Father John McGinn, Rector

Saint John’s Episcopal Church

Sandwich, Massachusetts

 

February 18, 2007                                  Last Sunday of Epiphany

 

 

 

You do not have to raise your hand, but is there anybody in church this morning who worries about their appearance?  Most of us.  You may remember the story of the woman who was working in her front yard when a moving van pulled in next door.  Her new neighbors drove in behind the truck and while the movers were unloading the van, the neighbor came over to greet her.  She was a bit self conscious because she had dirt on her hands and face, and was wearing dirty old clothes.  A few days later the new neighbors invited the woman and her husband to an open house.  This was the woman’s opportunity to make a better impression.  She colored her hair, put on a girdle, applied eye shadow and polished her fingernails and popped in her colored contact lenses.  She stepped to the mirror and said to her husband, “Now the neighbors will get to see the real me.” 

 

For years many advertisers have sold us many new products due to our obsession with how we look.  Now I understand they are taking a completely new tack, they are using actual faces of college kids on billboards.  College kids who are in need of pizza money can now earn it by slapping a logo on their forehead.  A company called Headvertise out of Rhode Island sells this mostly using websites geared to those between the ages of 18 and 24.  Live billboards allow Johnson and Wales student, Amy Johnson, to earn up to 200 dollars a week. “Easy Money” she says, “You don’t have to do anything except suffer a little bit of your pride.”

 

What will they think of next?  Advertising on the faces of college students. This got me thinking along another line.  Many people advertise what is in their heart by what is on their face.  In today’s scripture lesson read by Sylvia, it is about that time when Moses came down from Mount Sinai and as he came down from the mountain with the two tablets in his hands, the writer of Exodus describes him like this, “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking to God.”

 

I want to talk for a few moments this morning about people with shining faces.

 

 Do you know anyone who has a shining face?

 

 We all know that Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was on the 12^th, and he once said that “Everyone over 40 is responsible for their own face.”  This is to say that whatever is in our hearts is will gradually reveal itself in our outward appearance.   Spend great deal of time worrying and someday it will show up on your face.  Have bitterness and envy in your hearts, beware, you are chiseling in flesh what you harbor in your most private confessions.

 

When Moses came down from the mountain after his encounter with God, his face shone.  Rather than spending a fortune on plastic surgery, it seems that you and I need to spend more time in God’s presence if we care anything about our appearance. 

 

There is a story about a woman named Hannah.  Hannah was one of those shiny faced people.  Some people called her a walking prayer.  In her heart she was in constant communion with God.  She walked lightly, carrying her groceries and glancing up every once in a while with prayer on her lips.  Pass by her window and you would see her by the sink or the stove, lips in prayer, pleading with the heavens.   A jealous neighbor walked by once and whispered, “So why hasn’t God answered any of your impassioned prayers?”  Hannah was shaken.  Maybe this neighbor was right.  When will God answer?  Why should I wait?  Hannah abandoned her beseeching and stopped her yearning.  The groceries were heavier, the stove colder and she refused to pray.  One night a divine voice called out to Hannah in a dream. “Why have you stopped praying?”  “You never answered,” Hannah replied “so I stopped asking.”  To which the divine spirit replied, “Don’t you realize that every call of yours was in itself my response.  Your yearning was my greatest gift.”  With this Hannah resumed her prayer, her burden was lightened and her face shone once again. 

 

Many of us treat prayer as a summons to God, in order for God to do our bidding.  What Hannah found out was that the purpose of prayer is to spend time with God, allowing God’s work in our life.

 

When Moses came down from the Mountain, his face shone.  Notice that Moses wasn’t aware that his face was shining.  This speaks volumes of the God. 

 

When Aaron and the Israelites saw Moses with his face glowing and they were afraid to come near him.  Moses wasn’t even aware that is was showing.  There is a humility that comes from an encounter with God.

 

Some years ago, Mother Theresa was set to read at a prayer breakfast in Washington DC.  The person introducing her said, “I now have the privilege and the pleasure of introducing the greatest woman in the world, Mother Theresa”.  There was a round of applause as people stood as the four feet, eleven and a half inch woman approached the podium.  She was so short she had to stand on a box to be seen.  The people continued to applaud, and she lifted her hands and said “Please, be seated.”  And after everyone had been seated, she said, “I believe that if I was indeed the greatest woman in the world, God would have made me somewhat taller than I am.  No I am not the greatest woman in the world, I am but a pencil in the hand of a writing God who writes love letters to the world through people like me and people like you.”

 

Mother Theresa would have been unaware of her shining face.  She spent more time looking at the faces of the people she served, rather than her own.  Moses was unaware that his face shone, but notice the reaction of Aaron and those people when they saw Moses’ face.  They were afraid to come near him.

 

That is a common reaction.  Mediocre people are often uncomfortable in the presence of excellence.  Imagine that you are invited to play a round of golf with Tiger Woods.  Perhaps the greatest golfer that has ever made it around the golf course.  If you are a golfer you would be honored to be in his presence, but wouldn’t you be a little uncomfortable with your own game.  Would you be self conscious about your stroke?  I mean you may be good, but in comparison to Tiger Woods, for that round of golf you might be a tad self conscious.  That is the way wee are around really excellent performers.

 

Aaron and the people of Israel were afraid to come near Moses shining face in fact we are told that Moses wore a veil after his encounter with God.  I guess this was to keep from intimidating his audience.  When we are in the presence of excellence, all our mediocrities seem that much more exposed.  That is why the people were afraid of Moses’ presence.  Moses wasn’t interested in winning any popularity among the Israelites; he was completely focused of serving god.  No wonder his face shone.

 

There was another leader in scripture that had a shining face.  In the gospel for this morning, we read about the time Jesus was on the mountain with three of his disciples and while he was praying the appearance of his face changed.  His clothes became dazzling white.  “Not my will, but Thine be done.”  And it is because that Jesus was so focused on doing Gods will that he made it possible for you and me to have faces that shine as well.

 

How can you and I not respond to Jesus’ love?

 

In one of Isaiah’s most famous messianic prophesies, here is how he described the coming of the messiah,

           “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance we should desire.  He was despised and rejected by people, a    man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.  Like one from who people hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.  Surely he took up our infirmities and took up our sorrows if we considered him stricken by God, smitten by God, afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our inequities.  The punishment that brought us peace was through him.  By his wounds we are healed.”

 

That beautiful passage is from Isaiah 53.

 

Why did Jesus yield himself to such debasement?  Why was he disfigured?  So that you and I would be people with shining faces; that our love and joy would show from our hearts into our eyes. 

 

Don’t you want to have a shining face?

 

AMEN