Transfigured Calluses
Transfigured Calluses
The Feast of the Transfiguration is traditionally celebrated on August 6th. But starting with the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, we also commemorate the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’s transfiguration comes within days of his first prediction of his death and resurrection. So, on the Sunday before we begin to re-present the journey to Jerusalem, the cross and the empty tomb, the Transfiguration reminds us of the ultimate goal of this journey we’re on: what the Orthodox Church calls theosis, defined by St, Irenaeus in this way: He (Christ) became what we are so that we might become what he is.
Hear what Saint Paul says in today’s epistle — And all of us, with our faces unveiled, seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory into another, as by the Spirit of the Lord — or transfigured would be as accurate a translation as transformed. Last week I spoke of the transphysical resurrected body of Jesus that all of us shall someday share. That will be us becoming what he is, or theosis.
Unfortunately, to get to that insight in this second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul engaged in some nasty polemics with Jewish Christians who insisted that the Gentiles had to effectively become Jews — get circumcised, observe all the ceremonial laws of the Torah, not just the moral laws — before they could become Christians. Thus, Paul wrongly interprets the veil with which Moses covered his face as a veil of spiritual blindness. Of course, Christians today are above such polemics, right?
But today, we have the incident from Exodus that Paul is commenting on before us, which we can read for ourselves without Paul’s polemical commentary. Here is the same idea that when God appears more directly to human beings, we have a light of such beauty as to make us weep with a combination of joy and sadness, a light of such heat that we don’t know if it’s going to warm us or consume us. And if we don’t turn away from that light, we may forget what it might do to us. How will others perceive us? Will they even be able to look at us? Will they fear us, hate us? What will they see in us?
We’re told that Moses’ face shone. But the Hebrew has at its etymological root, the image of a horn, something protruding from the body. Eventually, that word came to be used to describe rays of light shining from an object. But when St. Jerome translated the Old Testament into Latin, he translated the Hebrew word literally and said that horns grew out of Moses. So, many images of Moses, including Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, portray him with horns coming out of his head.
But as horns are basically calluses, sometimes the Hebrew simply means that someone’s skin is callused. Perhaps, that is what the Israelites perceived in Moses’ face, that the friction between the divine light and human skin had callused his face.
Certainly, to follow Jesus, the Light of the world, will cause some friction. For we follow the Prince of Peace, the King who refused the way of force and violence, even as he, in Luke’s words just a few verses after today’s reading — resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem — knowing what awaited him. Moses and Elijah knew it as well — and they were speaking of his departure which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem — or in the Greek, exoudia – exodus, the journey to liberation and redemption, the way out of fear, the way out of lies, the way out of death, the way to love, the way to truth, the way to eternal life and the kingdom of God in which no sword or gun are drawn but those of justice, no strength known but the strength of love.
On this coming Lenten journey, let others see our faces. They may see only the calluses, they may see the rays of light. Either way, let us follow our transfigured Lord, seeing his glory as in a mirror, and know ourselves to be transfigured into the same image, from one degree of glory into another.
Last Sunday After Epiphany
The Rev. David Kendrick
March 2, 2025