I once went to Italy. I was in college.
For this polite Episcopalian from South Carolina it was an eye opening experience, in a good way, in many ways it set me free. Italians have a way of doing that.
One day when I toured the Vatican I saw the famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo. The sculpture depicts Moses with untamed curly hair and two horns growing out of his head.
I was unsettled by this and I soon learned that it has to do with a curious translation issue from the original Hebrew in the book of Exodus.
It has to do with when Moses came down from the Mountain after having been exposed to the glory of God and receiving the second set of stone tablets. The Hebrew can be translated to mean either that the skin of his face had grown radiant or that the skin of his face had grown horns.
Usually it is translated that Moses skin shone or was radiant, but the original Latin Vulgate translation by St. Jerome, which Michelangelo read, was translated that Moses had grown horns.
The intended meaning is probably a both/and rather than an either/or kind of interpretative issue- the meaning being that Moses had grown horns of radiant light, dazzling spikes of illumination, much like how Marc Chagall depicts Moses in his color-filled paintings, the bulletin cover today being one example.
Moses then had to veil his face from that point on, to shield the people from being constantly disoriented and overwhelmed.
Moses had been transfigured by God’s glory, irradiated, changed.
I spent two days at the Vatican over twenty years ago, the one memory that stays with me is of Moses changed, disfigured by the vision of God’s glory, he still holds my attention, and my fear.
It was a waking up event for me to be confronted by the reality that God isn’t always as safe and comforting as I had grown up thinking. That God is dangerous, that God transforms whatever or whoever gets too close, that we are not the same person afterward, whoever we were before is gone was new to me.
Disturbing thoughts at any time, especially for a polite Episcopalian from South Carolina.
Moses prayed, “Show me your glory” because without the glory of God Moses and the people of Israel lost all meaning, all purpose, all distinction from others and if they were to accomplish the exodus they would need much more than just their own resources, they needed God’s Presence, with a capital P.
It was and is understandable, “God be with us so that we can survive”, but God’s life sustaining presence, God’s life giving glory, comes at a cost, giving up who we were to become who God made us to be.
God’s glory shining from a human face. Think about that. God’s life giving light shining from a person, God’s glory is contagious, passed along.
St. Irenaeous wrote that, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” , “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
I wonder if he was thinking of Moses when he wrote that?
Irenaeous went on to write that, “The life of humanity is the vision of God.”, “The life of humanity is the vision of God.”
God’s glory is the life sustaining breath and blood of all creation, without which we cease to exist, the further we stray from that glory the more we wither and die, the closer we grow toward and see that glory the more alive we become, catching and reflecting God’s light.
Where do we behold this glory? Where do we look? Where do we encounter this illuminating presence?
Scripture, the sacraments, beauty, song, praise, justice, compassion these are all true and good and valid.
But Moses, Ambrose, Michelangelo, Chagall, Irenaeus, Jesus the Incarnate God himself all direct us to the human face, the human image of God. The artists, the poets, the Saints, the incarnate God all end up in the same place: encountering God’s glory in human form and presence, in human flesh and bone.
The human face, it points us beyond what we know to the One who knows us and who directs our attention back again to one another, over and over again until we begin to see one another changed by horns of transforming glory, spikes of light, “shining like the sun” as Thomas Merton says.
It is the vision that sustains us and that makes us who we are.
This is our mission: to receive, confess, proclaim and share this flesh and blood encounter and expression of divine glory in Jesus Christ.
That is the first thing we hear and say after baptism, the moment of birth. Turn to page 308 of the Prayer Book. “Let us welcome the newly baptized”, (The Celebrant and Congregation in unison say) “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”
Receiving, confessing, proclaiming and sharing the human face of God’s glory, Jesus the Incarnate God. That is what we are about, this human-divine person is the life and breath of the world. We can never see one another, we can never see the world in the same way again after the waters of baptism, liquid glory has wet our eyes.
That face of glory holds our attention, that face invites us to see further and further, more and more, beyond our own concerns to a whole world that has lost touch with glory, that has lost touch with the eternal value of human life, that degrades and devalues the human face.
When we ignore one another, when we ignore the world we ignore God, when we degrade one another, when we degrade the world we blaspheme. When we reach out, when we adore one another, God’s glory is set loose in epidemic proportions, a rising tide of light.
Where do we go to see the glory of God?
The witnesses have spoken, their testimony is true, in the human face, weary with the long day, delighted with seeing an old friend, gaunt and sick and hungry, newborn and smooth, wrinkled and full of days, beaten and cut, bright and animated, silent with death.
The human face, the image of God, passing us by as the Lord before Moses on Sinai, transforming us with light uncreated, beholding we are beheld.