  It is, once again, basically about relationships between people.

This week we are going to talk about being perfect.  I did not choose that word – Jesus did.  I realize it is a word that makes us feel very uncomfortable.  So let’s talk about that.

Folks at the roundtable had stories to share about perfectionists they have known.  Listening to each of the stories, it became clear that when we insist on perfection for ourselves, we become unhappy.  It’s miserable.  Because if you are shooting for personal perfection, again and again and again you will fail.  And for a perfectionist, failure is not an option.

I know this well.  I am a recovering perfectionist. 

I remember the moment I fully realized this.  I was book-browsing and I came across a book cover that showed a row of three people sitting in chairs facing the camera.  They appeared to be judges in a competition – the kind of thing you might see at diving or gymnastics competitions.  After a competitor performs, the judges each hold up a big card with a number on it to indicate how they have rated the performance.  In this picture, one judge held up a 10, the next judge held up a 10, and the third judge held up 9.5 – and my instant reaction was to zoom in on the 9.5 and think, “what did I do wrong?”  Because when I looked at the book cover it looked like they were judging me.[1] 

This is what a perfectionist does.  We hate to see any evidence that we are not perfect.  But, of course, we all know that we are not perfect.  In fact, our faith tells us this in so many ways.  Each week we confess our sins, reminding ourselves that we all fall short of the glory of God.  A colleague recently described leading a group of church members in a Bible study.  When she suggested a prayer of confession, they declined, saying they were not aware of any sins they had committed this week.  But the central story of our faith is the story about how God came down to earth, took on human flesh, and suffered and died for the salvation of the world.  The world could not save itself.  The world still cannot save itself.  We are hopelessly flawed.

How, then, are we to understand Jesus’ command to be perfect?  How is it possible for sinners to be perfect? 

Take a deep breath. 

The idea of perfection stresses us out.  We start to look for loopholes, or alternative understandings of this sentence – nitpicking the definition of the word.  What do we call this?  Legalism.  At the roundtable, we looked at a different translation of the verse that said, “just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”  The word that most versions translate as “perfect,” this other one translates as “complete.”  Somehow, this word feels more acceptable.  We said, “Perfect, I can’t do, but complete sounds like something I can manage.”  But, in this context?  Can you be completely loving to everyone?  Really?  Even if we substitute a different word, we are still trapped in the same impossible situation.  And it leads some of us to take some shortcuts.

I have been reading Hillbilly Elegy[2] for our upcoming book discussion group, and I was especially interested in the section where the author, JD, describes the religious experiences of his childhood.  He attended church with his father where the primary concern seemed to be criticizing other Christians – those who weren’t Christian enough.  In his church, he heard more about what they called the “gay lobby” and the “war on Christmas” than he did about any particular character trait that a Christian should aspire to have.  Morality was defined by drawing the lines far away from the things that would be a part of their personal experience.  Morality was defined as not participating in this or that, things which these church members wouldn’t be likely to participate in anyway.  JD writes, “church required so little of me.  It was easy to be a Christian.”

One thing I know about the Christianity of Jesus is that it is not easy.  It demands something of us, something that feels impossible at times.  It demands that we see ourselves as the temple of God, the dwelling place of God’s Spirit.  It demands that we become salt and light, that we love one another, and furthermore, that we take an honest inventory of our shortcomings as we strive toward perfection.  Perfection!

You know, there is a huge difference between simple and easy.  It is easy to say, “Don’t be gay,” if you are not gay.  There is nothing particularly virtuous about saying, “Don’t be gay.”  It is harder to say, “Love your enemies and reconcile with those who have harmed you.”  And it is even harder to practice it.

But the simplicity is found when we seek the truth about these things.  We find that it is only through God that any of this is possible.  Like any addict who has worked through the 12 Steps can tell us, the first step is admitting you are powerless over these things, whatever your particular addiction or sin might be.  The second step is to realize that only a higher power, only God, can save you.  The third step is to turn your life over to God’s care. 

I ran into an old friend recently I had not seen in a while.  He told me he just celebrated a year of sobriety.  I congratulated him, saying I know it’s not easy.  He said, “without God it’s impossible.  With God, it’s easy.”  Easy.

Maybe it truly does feel easy to him at this moment, especially compared to how impossible his life was before.  It won’t always be easy, because we are human beings who all fall short of the glory of God. And it is to all us sinful human beings Jesus is speaking when he says to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  what does he mean when he says be perfect?  look at everything he has been saying for the past 48 verses.  He means to do more than what is expected of you, to let your righteousness exceed the Scribes and the Pharisees, to be salt and light.  It won’t always be easy, but it will be simple – as simple as the command to love God and love one another.  Foolishly simple, Paul might even say.

Open your heart, surrender your will, to God.  Become God’s instrument for peace in the world.  Be the temple of God, where God’s Spirit dwells, where – if we are willing to let go of our worldly wisdom and egos to receive this Spirit – extraordinary things may happen. 

Let the Spirit work in you.  Imitate Jesus.  This is, by the way, not a once and done thing.  It is a life-long journey, a day by day endeavor.  Each day, let his perfection work through you, because God knows we cannot do it by ourselves.  It’s that simple.

Photo:  Campus Ministry students trying to draw freehand perfect circles.  It's hard.

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[1] I can’t remember the title of the book, but it was about perfectionism.

[2] Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance.