Last Sunday was Transfiguration Sunday. The Gospel narrative is likely familiar: Jesus takes some disciples and goes up a mountain to pray. While he is praying, “the appearance of his face changes, and his clothes become dazzling white. Suddenly (the disciples) see two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus” And then a cloud descends and covers them.
Why Moses and Elijah? Perhaps they appeared because they each had a similar glowing experience. Moses returned to the people glowing after his second trip up Mount Sinai to meet with God. He was so shiny he had to cover his face with a veil unless he was talking to God or performing his duties as a priest. Elijah encountered God as a small, whispering voice. After this encounter, he covered himself in a blanket. And then Elijah doesn’t die and is instead taken to heaven in a glowing chariot.
Laura Mayo
Glowing and hiding. Hiding is a little easier for me to relate to: Jesus and the disciples hidden in a cloud; Moses hiding behind a veil; Elijah’s hiding under a blanket after hearing the voice of God. Hiding the good or the not so good, veiling the glow, blanketing the inexplicable experience, covering our faces in fear.
Being fully seen
It is a great risk to be fully seen. Have you ever noted the behavior of children and animals when they are afraid? Dogs hiding under the bed during a thunderstorm? A big mess in the living room but no little culprit because he’s hiding behind the couch? Isn’t this our nature? We cover ourselves when we are afraid. We fear judgment, so we hide things about ourselves. We reveal only what we believe will be pleasing and liked. Fear and shame. Hiding.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil,” the town’s minister puts on a black veil and then refuses to remove it. He wears it everywhere all the time. The reader is never given the reason the minister wears a veil. Instead of reasons, we are given reactions. And the reactions are dislike, distrust and fear.
“‘I don’t like it,’ muttered an old woman, as she hobbled into the meetinghouse. ‘He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face.’”
“We reveal only what we believe will be pleasing and liked.”
The townspeople hide themselves from the minister or look down when he passes. The minister himself is unwilling to look upon his own reflection in the mirror.
The only positive to come of the minister’s hidden visage is his preaching. Hawthorne writes: “A subtle power was breathed in his words. Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the most hardened of breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.”
Perhaps this is not so positive, actually.
As the minister lies dying, one of the people gathered tries to remove his veil. With a final burst of strength, he sits up and cries: “I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!”
I wonder if he is right. Are we all hiding something?
Hiding behind
Or perhaps if not hiding something then hiding behind something? Hiding behind our insecurities, hiding behind our accomplishments — deciding our work is done, hiding behind our overwhelm, our busy lives, behind too many problems to fix. Hiding.
There can be real and perceived safety in the choice to hide. No one has to be convinced that we all live in a time of anxiety and fear. Shootings in schools, houses of worship, movie theaters and malls; terror alerts; extreme storms caused by our climate crisis; fearmongering among the politicians and the media. Fears of big things far-off to fears of things close to home and a consumerism that knows how to profit from our fears.
Our government officials seem to want to stoke our fears — fears perhaps especially of each other. There are many reasons in these days folks might need to hide: fear of deportation, fear your core beliefs will ostracize you from friends and family, fear being trans makes you a target of violence.
“Let me be clear: Trans people are made in the image of God.”
Transfiguration Sunday causes me to think particularly of our trans siblings and the vitriol and erasure and hatred that has been thrust upon them in these recent days. Let me be clear: Trans people are made in the image of God. The government’s ongoing actions against trans folk hurt all of us because we are all connected and especially hurt trans folk and their families and communities.
It is hard to know what might help. And we know we can all reach out to our trans friends and family and assure them we see them and love them and they are not alone. We can support with our money and our time organizations that support trans people. We can vote, we can help others vote. We can stand up for trans children, teens and adults and their families in conversations both private and public. We can, as people who seek to follow Jesus, demand dignity and respect for all people in the name of the one who countered oppression and injustice. We can act in the name of the rabbi who demanded inclusive, welcoming love, as he confronted the religious and political leaders of his time.
Whatever might be causing you to want to hide, it is my hope you have or will find a community that can be a place of rest and safety, a community where you can feel fully seen and known and loved, a community of deep compassion.
‘Things are getting uncovered’
Sadly, the lack of such compassion in our country is being revealed at every turn. In 2016, American author and social activist Adrienne Maree Brown wrote the following in reference to racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement: “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”
“The veil is now being ripped off and the truth of our sins are on full display.”
The uncovering in our country is revealing the bedrock of racism, white supremacy, heteronormativity, misogyny, prioritization of money over all else, the rejection of anything or anyone seen as different or a threat. There have been seasons, decades even, when we’ve covered up these lies and maintained at least civility in the public square. But the veil is now being ripped off and the truth of our sins are on full display. Even ideals we thought were core to our identity as a country — like democracy — were exposed again this week as lies, at least for our leaders. We pray for Ukraine and we pray for ourselves and we make our voices heard.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” wrote James Baldwin. There are plenty of reasons to despair. We could let exhaustion keep us from even making an effort. But our commitment to love begs us to notice there is work to be done and to join in the work.
We must find the ways we need to stop hiding. We must “hold each other tight” as the veils over the degrading and damaging ideologies are ripped away.
On Wednesday we will celebrate Ash Wednesday and Lent will begin. We all have the opportunity to consider our fear, to consider what we allow others to see and what we hide. Maybe it will be a time to experiment with leaving safety and joining community, with removing our veils, with being seen and known, reveling in our full, authentic selves. Maybe we can risk being seen and known. Maybe we can try not to make ourselves smaller.
Whatever we might be veiling and for whatever reason we might be afraid to be seen, maybe this Lent can be a time of release, uncovering, fullness.
And as more truths about our country are revealed, we can hold each other tight. We can refuse to look away. We can make our voices heard. We can love and love and love some more.
Laura Mayo serves as senior minister of Covenant Church in Houston. She is a graduate of Carson-Newman University and Wake Forest Divinity School, with additional studies at Regent’s Park College of Oxford University. She is active in various interfaith projects and organizations in Houston.
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