Some People Change

2 Corinthians 3:12-18; Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

It’s been a short Epiphany season this year. Only five weeks long. That’s not a lot of time for the light of the Savior of the world to penetrate the darkness of our world, not a lot of time for us to get up to speed with understanding that Jesus offers God’s grace to those on the inside of life as well as those on the outside, regardless of who defines inside and outside. For all our intelligence, we are sometimes slow to realize that our definitions carry no weight with God. 

Paul tries to get that point across to the Corinthian believers. They are a contentious bunch, even fighting with Paul about the very truths of the gospel which he had presented them. There are times when we can sense that Paul is close to losing his temper with them. Fortunately his theological and rhetorical training constrains him. 

We find that his statements to the Corinthians in today’s brief passage represent the core of his understanding of Jesus’ relationship with believers. Paul tells the Corinthian faithful that in Christ they are called out of lives of spiritual bondage and intellectual blindness into new lives which are filled with freedom, hope, and boldness. This is on account of the transfiguring encounter with the Spirit who is the Lord. It is only through Christ that the veil of ignorance and bondage is removed and that true sight comes to their eyes and hence to their spiritual being. Hardened hearts are softened and blind spiritual eyes become sighted as the glory of God is revealed and lives are transformed into God’s image. 

There is a lot of not seeing and not believing in the pages of scripture. There are very few instances of seeing and believing. Two of the key instances are presented by the presence of Moses and Elijah in the account of the transfiguration of Jesus. Moses represents the covenant that created a people and Elijah represents the epitome of the prophetic tradition. Each of them saw God in a special way. 

We heard about Moses having talked with God when God gave Moses the second set of the tables of the Law. Just before that Moses had begged God to show him God’s glorious presence. God told Moses to stand behind a rock and God would pass by so that Moses could see all of God’s goodness. “But,” God says, “you can’t see my face because no one can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). 

You will remember that when Elijah defeated the 400 prophets of Baal in the whole burnt offering contest on Mount Carmel and then had them slaughtered, Queen Jezebel threatened Elijah’s life. He fled ultimately to Mount Horeb where he sought God unsuccessfully in the wind, earthquake, and fire. Then he met God in the thin, quiet, nearly inaudible sound of near silence (1 Kings 19:12).

Paul earnestly desired that the Corinthians see Jesus in the words of the Gospel and the way the gospel was lived by those who had seen Jesus and by those who had not seen the physical Jesus but had believed in him where sight had not taken them.

It is easy to dismiss the fractured believing and disbelieving of the Corinthians as something that was only effected them. Mis-believing is not something that happened long ago. It happens everyday in the best of congregations. Like the Jews who could not or would not see Jesus as the Christ (3:14-15), we also may be victims to our own bondage and darkness. 

Week after week I stand at this pulpit, graciously accorded a measure of authority by you for this responsibility. Yet as a flawed human being who like everyone else needs to repent and seek God’s forgiving grace, I have to ask, am I at times masking God’s word of truth rather than unveiling it? Are some of you here because you don’t know what else to do with a Sunday morning? Or does anything spiritual that happens here roll off you like water off a duck’s back? We all have our veils, our masks, our blinders. Sometimes our faith is like that smudged window that just never seems to be streak-free, no matter how hard we try to clean it.

We are blinded by so many different kinds of things. We are blinded by fear: fear of failure; fear of loss; fear of success; fear of not being able to measure up to our ideal standards or those of someone else.

We are blinded by envy: envy of a lifestyle, be it jet-setting or simple; envy of prestige, renown, recognition; envy of people who have made it and seem to have everything going their way.

We are blinded by tradition: the traditions handed down by our forebears; the tradition of not rocking the boat; the tradition of being second-rate or sidelined so we have to pull our lives around us like a protective blanket.

We are blinded by ambition: the need to get ahead; the need to have everything imaginable; the necessity of always being right; the drive not to get left behind.

All these kinds of blindness separate us from God and from the joy in the Lord which the Spirit desires to lavish on us. 

Paul Tillich, one of the leading theologians of the mid-20th century, in a sermon on Romans 5:20 titled “You Are Accepted,”(1) suggests that our personal and societal idolatries often manifest themselves in a kind of “moral reversal.” Rather than seeing the state of our own sin (addictions), we project blame onto the external objects of our addiction. We cast blame on alcohol, drugs, temptresses or tempters, “the system,” the cops, religion, government, the President, immigrants, liberals, conservatives, ivory tower pedants. Other people—parents, spouses, children, friends, or strangers, congregation members—receive our venom. 

Paul claims that even today, in spite of everything (3:14), the blind do not see, and even though they “know,” they cannot fathom they are the problem.(2)

In human development and educational circles the ongoing discussion is whether we are who we are because of nature or because of nurture. If we throw the discussion into the theological arena, we are who we are because of nature – we are children of Adam and Eve, we carry the gene of sin and disobedience. But, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus, we are also the product of nurture. We are who we are because of the grace which Jesus brought us through his life, death, and resurrection which transforms us who through the working of the Spirit in us and in those around us. We can be changed. We can have the scales removed from the eyes of our faith. 

Paul admonishes the church at Corinth to take a look at their own lives in Christ and to see in their own unveiled faces how they are being “transformed … from one degree of glory to the next.” Paul had enough experience in ministry with the Corinthian congregation and with others to know that no one falls head first into the pool of God’s transforming love and emerges fully formed as a perfect reflection of Christ. The work of God’s justifying and redemptive Spirit moves in human lives from one degree of glory to another, often taking a lifetime to achieve the full reflection of Christ in our shining, unveiled faces.

This is wonderfully good news! No one sails through life without setbacks, without rough seas, without hardships and doubts. Paul is a prime example of this obvious truth. Yet for the follower of Christ, the setbacks or hardships are not the defining events of life. For the beloved sisters and brothers of Christ, the defining event is the gift of freedom offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The true identity of the Christian is found in the love of God that has been written upon hearts. No outward circumstances or worldly appearances can change the inward and spiritual reality of God’s justifying and redemptive grace. 

The work of the Christian believer – our work – then, is to allow the love of Christ and the freedom of the Spirit to be manifest in daily living. The work of the Christian believer, with Paul, is not to lose heart but to continue — no matter what the circumstances of life — to act with boldness in the direction of God’s redeeming work of love and mercy.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 153-63. Available online at www.religion-online.org.
(2) Donald W. Musser, “2 Corinthians 3:12-18 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 450.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.