Last Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A), Feb. 6, 2005
BCP: Exodus 24:12(13-14)15-18; Psalm 99; Phil. 3:7-14; Matt. 17:1-9
RCL: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2 or Psalm 99; 2 Pet. 1:16-21; Matt. 17:1-9
Ours is a hidden God who discloses himself to us over time. He does this, apparently, bit by bit, as he wills. One might suspect that this progressive self-revelation takes place at times and in manners for which God’s people have been adequately prepared. Indeed, were our exposure to God both immediate and complete, we would undoubtedly be overwhelmed by his magnificence.
In today’s reading from Exodus, Moses meets the Lord at Mount Sinai. God’s glory is veiled in a cloud. Moses is shown only as much as he and his followers can reasonably be expected to accept. “Come up to me on the mountain,” says the Lord, “and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for [the people’s] instruction” (24:12). Like a parent dealing with young offspring, God reveals himself as the maker of rules.
God’s people mature over the course of millennia, and in today’s gospel Jesus leads his closest friends to a mountaintop to meet their God. Again the divine glory is hidden by a cloud, but God’s self-revelation is now made more complete. God identifies Jesus as his own incarnate Son, the one whom Paul will identify shortly as none other than our own brother (Rom. 8:14-17). Suddenly the vision of God as lawgiver is expanded into that of a God of unconditional love and acceptance. The Lord now shows himself to us as a parent might to a respected and trusted adult child.
The revelation of God’s unchanging will hardly ends with the coming of Christ into the world. If anything, the process takes on a new momentum as Christ’s body, the Church, clarifies misunderstandings. A U.S. president was elected in 1980 on a platform of “traditional Christian values” — a divorced and remarried man who, a generation earlier, would have been unelectable on purely moral grounds. When contraception became a medical possibility in the middle of the last century, nearly every Christian condemned it as intrinsically evil. Today most consider its practice to be a moral imperative. God hasn’t changed, but our understanding of his will clearly has grown. Undoubtedly it shall continue to do so as we wrestle with “moral decline” in our own age.
Today’s readings invite each of us to an ever-clearer understanding of God and of his will. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own” (Phil. 3:12).
Look It Up
How does Paul understand our knowledge of God and of his will in the present age? How does he believe this will change in the kingdom? (1 Cor. 13:11-12)
Think About It
On what issues has God used consensus in Christ's body to resolve long-standing disputes about his will?
Next Sunday
First Sunday in Lent (Year A), Feb. 13, 2005
BCP: Gen. 2:4b-9,15-17,25-3:7; Psalm 51 or 51:1-13; Rom. 5:12-19(20-21); Matt. 4:1-11
RCL: Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Rom. 5:12-19; Matt. 4:1-11
