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Daniel, Exodus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jesus, John, Lamb, Luke, Mark, Matthew, Moses, Revelation, Sermon on the Mount, Son of Man, Transfiguration
This is an experiment in theological imagination. I will of course not go against what the biblical text says. But I will fill the gaps with my imagination to hopefully synthesize something that might be fruitful and perhaps insightful as well. If you do not like experiments in theological imagination, I suggest you navigate away from this page. But of course, you would then not know what you have missed! So what’s going to win – your desire not to have the boat rocked or your God-given curiosity? Let’s see!
The Context
Recently, someone sent me a text on WhatsApp that read, “Deepak, I am wondering how in the transfiguration, God’s glory shone and the disciples lived. Moses couldn’t and so God didn’t show him.” The twin references are to God’s words to Moses in Exodus 33.17-23 and the accounts of the Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 9.2-8, Matthew 17.1-8, and Luke 9.28-36). Since the passage in Exodus is the quintessential passage dealing with our inability to see God’s glory, let us see what it actually says. In the NRSVUE we read, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.’ Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, “The Lord,” and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.’ And the Lord continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.'”
We can link this to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5.8) Whatever we conclude about what it means to see God or see God’s glory, we can say that Jesus promises this vision to those who are pure in heart, whatever that means. Since this post is not about the beatitude, I will not deal with it here, though I have dealt with it elsewhere.
Some Initial Observations
Coming back to the passage in Exodus 33, let us make a few observations. First, Moses asks to see God’s glory. In response God tells him that God will ‘make all his goodness pass before’ Moses. However, this goodness passing before Moses is not to be taken as Moses seeing God’s glory because God says, “You cannot see my face” and “My face shall not be seen.” God also says, “I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.” From this I conclude that God’s ‘goodness’ is the same as his ‘glory’. But God obstructs Moses’ line of sight for a bit so he only sees God’s back rather than his face. Now we have to recognize the use of metaphor here. God does not have a face, nor a back!
Second, isn’t there a contradiction with Exodus 33.11a, where we read, “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend”? What’s happening here? Within the span of less than ten verses the author of Exodus tells us first that Moses spoke with God face to face and then that Moses is not allowed to see God’s face! Is this a contradiction? Did the author forget what he had written a few verses earlier?
Now, we must allow the biblical authors to use the full gamut of linguistic conventions. In v. 11 the author uses an idiom and actually explains it. To speak to someone ‘face to face’ is to speak with that person ‘as to a friend’. However, to ‘see God’s face’ is to get a vision of God’s glory or goodness. So there is no contradiction or lapse in memory here. It’s just that the author, being a competent human, uses different linguistic conventions to convey different ideas. And what this means, pay close attention, is that the biblical author expected the reader to put in some effort, as much effort as would be needed, to understand what he had written. We must not read the scriptures in a lackadaisical manner.
The idea of seeing God’s face appears earlier in the biblical narrative. In Genesis 32.30, following his name-changing and joint-displacing wrestling match, Jacob names the place Peniel and declares, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” What gives? Is this a contradiction of what God told Moses about the impossibility of seeing God’s face? Absolutely not! We have just seen that the idiom of talking to someone ‘face to face’ is to speak to that person ‘as to a friend’. Hence, to see God ‘face to face’ is to see God ‘as one sees a friend’. Given that this ‘seeing’ involved a life altering wrestling match, this puts a wonderful spin on what true friendship involves. But that’s for another day.
Third, however, what if Jacob meant, “I have seen God’s face”? It is possible that language changed from the time of Jacob to the time of Moses. After all, we do not ‘suffer the little children’ anymore! And the time from the KJV to today is about the time between Jacob and Moses. So what if Jacob meant that he had seen God’s face? We must be careful while interpreting any text to see who is speaking and if that person is capable of making any truth claims he/she is making. In other words, does anything in Jacob’s life so far make him a reliable witness to the event of ‘seeing God’s face’? I would say, “No!” Till this moment, he has been cheating his brother, passing off a curse on his mother, deceiving his father, treating his first wife unjustly, treating his second wife as unworthy of his prayers for the reversal of her barrenness, and doing strange magic on his father-in-law’s flocks! His actual life of faith with God has only just started. Just as we would not rely on a new Christian to interpret the bible, so also Jacob is not a reliable witness at this stage. Hence, in either way of interpreting Genesis 32.30, I do not think that the wrestling match at Peniel is an example of a human seeing God’s face in the sense meant in Exodus 33.20.
Isaiah in the Temple
Another classic example of someone presumably having a vision of God is Isaiah’s call narrative in Isaiah 6.1-13. In v. 1 the prophet reports, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” What did Isaiah really see? He saw a very large figure sitting. He saw the hem of the robe that was filling the temple. In other words, Isaiah actually saw precious little apart from the hem of God’s robe! Specifically, Isaiah did not see God’s face! But there are other creatures in the vision, who are described with the words, “Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.'” (v. 2-3) These creatures had six wings, certainly a strange number of wings. Two wings, as we might expect, were used to fly. But why did they cover their feet and eyes?
In many cultures, including in India, one does not display the soles of one’s feet to a person of higher status. This is why, when an elderly person enters the room, the younger people will either stand up, ensuring the soles are in contact with the ground and, therefore, unseen, or will sit upright with the feet flat on the ground, accomplishing the same. Since the Seraphs were flying there was a possibility that they would fly in a way that God would see the soles of their feet. To avoid this, they covered their feet.
But why did they cover their eyes? The words of their song are, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” They saw the glory of God and were compelled to sing that he is thrice holy. But note that for something or someone to be holy does not mean that it is pure or perfect or morally upright. Those may be consequences of holiness. However, holiness itself refers to that which sets something or someone apart from other things or persons. The Seraphs saw something that made them cover their eyes and sing that Yahweh was utterly different, utterly holy. What was it that they saw? Let’s hold on to that thought for a bit.
Ezekiel and the Chariot
The prophet Ezekiel had a similar but more elaborate vision, which he describes in chapter 1. Ezekiel describes God as follows, “Seated above the likeness of the throne was something that seemed like a human form. Upward from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around, and downward from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendor all around.” The figure he sees ‘seemed like a human form’. Both Isaiah and Ezekiel are clear that they saw a figure in human form. I thought they were getting a vision of God!
But Ezekiel concludes the vision with the words, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” In other words, though we think he sees the glory of God, he himself is clear that his description only captures the ‘likeness’ of what he saw. But what did he see? Once again, we will leave the prophet while we continue our exploration.
The Transfiguration Accounts
And so we get to the three accounts of the Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels. All three accounts are, as usual, quite Spartan. Matthew tells us, “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light.” This is oddly the most descriptive of the three accounts! Can you believe it? What does it mean, though, that Jesus’ face shone like the sun? Presumably, we can conclude that this was what his glory consisted of. But what did the disciples see? After all, none of us really knows what the sun looks like since we actually cannot look at it. Now in all three Synoptic accounts, Peter suggests making tents for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. And all three accounts tell us that the disciples were terrified at what they saw. What did they see? What was the glory that was revealed to them?
All three Synoptic accounts place the Transfiguration soon after the episode at Caesarea Philippi where Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah and following which Jesus told his disciples for the first time about his upcoming crucifixion. In addition, Mark and Matthew tell us how Peter rejected this revelation of a suffering Messiah. Six days after this episode, Jesus took the three disciples up a mountain where he was transfigured. And we still do not know what they saw? Nor do we know what made them afraid.
Peter on the Mountain
However, it seems clear to me that the timing of the Transfiguration was no accident. Rather, it is precisely because Peter made a confession about Jesus but using the words with meanings that were not aligned with what Jesus had in mind that Jesus felt the need to take him and the two brothers up the mountain to receive this vision. Something about the misalignment of Peter’s words with reality led Jesus to take the three disciples up the mountain. Hence, we can conclude that what they saw on the mount of Transfiguration was meant precisely to re-align their idea of who Jesus was and how he was going to accomplish his task with reality.
While recalling the Transfiguration Peter writes, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1.16-18) In other words, according to Peter, the voice from heaven at the Transfiguration confirmed that what they had seen there was honorific and glorious in the sight of God the Father. But we still do not know what Peter, James, and John saw when Jesus was transfigured.
Terrifying Clouds
As mentioned earlier, all three Synoptic accounts tell us that the disciples were afraid. According to Mark, Peter “did not know what to say, for they were terrified” (v. 6), following which they were enveloped in a cloud. In the words of Matthew, after seeing Jesus transfigured and after hearing the testimony of the voice from the cloud, the disciples “fell to the ground and were overcome by fear” (v. 6) In Luke’s words, while Peter was making his suggestion about the tents, “a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.”
The idea of clouds is a common one in the bible. When God gave Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai we read, “On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled.” (Exodus 19.16) Here too we find a link between the cloud and the fear of those who are enveloped by the cloud. The narrative goes on to tell us, “Now all of Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently.” (v. 18) The idea of smoke as a substitute for the clouds is also common. In Isaiah’s vision we read, “The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.” (Isaiah 6.4) Were the pivots on the thresholds shaking because of the loudness of the voices or because the pivots too were gripped by fear as the house was filled with smoke. Given that Isaiah can speak of singing mountains and trees that clap their hands (Isaiah 55.12), there is no reason to preclude pivots shaking because of fear!
Daniel’s Night Vision
In Daniel 7, the prophet tells us about a troubling vision that he had. In the vision he sees four beasts, each worse than the ones preceding it, representing four powerful nations that would oppress the people of God. The sequence of bestial kingdoms is brought to an end by a decisive act when Yahweh shows up in his fiery throne chariot and begins to judge the nations. Having dispossessed the bestial human empires, Yahweh proceeds to invest the authority to rule in someone who presumably is worthy to rule the world.
Here too we read about clouds for Daniel tells us, “I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” (vv. 13-14) The clouds, which in other passages shrouded the mysterious divine glory, now envelop this humanlike figure. Note what Daniel says carefully. He does not say that he saw a human. Rather, he saw ‘one like a human being.’ Whatever does this mean?
Daniel too is afraid when he gets this vision for he tells us, “My spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me.” (v. 15) Even after Daniel receives the interpretation of the vision his fears are not quelled for he writes, “My thoughts greatly terrified me, and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter in my mind.” (v. 28) Note the addition of the idea of having his face become ashen after he receives what should have been an interpretation that dispelled his fears.
Reasons for Fear
However, what are the reasons for the fear that all these people confess to having? What gives rise to fear in us? Fear is a natural physical and physiological response to real or perceived threats. When faced with something unknown or something that potentially could harm us (e.g. spiders or snakes) our bodies could respond by making us experience the threat through the symptoms of fear. In general we could say that when we are faced with something that threatens us or those we love, we could respond with fear. However, a greater response of fear would be caused if we are given a tool that supposedly would get rid of the cause of fear but that we believe is insufficient for the task.
For example, if I am facing a cobra that is ready to strike me, I would be justified in fearing for myself. If my friend, who is standing behind me, gives me a sheet of paper with which to fight off the cobra, my sense of fear would increase because the ‘solution’ is just not up to the task at hand.
Similarly, if I were engaged in a sky diving exercise, there would be a certain amount of justified trepidation. But if my instructor hands me my parachute and says, “We did not have time to perform all the safety checks on this,” the fear would increase because the tool given to save my life may be inadequate to the task.
I have not come across a single Christian writer who deals with fear who addresses the increase in fear caused because the ‘solution’ seems inadequate to solve the problem that first gave rise to the fear. It seems that there is a belief, unfounded in my view, that the ‘solutions’ God gives us always satisfy us regarding their adequacy.
Reality Check
However, we have seen that all the visions that reveal God include some substance that obscures what is seen from those who are not invited in. This could be clouds, as in Exodus, Ezekiel, Daniel and the Synoptic Gospels, or smoke as in Exodus and Isaiah, or fire, as in Exodus, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Note that the account in Exodus links all three obscuring substances. What we see in these accounts are that both those who are outside the realm created by the obscuring substance (e.g. the people at Sinai, Daniel before the interpretation, the disciples in Mark) and those who are given the vision (e.g. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel after the interpretation, the disciples in Matthew and Luke) are struck with fear.
For those on the outside the fear is the fear of the unknown. They do not know what is inside the obscuring substance and are afraid for themselves because they think it presents a threat to them. They know that they are facing some insurmountable problem and the enormity of the task at hand gives rise to the fear. For those on the inside the fear is the fear of the known! They have been given a glimpse of what the nature of reality is and they fear for themselves because they think it is insufficient to deal with the problems of the world. They have been told to fight off the snake with a sheet of paper or jump from the plane with a possibly defective parachute.
It is my hypothesis that what those who are given a vision of God’s glory see is something that does not match their expectations. More to the point, what they see is completely different from what they believed would be glorious and, as a result, they are moved to be afraid after receiving the vision in addition to before.
The Gospel According to John
We understand why this is so when we turn to two Johannine works – the Gospel and the Apocalypse. John’s Gospel is different from the Synoptic Gospels in that it does not have an account of the Transfiguration. Yet, John declares, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1.14) The Synoptic Gospels have the account of the Transfiguration to point to and, as we have seen from 2 Peter, this is precisely how Peter viewed the episode. John, as usual, is different. Since he does not have a retelling of the Transfiguration, where in his Gospel do we have evidence that John saw Jesus’ glory?
At the Last Supper, when Judas receives the bread, he leaves them. The die is cast. Now there is no turning back. His betrayer is resolute in his mission as Jesus was in his. And so Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” (John 13.31) Earlier, Jesus had clearly linked his death with his glorification when he said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12.23) Indeed, John himself makes the link when he writes, “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive, for as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7.39) Given that Jesus breathes the Spirit on his disciples on the evening of the first Easter (John 20.21-23), proclaiming peace to them, the only occasion in the Gospel of John that can qualify as fully revealing Jesus’ glory is the crucifixion.
The Apocalypse of Jesus
When we open the Apocalypse, however, all the strands we have been discussing come together. In a mashup that involves elements from all the parts of scripture we have dealt with so far, John presents to us a central worship scene in chapters 4 and 5. It is best to set this scene in context. The initial vision in chapter 1 depicts Jesus as the one who is intimately involved in the lives of the churches. Then we get the letters to seven churches of Asia Minor in chapters 2 and 3. These letters reveal that the followers of Jesus were facing persecution of differing intensity, each church having different responses. John is then spirited to heaven and the worship scene begins. The questions in the mind of the reader would have been, “What is God going to do about the suffering of his people?” and “Are the forces of evil, now embodied in the empire, going to keep wielding oppressive power over the world and especially over God’s people?”
If you knew that your life was threatened because the nation in which you live was against everything connected to Jesus, surely this would have caused some fear and trepidation in your mind. And you would have asked the questions above, wondering how God was going to ensure that his world would not be ruined and his people would be vindicated for following his Son.
And then you turn the page to chapter 5 and read about a scroll that contains God’s purposes for the world. But no one is found to be worthy to break the seals and open the scroll, that is, to execute God’s plans. Already filled with fear, your fears are now compounded with despair since it seems that no one is worthy to put God’s plans into action. It seems that God’s plans will forever be thwarted by the forces of evil because there is no human worthy enough to be given the responsibility of putting those plans into effect. John begins to weep (v. 4) and we would too if that were the last word on the matter.
However, one of the elders tells John not to weep saying, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” (v. 5) Finally! Now the great warrior will be revealed, the one who would be able to vanquish all God’s enemies and forcefully put them under his feet. You turn with John to take in the overwhelming glory of this all-conquering hero.
And your eyes meet “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.” (v. 6) What!? God was entrusting the future of the universe to this weakling? All of God’s purposes hang on the success of this Jesus who was hanged on a tree? This defeated and executed figure was the one who was found worthy enough to be the executor of God’s purposes?
Conclusion
Surely this is cause for fear! Can we really trust that God defeats all the forces of evil, who have no qualms about unleashing their wrath on us through unending and limitless violence, through the power of self-giving love? If what Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel saw was not just one like a human, but one like a human who had been slaughtered, can we not think that they were afraid because they could not, as we today cannot, really believe that evil will be utterly defeated by the power of nonviolent self-sacrificial love? If what Peter, James, and John saw was a vision of the ultimate reality about Jesus, namely that he was going to be victorious in and through his death, can we not understand why they were so confused and terrified?
Then why did God tell Moses that no one could see him and live? I conclude that it is not because God’s glory is so overwhelming that we will be blown away by it. Rather, because our ultimate goal is self-preservation, the revelation that God’s ultimate reality, the deepest truth about him, the weightiest aspect of his character, is self-sacrificial love threatens our self-preservatory instincts giving rise to utter insecurity, leading in turn to a complete unraveling and death. It is only because the vision on the mount of Transfiguration was tempered by the prior knowledge and experience of Jesus that Peter, James, and John had that they could handle the revelation. And it is only Jesus’ resurrection that certifies that his way was indeed the way of divine victory over the forces of evil.
The unraveling vision of the slaughtered, yet victorious, Lamb is terrifying because, if this is how God won his victory through Jesus then it tells us that he underwrites no other way by which to secure the victory of his kingdom. In other words, the unraveling vision condemns every justification we use for the violence we engage in, and especially violence done in the name of the slaughtered Lamb. The unraveling vision invites us to follow Jesus in his victorious way of self-sacrificial love. And the fact that the Church has, for many centuries now, relegated the way of self-sacrificial love to the margins demonstrates the serious extent to which we have rejected the unraveling vision.