Sunday, March 6, 2011

Holiness as Otherness

Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on March 6, 2011.

A couple weeks ago, we talked about rethinking the words righteousness and holiness and how they are active words, actually quite dangerous to us, because we are neither righteous nor are we holy. If we were to interact with the Father directly, we would be incinerated. Jesus is the way we can interact with the Father in a personal way. I went on to talk about what meekness means, but this is Transfiguration Sunday, which forces me to back up and explore this holiness, which is referenced in today's readings.

Now, righteousness is only one aspect of what it means to be holy. The other, more primary meaning of holiness is “otherness.” When we say that God is Holy, we are not just saying that he is righteous, but we are saying that he is “other.” You know those forms where they give you three options and then a fourth option that says “other?” You then have a blank to write in what your “other” is. With God, we can't write anything in. We leave it blank. He is truly other. Have you heard the word Xenophobia? It means the fear of foreigners. God is so foreign to us, that we have this deep-seated fear in our very bones. When we read about people having the fear of God or that they were fearing the Lord, this is what this means. God is so “other” that we may have awe of God, but we also have this intense fear, because he is unknown.

The biggest fear is the fear of the unknown. We may have day-to-day fears, like fear of our children getting hurt, but the fears that really rattle our bones is that fear of the unknown. If you were in a room and someone told you there was a tiger in the next room, you'd be a little scared, but the tiger is contained in the next room. If someone told you that a GHOST was in the next room, you'd be seriously creeped out! Ghosts fall into that category of the unknown. It's unpredictable, it may be able to walk through walls and get us for all we know.

Cathi and I love ghost stories, not just because they are told in a creepy way but because what is happening is the storyteller is tapping into a virtually unknown realm—the supernatural realm. We go to the movies to be scared. Many people like to go see horror movies, but the scariest horror movies are the ones with that unknown element—that otherness—that tapping into the supernatural. You have your slasher flick, where there's a mad killer on the loose, but what makes those movies really scary is when there's a supernatural element. The killer won't die—he just keeps getting up and attacking again. The scariest of these horror movies are the ones about demonic possession or ghosts. These movies tap directly into a supernatural realm that exists and that we are already terrified of. This is the otherness in art.

In Exodus, we have Moses going up alone to the top of the mountain to talk with God. No one else is allowed to go. They aren't even allowed to touch the mountain. This is to protect the Israelites from God's holiness, which has settled on Mt. Sinai. A cloud is also there, to protect Israel's eyes, because looking at God is like looking at the sun. The people down below are terrified, because of God's otherness, and the scripture at this point describes God's holiness as a devouring fire, consuming everything. Think of those wildfires in California that cannot be put out. When will my house be next? It's frightening. In a way, fire is supernatural. First there's nothing, then there's fire! We can control it sometimes, but we can't control what is happening in California. Think about the tiger and ghost in the next room: if there were a fire in the next room...we have a terrifying danger. Fire is unpredictable, too. What's interesting is that God allows Moses to live. Moses and God the Father have a special relationship, but it says many times in Exodus that Moses was filled with fear.

There's another scene in the Old Testament that I find interesting. When Elijah wins the battle with the priests of Baal, Jezebel threatens his life, and he flees to Mount Horeb, which is Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. There on the mountain he has a conversation with God. It's a famous scene, because God passes by! Just like with Moses, the top of the mountain becomes a cacophony of fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes. It's frightening stuff. Like Moses, Elijah is spared death from witnessing the Father's glory. In the midst of all this terror, God speaks to Elijah in a gentle whisper, as if to say, “my holiness may destroy you, but I love you, Elijah. I will let no harm come to you.” The supernatural realm may be the most frightening thing imaginable, but God himself is gentle.

I find it fascinating that both of these men climbed to the top of Mount Sinai at two different times to speak with God. What is even more fascinating is when I read our Matthew 17 passage—the Transfiguration of Christ. In this passage we stand with Peter as he witnesses this incredible, supernatural event, and we read, “Jesus' face shone like the sun.” That is probably not just a metaphor: Peter and James and John probably couldn't look directly at his holiness. If only there were a cloud there to help shield their eyes. Oh wait, the cloud comes in verse five.

Now, what is most amazing is that Jesus is not alone. He is speaking with Moses and Elijah. Being stuck in time myself, I always assumed that Jesus was communing with the two prophets after they had already lived their lives on earth. They were in heaven, and they came out of heaven, and stood on that mountain with Jesus, with Peter and James and John watching.

However, knowing God is not hindered by paltry things like TIME, there is a possibility that we're looking into a wormhole, a hole opening up in time and space, and perhaps Jesus is talking to Moses as he stands on Mount Sinai in Exodus 17 and to Elijah as he is standing on Mount Sinai in first Kings 19: three different events in human time, but one conversation in God's time. However, no matter how much Jesus Christ glows, no matter how much he shines like the sun, we can still interact with him, whether its Moses and Elijah in the midst of consuming fires on Mt. Sinai or Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. Like I said before, God has made a way for us to have a relationship with him.

In Hebrews 12 we read that Mount Sinai cannot be touched, but Mount Zion can be touched. Sinai was our relationship with God the Father without Jesus, and Zion is our relationship with God the Father through Jesus. Jesus is the way we can look upon God's glory without being blinded, without being incinerated. This is probably the reason that Moses and Elijah are not consumed into ashes, because they are encountering Christ on that mountain.

This is something people do not just make up, and Peter tells us this in his second letter. He actually uses his eyewitness testimony of the Transfiguration to prove that the gospel is not a cleverly devised myth. As C.S. Lewis has said in the study series we have been going through in our home groups, Christianity is just complicated enough to be true, because truth is stranger than fiction. Here's what C.S. Lewis writes: “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.”

In other words, it has time travel, holes in the space time continuum, and human bodies that are leagues beyond what we are used to. One of my favorite verses is John 21:4: Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was him. He has a post-resurrection body. He is different, but he is the same. He can eat food, but he can also walk through walls, and at the end of the forty days, he ascends into heaven. He flies straight up like a rocket. It sounds incredible, but it is something we could not have guessed. It has that twist, as C.S. Lewis says.

Let's look at this strange transfiguration again. In Christ, two realities meet. One reality is the material world, creation, fallen in sin, disconnected from the creator, in need of redemption. This fallen world includes people and it includes chronological time. But in Christ there are two realities meeting. Our world intersects the world of the Father, which includes the supernatural realm, and redeemed creation—the new heaven and new earth. In Jesus Christ our world and the Father's world collide. That is what we are seeing in this transfiguration scene. We are seeing the Father's world spill into ours for a moment, and Jesus embodies both worlds—he is fully human and he is fully other—he is fully God. This scene in the gospels is here to show us the two worlds intersecting, and the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to these two realities, and when we finally see it, we can't UNSEE it.

We are going into Lent, a time of repentance and fasting. Over the weeks we have talked about not just giving up things, like we always learned Lent was about as children—I'm giving up chocolate! No, we have been talking about asking Jesus to replace an aspect of our human nature with his righteous nature, whether it's something sinful, like anger, lust, or pride, or something that we think we need in our lives—something that controls us—like a critical attitude or a worldly value. Lent isn't just about self-denial, it's about casting our human spirit onto Jesus and asking Jesus to give us his Holy Spirit.

God has given us this amazing gift in Jesus. We are able to commune with the Father through the Son, but the Spirit is what fills us and opens our eyes to this good news. Just as the disciples had their eyes opened on the Mount of Transfiguration, so they could see who Jesus really was, so we have the eyes of our hearts opened when we read scripture and see who God really is.

This Lenten season, spend time with the scriptures. Stay quiet, listen, read the Word of God. The Spirit will connect you with something you have not connected with before. We have our own Mount of Transfiguration in our hearts, and when the Spirit opens our eyes, we see Jesus for who he really is, the savior of the world. We see that all of time and space cannot stand against God's will. And we see that it is possible to live in God's holiness when we accept Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed reading some of your sermons and am glad you are posting them. I'll read some more of them. -Loved the wormhole analogy. Actually posted by Heidi :o) Not very tech oriented over here.

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