I am intrigued by the fact that all three of our Scripture readings have to do with faces. We are highly oriented to faces, and almost take for granted that we will be able to see and scrutinize the faces of politicians, athletes, movie stars, and criminals. More importantly, we have photographs in our homes of the people whom we love--their faces framed on table and shelf, and, attached to the refrigerator. Some are the faces of those who have died: I have photos of all four of my grandparents and my father on display. Of course we also have the faces of babies and children in the next generation. At St. Thomas we have the faces of Vestry members on display. Our faces are photographed for identification cards of all kinds, most especially passports. Faces are very important.

Last week in the "New York Times", I read about some research scientists have done on face recognition. They have concluded that our brains are wired to recognize faces, probably as a matter of survival. Not recognizing a face when one is present, could be fatal; while mistaking something else for a face, rarely has drastic results. This face-pattern programmed into our brains is the reason why so many people see a face in the full moon. It is also the reason that a Florida woman saw the face of Jesus in a toasted cheese sandwich, and some else has an oyster shell with the face of Jesus, and a third person has a cinnamon bun with the face of Mother Teresa. You can see photos of these so called “faces” in the Science Times section of the Feb 13th issue.

I also realize that we use the concept of "face" in everyday conversation. When someone changes direction, we say they have done an “about-face”. When we smooth over an embarrassing mistake, we are “saving face”. When a person is critical in our absence and complimentary in our presence, we say that person is “two-faced”. We also talk about someone having a “long” face, meaning they are sad or discouraged. Finally, we are aware that sometimes we “put on a face” when we are very sad, or angry, and must go to an event where it is inappropriate to show such feelings.

Our faces are often windows to our souls, and that is why there are so many references to faces in the Bible. In the reading from Exodus, we hear that the face of Moses was shining when he came down the mountain from his meeting with God. The words imply that the holy radiance of God’s presence was reflected in Moses’ face, not just on that day, but long after that day, so that Moses had to wear a veil over his face. Perhaps this meant that God gave Moses a share of His Spirit, to strengthen his ability to lead the people. There are several places in the Hebrew Scriptures where individuals met God face to face: Abraham with the 3 strangers, Jacob wrestling with the angel, and in our reading two weeks ago, Isaiah in the Temple, where he saw God seated on his throne. In Psalm 27 and again in Psalm 105, God invites us to “seek his face”. The way we might seek God’s face is to give priority to our relationship with God, to pray and meditate, in short, to become a friend of God.

All of this is helpful in understanding what happened on that other mountain, when Jesus was transfigured. We know from the Gospels that Jesus often went away by himself to pray and that on several occasions he went up a hill or a mountain to pray. There are only two times we hear that he took disciples with him: this one, and in Gethsemane. We don’t know whether he wanted their support, or perhaps wanted them to witness what would happen. What did happen is very similar, deliberately similar, to the experience of Moses: each man went up a mountain to speak with God, whose presence was manifest in a cloud and a voice, and each man’s face was shining as a result. St. Luke says, “the appearance of Jesus face was changed”. The point that Jesus is the true successor of Moses and the prophets, is underlined by the presence of Moses and Elijah on either side of him.

I see three distinct and overlapping meanings in this event. The first one is that Jesus is designated here the “Prophet Like Moses” that God promised to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 18. Like Moses, his task is to teach people the way of God. The second meaning is the strong implication that Jesus is much more than he appeared to be. Up until this event, the disciples were following a man from Nazareth who spoke well and had the power to heal. Now, on the mountain, they saw he was more than a teacher and a healer. Years later Peter or his disciple described this event in the 2nd letter of Peter: “we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God when that voice was conveyed to him by the majestic Glory, saying This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased”. The third meaning of the Transfiguration is the effect it had on the 3 disciples, Peter, James and John. St. Luke reports that Moses and Elijah were speaking to Jesus about “his departure, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem”. If those three disciples made the connection between the idea of Jesus’ departure in Jerusalem, and his words a few days earlier about how he would undergo great suffering and be rejected by the chief priests and killed, it is not surprising that they were awestruck, and afterwards, they said nothing to anyone.

Later, after the resurrection of Jesus, they must have talked about this experience, or we wouldn’t have this extraordinary passage from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. St. Paul’s thought is not clear in today’s reading, because he makes three jumps, omitting the connecting ideas. The first jump, is from the physical veil over the face of Moses, to a mental veil over the minds of people who listen to the Books of Moses. What St. Paul is doing, is creating the metaphor of a veil, and then transferring that metaphorical veil from Moses to those who listen to Moses. Remember that the purpose of the veil, is to hide the shining face of one who has seen God.

St. Paul claims that when a person turns to Christ, the metaphorical veil is removed. How I wish he had explained this! Apparently, it means that those who turn to Christ, can now see a shining face. What St. Paul actually says is, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. That is the second jump: what is the connection between the removal of the veil, and the freedom given by the Spirit? My best guess is, that without the metaphorical veil, we can see clearly the "truth" of the Spirit’s presence in Christ, and therefore, by that clarity and that faith, we are free to “act with great boldness”, which are St. Paul’s words at the beginning of this passage. Probably St.Paul was describing his own boldness and his own sense of freedom, and then saying, this freedom and this boldness belong to all Christians.

The third jump St. Paul makes, is to say "not only" that we can see, without a veil over our minds OR over our eyes, the glory of the Lord, "but also" that “all of us are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another”. Something is happening to us, as we look at Christ. In some way, his transfiguration is passed on to those who look at Christ with faith. What does this mean? In order to make sense of it, we need to remember the claim made in Genesis, that human beings, ALL human beings, are made in God’s image. Then, I need to tell you about the speculation in first century Jewish literature, that when the end of the age comes, God’s elect will be transformed by the light and glory of God. In the first book of Enoch (38:4), it says that sinners will not be able to look upon the faces of the elect. In the second book of Baruch (51:3, 5, 10) it says of the righteous, “the shape of their face will be changed into the light of their beauty, so that they may receive the undying world which is promised to them . .” St. Paul must have been familiar with these ideas, and he is using them to describe a transformation that begins here and now, not at the end of the age.

Now we have come to the heart of the matter. The living spiritual connection between Christ, and the person who put his or her faith in Christ, means that we are gradually formed in the image of Christ, and the Greek word for image is "e????". In other words, "we" become icons of Christ. St. Paul says this over and over, and I have never seen it before: in Romans (8:29) “we are conformed to the image of God’s son”, and in I Corinthians (15:51), “we shall all be changed”, and in Galatians (4:19) “until Christ is formed in you”, and in II Corinthians (5:17), “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”. St. Paul urges us to “be transformed” (Rom 12:2), to cooperate with this spiritual change, and allow ourselves to become more and more like Christ. And it is clearly a gradual process: “from one degree of glory to another”. Although my focus at the beginning of the sermon was on faces, St. Paul is not talking about a physical change. He is talking about an inner transformation, which will become visible in our faces, the windows to our hearts, our souls.

To the extent that transformation is ongoing in us, we ARE able to do things we couldn’t have done before. We are able to go the second mile, we are able to tell the story of our faith, we are able to feed the hungry, to visit the sick, and to welcome the stranger. People who put their faith in Jesus "are changed": there is an inner shift which shows in behavior which is unselfish, generous, loving, and bold. Therefore I say to you, meditate on the Transfiguration of Jesus, but look for his image, in one another’s faces. Amen