| Moses and the Transfiguration |
|
According to Jewish legend a Rabbi called Simeon, was once forced to live in a cave for 12 years because of his outspoken criticism of the Roman occupation. Rabbi Simeon, during this enforced time of hiding, entered into a period of intense religious study and when at length he emerged from his seclusion he had reached such a sublime degree of spirituality that initially he could not tolerate the sight of simple people going about their daily activities. He would instead direct his gaze at the unfortunates and they, poor things, would burst into flames. God was most displeased with this unhealthy attitude and "grounded" the Rabbi, ordering him back to the cave for an additional twelve years until he learned how to conduct himself properly in human society.
In modern times the Spiritual leader Sai Barbar, by all accounts a man gifted in the ability to bring healing, to transform into light, to even appear in peoples room, vision like, when they were physically hundreds of miles away, is a man who, while transfigured, seems to have been unable to integrate this gift with the challenges of the everyday and so his light has been shadowed by material excess and accusations of sexual misconduct.
According to the story that we heard today from the book of Exodus Moses has developed into a man who embodies a sublime degree of spirituality, so sublime, in fact, that his face radiated like the sun and he chose to wear a veil so as to not frighten those folk around him.
Moses had been to the mountain and back and he had been changed by his experience. It is always a challenge to return home after life transforming events always hard to come ‘back down to earth’ but come home we all must and the question that often arises for people is: Who am I now and how do I integrate this experience into my everyday.
Now you may be wondering exactly what type of experiencing I could be referring to and imagining that you certainly have never climbed a mountain and chatted with God as Christ and Abraham did in the tales of transfiguration that we heard this morning but all of us, every single person gathered here today has been transformed by events and has then had to re-enter the everyday.
Events such as the birth of a baby, or the death of a loved one, events of intense physical endurance like swimming a race or running a marathon, events like an overseas journey or surviving an accident, events like living through a war, as a solider or as the one left behind, events like marriage or divorce or immigration, events like watching your children have children, like watching your children leave home Events large and small, universal or particular that leave us feeling that nothing will ever be the same again and now we have changed and now, and now and now what?
the moment led to the creation of a tabernacle and a tent in which it could be housed, a massive undertaking requiring time and dedication.
So for both men the transfiguring moment was a spur to continue following their calling from God, to continue being true to the dangerous and difficult paths that they were already treading. And so unlike the Rabbi Simeon, or Sai Baba, Moses and Christ do not allow their transfiguring experience to cloud their grounded reality.
They do not get carried away with the grandeur of their mountaintop experience but instead they just climb back down and keep on walking…
We all have the capacity to be transfigured, to be altered or changed by profound experience, and after such moments we are all the left with the question, what now?
Let us look to Christ and Moses for the answers. Let’s climb down and keep walking and let’s not forget, that our faces can indeed shine like the sun. Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
