TRINITY IX 2004

In the Octave of the Transfiguration of our Lord

Thursday past, we conducted the Burial Office and a Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of one of our long time members, René Lapensée. In my sermon, I mentioned that all of human history is full of the use of symbols in all aspects of life. Ultimately, I came ‘round to deciduous trees in our own Canadian climate, in their yearly cycle of bare skeletons in the winter to lush summer greenery, as symbols of the Resurrection. The connection being that René’s job for the City of Ottawa was as a tree man; he was an expert in ensuring, through careful pruning and such, that the yearly resurrection to life in our city’s trees was as magnificent as possible.

In Christian theology, we use another term to denote a specific sort of symbolism – “type.” We say that Jonah was a type of Jesus in that he spent three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, prefiguring our Lord’s three days in the sepulchre. Jeremiah is often considered a type of the Messiah as well, for the rejection that he suffered by God’s own chosen people. “Types” in this sense therefore mean foreshadowings of the Christian dispensation as depicted in the events and characters in the Old Testament.

Often we find direct references to such types in New Testament writings, used to hammer home a point or points, usually about Jesus as the Messiah. In today’s Epistle passage, St. Paul makes reference to more than one. In verses 3 and 4 of his first letter to the Church in Corinth, St. Paul states, “And did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink.” Now so far as the ancient Israelites were concerned, even though the water came out of a rock, it was real water; and even though the quails and manna also appeared somewhat miraculously, they were nonetheless real food. However, St. Paul was reminding his readers that these were types of the Lord’s Supper, of the Body and Blood of Jesus. Verse 4 in full reads, “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”

Verses 1 and 2 of the same Chapter, the opening verses of this morning’s Epistle, cite other types, and are a happy coincidence today in terms of where we find ourselves in the Church year. “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” The passage through the Red Sea prefiguring water Baptism, the seal of the New Covenant, the New Covenant as realized in Jesus Christ.

The cloud refers to the cloud that first separated the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptians, and then accompanied the Jews for forty years in the desert. And here is where we realize the happy coincidence: Friday was the Feast of the Transfiguration where we read of Jesus’ being wonderfully transfigured before chosen witnesses who were subsequently enveloped by a cloud from which they heard the voice of God. The cloud that lead the Israelites is not the same kind of Old Testament type as the others which we have mentioned, as it was not just a prefiguring symbol, but was the “real deal” as they say.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Name of Jesus, and in the First Lesson at Mattins we read in part, “and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.” (Ex. 34:4b-5)

And now for a bit of etymological gymnastics. Briefly: we might hear of the cloud that lead the Israelites, that surrounded Moses and the Mount when he spoke to God, and that filled the Tabernacle after it had been built by Solomon, referred to as shekinah. However, shekinah is an Hebrew word that does not actually appear in the Old Testament; rather, the word for cloud is anan. The word shekinah, which apparently came into use after the close of the Old Testament canon, some suggest about the time of Christ, strictly speaking means dwelling. Rabbis also, in some contexts would use the word instead of the Name of God, thus shekinah is most often recognized as referring to the place where God dwells. So, because God was in the cloud, it is not inappropriate to call that cloud shekinah.

There is another bit of symbolism, as it relates to clouds, that we might consider. If any of us were to go outside and look directly at the sun without protection, our eyesight would be damaged. If there is substantial cloud covering the sun, we are able to look directly at the place in the sky where the sun might be, without suffering such damage. Several times in the New Testament, God is referred to simply as light. But of course, not just any light. In the episode of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, we read in his defence before King Agrippa, “At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.” If we recall the remainder of the story, we know that Paul was rendered blind for three days, and his sight was only restored when “there fell from his eyes as it had been scales.” One might reasonably wonder if, with the immediate presence of God, the light without the cloud, the shekinah without the anan, that God covered Saul’s eyes with the scale-like substance to protect him.

God, uncreated light, brighter than our sun, brighter than any other suns that we call stars. It is not surprising that His shekinah, in His appearances to men, would include a protective covering. If we cannot look directly at the sun, how much less at the Light Which is above the brightness of the sun. In the Lesson from the Name of Jesus, the cloud protected Moses from being consumed in a moment by that Light. Later in that same chapter from Exodus, we read in the First Lesson for Mattins on the Feast of the Transfiguration, the day prior to yesterday that, after forty days and forty nights in God’s presence, Moses’ face shone so brightly itself that for a time he had to wear a veil as the reflected light of God frightened the Israelites. The Gospel reading on the Feast of the Transfiguration tells us that Jesus’ face shone as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light – here was not the reflected Light of God, but the Light Himself. Subsequently, He, Moses, Elijah and the three Apostles were overshadowed by a bright cloud, from which came the voice of God the Father.

In passing, some all-too brief thoughts on the theological significance of the transfiguration. (a) It symbolized and foreshadowed both Jesus’ Resurrection and His Second Coming at the end of time, the consummation of God’s plan, when all who will be redeemed will be transfigured into the brightness of His Glory; (b) It was a temporary unveiling of the Son of God’s eternal glory; (c) That this glory was seen and not just expounded on was so that “the disciples could taste in part what could not be fully comprehended” (Calvin); that is, as the cliché says, “A picture is worth a thousand words;” (d) Moses and Elijah were a part of the picture to show both continuity with the OT in the ministry of Jesus and His own uniqueness and absolute authority (hence He alone was transfigured, and He alone is identified from heaven as the One to be obeyed); (e) The cloud was a manifestation of the Shekinah glory: the presence of God had returned and was realized fully in the person of Jesus Christ. And Moses and Elijah are there, silently endorsing him as the One in Whom men meet God.

God, not a nice old man with a white beard. God – uncreated Light, brighter than the sun. Much as our biologists have dissected trees down to the subatomic level, discovering along the way how many of the processes that keep the tree alive work; nonetheless, “only God can make a tree” and a deciduous tree is a reasonable symbol of the Resurrection. And much as we know about the sun and clouds, though perhaps less than the internal structure of a tree, they are most surely symbols of shekinah.

Perhaps the next time any of us sees that occurrence that surely moves the heart of even the hardest among us – a break or a few breaks in the clouds permit great shafts of sunlight to burst through and touch the ground – perhaps we won’t be moved to say, “Hmm, interesting phenomenon. A break in the cumulonimbus has permitted electromagnetic penetration of the troposphere with sufficient saturation of photonic energy to cause suspended atmospheric particulate matter to become visible in a not unpleasing way.” Rather, might we not be moved to say, “Shekinah?”

THE ANNUNCIATION        OTTAWA 2004         CLRK