Not even Abraham long before had seen and spoken with God face to face.  We might point to the three mysterious visitors to whom Abraham offers welcome and hospitality, but even if we take these three as one visitor, the Lord, He is showing Himself to Abraham in the veil of human likeness.  Only Moses, and Elijah after him, and only Adam before them, beheld the glory of the Lord.  Adam chose blindness; Moses and Elijah sought God’s face.  In the case of Moses and Elijah, God shielded them so the glory would not overwhelm them.  To Moses, God said

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in                        your presence.  I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on                            whom I will have compassion.  But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me                        and live.”

Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.  When my                          glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have                            passed by.  Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be                            seen” (Ex 33:19-23).

“All my goodness will pass in front of you”: what could that mean?  I’m not sure, except to say glory!  God proclaiming His name is God demonstrating His character: love, faithful, committed, love that follows through, love that fulfills.  The one who serves in the name of the Lord serves in the fulness of the full goodness of God.

Yet even with Moses, the one with whom God spoke “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11), God’s face “must not be seen.”  The truth must dazzle gradually.  “Tell all the truth but tell it slant — / Success in Circuit lies / Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth’s superb surprise / As Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind —” (Emily Dickinson, #1263).  Looking directly at the sun harms the eye: we squint and shield our eyes.  It’s for our own good, our own preservation, that God tells Moses, and us, that God’s face must not be seen, though He permit us to have glimpses of His glory and delights in the giving.

His glory has its effect upon us—that’s the point of glory: to have an effect, impact, consequence, result.  Moses came back to the people radiant with the Word of God.  The book of Numbers records part of what it means that God speaks with Moses face to face: with Moses, God spoke “clearly and not in riddles” (Num 12:8).  To be in the presence of God, the face of God, the name of God, the Word of God, is to become radiant, to become light.  Oh, spend time with God’s Word!  But those still living in the valley of the shadow, used to the shadow, taking the shadow for brightness, are in no way prepared for the light.  They are afraid; they hide themselves away when the Word calls, when the light calls, when the one bearing the Word and bringing the light calls.  To such as these, it’s all riddles, parables, gibberish, and nonsense.

Scripture makes no secret that, in the wilderness, the people of God felt more terror than love for God.  Terror is no basis for relationship, as they went on to demonstrate so well in the wilderness.  Beloved, fear of the Lord is not terror of the Lord, but loving reverence for Him and loving resolve to do what He asks of His own.  Fear of the Lord is the earnest desire to do nothing to harm the relationship.  Guys, how many sad country boys twang about how they done ruined the one good thang they had!  Don’t ruin the one good thing—if it were only easy not to!

By his own devising or upon the instruction of God, Moses gets a face covering.  This face cover conceals the light of the glory.  The veil was there so that the people would not be terrified, yet the veil itself terrified them.  Moses just can’t win!  He’s the Jim Kelly, the Dan Marino of the men of God!  The people could not bear to hear the Lord speaking from the mountain; they could not bear to behold the Lord.  The glory was too much, God was just too much for them, and we know many people just like that: maybe we were them, once.  The name of God, the character of God—too much.  So much that all the talk about God begins to sound like riddles, nonsense, and gibberish.

A few Sundays back, I referred to Blaise Pascal—philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and devout Christian.  Pascal understood the difficulty Christianity presents for people both outside and inside the faith.  He understood the factors working against belief, like a cover blinding people to the truth, preventing them from seeing reality.  No one is quick to say that he or she is out of touch with reality.  People are usually sure they have a firm hold upon it.  Maybe this is only a philosophical way of speaking about reality, but reality is more than and beyond what you and I can apprehend with our senses; reality is more than, other than, what we can reason our way to by observation and logic.  Reality is something other than how we feel about things one day to the next.  Reality doesn’t just present itself.  For us, reality isn’t just there.  Reality is revealed; truth is revealed and, until it is, people walk around with a veil around them, a virtual reality headset, a VR heartset.  “Truth hurts!” was the old middle school taunt.  As it turns out, there was some truth in it.

If truth and reality come by way of revelation, how to get to revelation?  Pascal was of the opinion that the Word of God was necessarily and unalterably veiled “for all who do not hate themselves.”[1]  Before we conclude that Pascal was a bitter ascetic, wearing sackcloth and flailing himself bloody each night before the blazing fire, allow me to share these words, too: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).  Who do you suppose said that?  And we think, well gosh, Jesus!  I mean, do we have to hate our lives?  Do I have to hate my life?  My life without Jesus, yes, of course!  My life before Jesus, certainly!  My life before Jesus was headed in the wrong direction!  If I remained enamored with my life, my way of living, with what and who I was living for before Jesus removed the veil and let me see him, I never would have received Jesus.  The draw of this present life is strong, beloved!  The world seems to have a lot to offer, a lot to recommend it, and we go pursuing those things, even after we’ve come to know Jesus.  We get distracted.  Spiritually, we’re all contending with ADHD.  Graciously, Jesus begins to lift the veil, and we scream and cry and run the other way.

We don’t run to Jesus by running from the Word of God.  Whichever way we run from Jesus, it isn’t running toward truth.  Pascal wrote, “This is not the home of truth; it wanders unrecognized among men.  God has covered it with a veil that keeps it from being recognized by those who do not hear his voice.”[2]  Those who do not hear God’s voice do not recognize truth.  People are unable to recognize truth until they hear God’s voice.  Wow.  That sounds . . . crazy.  That sounds . . . unlikely.  Unless it’s true.  But how could it be true?  No, no.  God has veiled the truth in His Word, the Bible.  How people argue about the Bible.  How they ignore it.  Of course.  The one place you’ll find truth is the one place they tell you you’ll never find it.  One only can remove the veil.  He removes it by causing us to hear His Word.

There on the mountain, Peter, John, and James heard the voice from the cloud and knew whose voice they were hearing.  The three beheld Jesus, brilliant with no earthly brilliance, ablaze and aglow with no physical light, and they were stunned, mumbling earthly gibberish as if that were the time and place for them to be speaking.  Moses and Elijah were there—the only two to have beheld the glory before them.  This is good company to keep.  It was good for them to be there.  But they weren’t there simply for the sake of being there.

Jesus said wonderful things, did wonderful things; it was good to be with Jesus: all the apostles were agreed upon this, even Judas said so.  Jesus was the most wonderful man any of them had ever met.  The veil given in order to prevent terror gave sin an opportunity to cover the way to knowledge and understanding, to truth and reality.  Inside the veil, sin projected such pretty pictures.  In Lamentations, the prophet begs God to “Put a veil over their hearts, and may your curse be on them!” (Lam 3:65).  Seeing they may not see, hearing, they may not hear, lest they understand with their hearts, turn, and be healed (Is 6:10; see also Dt 29:4).  A hard one to hear?  How to understand it?  Perhaps one way is this: the proclamation is such that, hearing, hardened hearts grow yet harder.  Hearing, rejection becomes more resolute, more absolute: “if that’s the way, then no!”  Our hearts do not, cannot, and will not understand their way to God.  We do not feel our way to God.  We cannot and never will, that way.  We do not think our way to God; we never will that way because we cannot.  That’s not the way God gives.  We get to God not our way, by our means, our faculties, but His way only.  Only Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, can guide us to Him.

The veil has become a curse, such the ongoing work of sin in all God’s good gifts.  The veil must be removed, but if no man or woman is now willing to have his or her veil of pretty images removed?  Beloved, Moses had to remove the veil when speaking with the Lord; the veil had to come off in the presence of the Word: isn’t this exactly what we are seeing, alongside Peter, John, and James, there on the mountain, in Jesus, transfigured?  The Word removes the veil—this power is for relationship, and no relationship can happen without hearing.  Seeing isn’t believing—how odd that this should be a lesson of the Transfiguration!  Seeing isn’t believing.  Hearing—hearing is believing.  And what does Jesus say to those stunned, stammering followers?  “‘Get up,’ he said.  ‘Don’t be afraid’” (Mt 17:7).

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

               [1] Pascal, Blaise.  Pensées.  A. J. Krailsheimer, trans.  New York: Penguin, 1995.  152.

               [2] Pascal, 261.