“Makeover”
Exodus 34:29-35
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For the better part of 20 years now, reality television has fed viewers a steady diet of makeover shows. Whether it was the Extreme Makeover that offered drastic changes to a person’s body, the Extreme Home Makeover that offered drastic changes to family’s home, or any number of style makeovers from Queer Eye to America’s Top Model to What Not to Wear. It’s a trend that started on daytime talk shows, a little makeup, a new wardrobe and voilà, a whole new you. In the nineties’ film Hope Floats, the lead character, Birdie, is lured to just such a talk show with the promise of a makeover. Only it turns out that she is there to find out in front of a national and studio audience that her husband is leaving her for her best friend. When she flees her life and returns to her childhood home, her mother asks why she would go on national television and humiliate herself in such a way. “I thought I was getting a free makeover,” she answers. “Well,” her mother replies, “you sure got one.” When Moses went back up Mount Sinai with two newly cut tablets to replace the first set that he threw to the ground and destroyed in a fit of anger at the people’s worship of the golden calf, he must have had some idea of what awaited him up there. This would not be his first sit-down with the Almighty, he’d been in God’s holy presence before. But what he doesn’t realize as he returns down the mountain is that his prolonged exposure to the radiant glory of God has left him with something of his own kind of makeover. It is not uncommon to hear someone remark on the glow of an expectant mother, or the radiance of a bride on her wedding day. When life is going well, when someone lands that new job, or gets accepted to a program of study, or finds themselves in the throws of love, we can often tell something is going on with them just by looking at them. We might not guess the details, still, we know because we can see it in the beaming look on their face. Like Moses in this story, the person in question may not even realize it themselves; how their appearance has changed. But the shine on Moses’ face is more than the product of his personal happiness, or any other set of accompanying emotions. The translation here is a little tricky because the word that is used to describe Moses’ “shining” face is only used one other place in Hebrew scripture. It’s in the Psalms, and the same word is used to describe a display of horns, like those of an animal. In fact, in one of the more bizarre examples of biblical literalism gone wrong, the sculptor Michelangelo took this language as his guide and depicted Moses with actual horns protruding from the top of his head. I briefly considered making the picture of that sculpture the cover of our bulletin, but I didn’t want to freak anyone out. What this funny little word tells us is that something more substantial than a transitory emotional radiance is beaming from Moses’ face as he returns from sitting down with God. Something of God’s glory has been passed along to Moses, and it has transformed him. The shining doesn’t merely brighten his face, it flows out of him. And yet despite the magnitude of such a change, he isn’t aware of it until he sees the reaction of his brother and the rest of the people of Israel. He doesn’t know it because the transformation that’s taken place isn’t the result of something he has done to improve himself, it’s something that has been done to him by prolonged exposure to glory of God. Because he didn’t produce this change in himself, that he means he doesn’t really have control over how God is at work through him. And all because he has spent a considerable amount of time in God’s presence. Not just a few minutes here and there, or an hour or so each week if that. We are told that Moses was with God at the top of that mountain for forty days and nights, which is the bible’s way of saying, “a really long time." But we belong to a culture of quick fixes. We don’t have that kind of time to just sit around and wait. Whether it’s a broken taillight or a broken heart, we tend to go in for the quickest and easiest repair that will allow us to get on down the road just a quick as we can. We have little patience for the part that has to be ordered, or the time that must pass before we feel up to the risky prospect of venturing into a world of uncertain connections. What we see in Moses’ experience is that the transformation that God works in our lives requires this kind of long-term exposure. Not thirty minutes in the tanning bed or a trip to the Express Lube. Too often when we don’t see immediate results, don’t feel the Spirit moving in our lives the way we think it should, or the way we see it working for other people, we’re ready to give up the whole business. The minute something stops working the way we want it to, or making the kind of progress we think it should be making- whether that’s a car, or a hobby, or a relationship, or even our faith- we look for the quickest fix we can find. And if one can’t be found, then we’re just as likely to toss it out and look for something else as we are to spend the time it takes for God to work in us the kinds of transformation that is truly meaningful. The same could be said, really, for the way we engage in the world around us when it is less than ideal. Of course, when we do spend the time, when we put ourselves in a position to be made over by God so that we more closely resemble who God would have us be, we are left to confront the fears such a transformation may raise in those around us. Because let’s face it, change is unsettling. Change challenges expectations and assumptions about the way things are, and it disrupts whatever we try to impose on the world around us. Moses didn’t just look different, like he suddenly cut off his beard and changed his hair and now look. No, he reflects the very holiness of God, that supreme otherness that distinguishes the creator from the creation. The glory that Moses reflects isn’t like the glory we’re used to seeing flaunted by modern athletes and celebrities walking the red carpet, who seem only to call attention to themselves. This is God’s glory that shines forth. This isn’t just a whole new Moses that the people see, it is a vision of the holy behind and beyond all that Moses is. This is like God’s eye for you and me. What’s revealed on Moses’ face is a glimpse of something that all too often lies beyond our capacity to see. So that when it finally stands before us in the face of someone, we thought we knew, the sight of it stops us dead in our tracks. It stops the people of Israel, not because they see Moses, but because they see something of the glory of God. It is the same for Peter, James and John on that mountain with Jesus. The vision of their teacher transfigured before them is overwhelming. Peter babbles something about building structures to house Jesus and Moses and Elijah as though what he sees could be contained. Ultimately, Moses’ shining face is not the lasting result of his trip to the mountain of God. That really wasn’t the point of his going. Moses didn’t go up there in the hope of getting a one-of-a-kind makeover. Too often I think our lives of faith are presented in this way. It is seen as a quest for the mountaintop, for the high of divine illumination. I had a college classmate who heard about the church some of the other students in his program were attending. They described these amazing religious experiences, and he went along hoping for one himself. We wanted to capture some of that holiness. “I waited and waited to feel something,” he complained, “and nothing happened. Moses didn’t go up the mountain looking for that Coppertone glow. No, he went up the mountain with two new tablets, in the hope that God would make a covenant with God’s people. That’s what he came down with. That is what he wanted to share with God’s people. He wasn’t up there for the glow, it was just one of the side effects. That shining face was secondary to the promise God had made to be their God, if they would be God’s people. His face was just the sign of something that told them this promise had indeed come from God alone, and no other. That is how God makes over our lives and transforms us, not by sending us up the mountain, but by sending us down with a vision of the world transformed, and not just ourselves. That is what Jesus was talking about with Moses and Elijah on his mountain, about what was going to happen in Jerusalem. This coming Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. The forty days and nights to come lead us to Jerusalem and to a different kind of mountaintop experience. Just a hill, really. Where a new covenant was sealed, and the glory of God was revealed. The forty days and nights ahead are an invitation to spend a little more time with God as we move toward the fulfillment of that covenant. Who knows, along the way we just might find ourselves made over in unexpected and glorious ways. Alleluia, Amen.
