Behold the Glory and Goodness of God

Reflections on Luke 9:28-36

O God, you are in the midst of us. Help us to know it. Help us to be it. Amen.

The last Sunday in Epiphany has these fabulous readings that describe what it means to encounter the glory of God. In the case of both Moses and Jesus, this manifests as– well, a glow up. And in both the case of Moses and Jesus, the folks around them respond in this really interesting way. You know, we talk and sing a lot about how wonderful the glory of God is– we praise God for Their glory. When we’re trying to be humble we say that the work we’re doing is all for the glory of God. But here we see… when folks actually encounter the glory of God, it’s too much. The Israelites found it so disturbing the way Moses’ new glass skin shone that they wouldn’t even come near him and he needed to wear a veil to go about his life. 

This hits a certain way if you’ve ever experienced the things you know to be blessings, perhaps your deepest joy, be called an illness or a perversion or a sin. 

If you’ve ever had to go around hiding a part of yourself. 

If you’ve ever been told that you are “too much.”

Now, Peter had the discernment to know what he was seeing was good…

our guy can often be clueless, but in this moment he’s starting on the right track… 

but he still almost immediately wanted to pen Jesus and Moses and Elijah in their own nice little dwellings there on the mountaintop. He wanted to contain the glory of God into these neat, orderly, human crafted boxes. And while I’m sure they would have been beautiful containers, given literally for the glory of God, they still would have been what they were intended to be: boxes, set aside on the top of a mountain, perhaps far off the beaten path. Relegated to the edges of our awareness, shut away from our day to day lives.

But you see, God intervened, as God so often does when we’re up to our shenanigans, and manifests this cloud, and this is where I always envision the voice they hear as having that real “Parent voice” quality… you know, the one where you don’t even have to say words… you just go <make a dad voice sound>... that voice…and like, what do you do when you hear that voice? YOU STOP. Whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re saying. Cause that’s the “I mean business” voice. And God basically says, “Hey knucklehead, you’re not in charge here. I am, which means he is.”

Now listen, it’s easy to pick on Peter… The thing about being The Rock the Church was built on is that a lot of his shenanigans got written down and we get more insight into his knuckleheaded behavior in a way we don’t see as much of say, Bartholomew’s. Cause we all get things twisted. We’re just human. We can’t see things from God’s point of view and can’t always see the forest for the trees. That’s fine. 

But I think it’s good to consider Peter’s response to encountering the glory of God, alongside how the Israelites responded, as cautionary tales. Too often, when we encounter the glory of God, it freaks us out, because it is too much for us. It makes us uncomfortable, because God is greater than we mere mortals can handle, and rather than accepting in humility that reality, we try to contain God inside our understanding. In fact, I would argue that this is part of the theological problem of God’s glory itself– what the heck even is glory? From a dictionary definition perspective, “glory” roughly means “magnificence,” “greatness,” “splendor,” “grandeur,” “beauty.” It’s a word that doesn’t easily lend itself to definition because every other word or set of words that could be used to describe it falls short of the fullness of its meaning… Like God. And so we often map onto it those aspects of God which we find most compelling or easiest to grasp. God’s love. God’s power. God’s goodness. God’s image. But then we try to nail those down– to contain them within the limits of our understanding.

The glory of God is transformative, expansive, and calls us into a more nuanced and mindful understanding of our world and one another. All the boxes that we develop–those categorizations that allow us to go about our lives without having to think too much are useful. If you are a hunter-gatherer in the wilderness, you need to be able to quickly identify if that rustling in the bushes is a squirrel or a saber tooth cat. It is vital to be able to tell which plants are medicine and which ones are poison. And as a species that relies on in-group interdependency and cooperation to stay alive, developing group norms and roles and a shared culture is absolutely necessary. But when our norms, categories, and roles are too rigid or simplistic, they can be counterproductive– even deadly. “Red and sweet is good to eat” is a nice guideline, but that doesn’t mean every sweet, red berry is safe, nor does it mean that berries which are not red or sweet are always poison. 

Theologians have spent thousands of years wrestling with defining the nature of God and what that means for us as God’s people. This is at the heart of the spiritual life– seeking to know God, recognize God, be in relationship with God. But all the language we use to describe God is always imperfect– it never quite encapsulates the fullness of God’s glory. And so often, when we get ourselves too committed to a single set of attributes or try to nail God down like Christ on the Cross, that is when we stray from the good road. That is when, in trying to make everything make sense, we go from that which is life-giving and liberating to that which becomes a prison and deals death. Indeed, at the root of the rejection of Jesus’ teachings and ministry is a rejection of the way they break open the containers of God’s mercy and justice. 

We want control. We want to be able to wrap our heads around things. We want to be comfortable. Because we think that is what will make us happy and keep us safe. So we build fences and create hard and fast rules and develop binary systems and zero-sum games. We have us and them, in and out, good and evil. But life isn’t that simple. God isn’t that simple. We will never be able to open ourselves up enough or empty our minds of enough of our own crap to make enough space for God’s glory, but we can start by pausing, and looking at the glory of God all around us, and simply letting it be what it is. Letting ourselves encounter one another from a place of curiosity– listening to understand, not to respond. Being generous enough to assume that other people’s behavior makes sense to them, even if it doesn’t make sense to us, and trying to open ourselves up to their perspectives. We can pause and ask ourselves: does another person coming in mean that we are pushed out? Does another person’s goodness being affirmed in any way deny our own goodness? All of this stretching to open ourselves to one another makes space for God’s glory precisely because our being created in God’s image means that the wild variety of the human condition is a reflection, like Moses’ dewey, glowy skin, of the glory of God.

We may only ever be able to perceive and encounter God’s glory in momentary glimpses or mediated through the veil of the limits of our understanding, but it is all around us. We may believe that it is only on far-away mountaintops or in neat little boxes and grand cathedrals, but in reality it is always at hand, if we’re willing to be open to it. We may want to bottle it up, but God will not be bottled up. And that includes within ourselves. God calls us into lives that point to God’s glory and so often we resist that call and hide behind veils, but know this: God created you, all of you, in God’s image and to God’s own glory. And while we are all broken in our ways, accepting that we ourselves are images of God with dignity can break the cycles of pain and insecurity that cause us to deny the dignity and goodness in one another. It is from this place of self-acceptance– self-acceptance and humility– because while all of us are images of God, none of us is the image of God– we can have the security to know that another person being different from us and also good does nothing to diminish our goodness. 

I’ll leave you with this: how would your life be different– how would our communities be different– if we could behold the glory and goodness of God just a little more and resist the urge to put God– and one another– and ourselves– inside containers we construct or which we have inherited?