Secrets
Transfiguration Sunday
February 18, 2007

Secrets
by Donald Hoffman

2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2; Luke 9:28-36

Once upon a time a little girl, and a dog, and a scarecrow, a tinman, and a lion went to see a great and powerful wizard. And the wizard appeared as a glowing face, and gushes of flame, and a loud voice. But of course, this only worked as long as you paid no attention to the man behind the curtain. And you and I know exactly how great and powerful that wizard turned out to be. He was only a humbug.

There is something about keeping secrets and finding secrets out that suggests power. If I can keep all my secrets from you, it increases my power. And when secrets are discovered, power shifts. It’s always the nature of government, going way back to the Pharaohs, to keep secrets from the citizens and to try to find out everyone else’s secrets. All the great political stories, all the great political scandals have to do with secrets. The Watergate break-in was an attempt to discover what secrets the Democrats were hiding from the Republicans, but the story instantly turned into what secrets President Nixon was hiding that everyone else wanted to find out. We all want to hide our secrets. We all want to find out other people’s secrets. It gives us power!

There is an arms race going on right now between the effort to protect secrets and the effort to find secrets out. Mathematical trapdoor cyphers. Tiny surveillance cameras. Computer firewalls. Complicated lasers that can measure the vibrations of a window pane and decypher the words whispered on the inside. It was while she was trying to protect her privacy that Princess Diana died. Secrets have power, and when secrets are found out, power shifts.

Moses is coming down the mountain for the second time, carrying the replacement tablets of the law. The people are shocked and frightened. His face seems to glow. He radiates power, energy. So Moses covers his face with a veil. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that just when God is revealing more and more to Moses, Moses is hiding more and more from Israel. “Pay no attention to the man behind the veil.”

When the apostle Paul reads this story more than a thousand years later, he puts a completely new interpretation on it. When you read the book of Exodus you get the idea that Moses is using the veil to protect the people. Paul thinks Moses is using the veil to protect himself. He doesn’t want people to find out that the glow isn’t permanent. It would be embarrassing to Moses if people found out that his battery couldn’t hold a charge. A loss of Energizer bunny power could mean a loss of political power. “Pay no attention to the face behind the veil.” Is Paul suggesting that Moses, with all his power, is only a humbug?

Paul’s analysis rings true. Political leaders are always keeping secrets from the rest of us “for our own good.” It’s only after the secret is revealed that we discover they were protecting themselves, not us. Important political decisions are always being made behind a veil of secrecy, or as the saying used to be, “in a smoke-filled room.” “Pay no attention to the men behind the scenes.” So even if Moses seems so powerful when we read the story in Exodus, maybe there is something of a humbug to him.

The same thing Moses is doing at the bottom of one mountain is what Peter is doing at the top of another mountain. Peter wants to create “Jesus, the Great and Powerful!”

       Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry!
       Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!
       For a limited time only, fresh from an engagement
       before the crowned heads of Europe,
       we have ... not one,... not two,
       but THREE, THREE, THREE great prophets!
       For only one thin dime you will both see and hear
       Moses AND Elijah AND Jesus!
       (Pay no attention to the man behind the tents!)

And then suddenly God lowers the veil, and all of Peter’s secrets are exposed. He will not become the carnival barker revealing a new wonder to the gullible tourists. He is only a humbug.

Now secrecy is important. I never want to say it isn’t. Keeping secrets is the first step on the road to becoming human. We discover very soon in life that mommy and daddy have deep secrets, sometimes frightening secrets. Not long afterward we discover that we can keep secrets from the adults. It’s very exciting. The secrets we keep are tiny and not important, but just by being secret they grow in meaning. By keeping secrets we separate ourselves from our parents. By keeping secrets we become individuals. By keeping secrets we are becoming more human.

When we can’t keep secrets, we stop growing. Melody and I used to know a woman who could not keep secrets from her parents. She was in her sixties, and she was an incomplete person,... a slave,... totally dominated by her 90-year-old parents. She couldn’t keep a secret.

You are on your way to becoming fully human when you learn to keep secrets, even from mommy. And you are farther on your way to becoming fully human when you discover someone you can trust, someone you can share secrets with. It may be a best friend in Middle School. It may be a husband or wife. It may be God.

If the first stage in becoming human, the first step of growing up, is learning to keep secrets, the second stage is learning to share secrets, learning who you can trust, learning how you can trust.

Just as I used to know a woman who couldn’t keep secrets, we’ve all known people who couldn’t share secrets. People who never learned to trust. Or perhaps people whose trust was betrayed at an early age. And now they can’t trust, they can’t share, and their life, their relationships, their marriage ... it’s all stunted, weakened, immature. Pay no attention to the man behind the iron curtain. Pay no attention to the face behind the iron mask.

Of course we’ve all got secrets we won’t share. Shameful secrets, and we think if people found out, they couldn’t love us anymore. Deep secrets, and revealing them might make us too vulnerable. Scary secrets that Freud told us were hidden in our unconscious minds, and even we ourselves aren’t sure what they are. We’ve all got secrets we won’t even tell our best friend, secrets we won’t even tell our spouse, secrets we won’t even tell God.

Oh, wait a minute! God already knows. I don’t have any secrets from God. Even the shameful secrets, the deep secrets, the scary secrets--God knows them all! Gulp!

But it’s not God who needs to share secrets, it’s me. It’s not God who needs to learn to grow in trust, it’s me. God isn’t afraid of being exposed as a humbug; that’s MY fear. I’M the one who needs to grow up by trusting, by sharing, by removing my own veils, tearing down my own walls, lowering my iron curtain.

So even though God knows, God deliberately holds back. God respects our privacy. God lets us be in charge of how much we share, how much we reveal, how much we trust.

God trusts me. God trusts you. God trusts us to control how rapidly or slowly we tear down our own curtains of secrecy. Isn’t that amazing?

Remember that even though Peter, James, and John were on the mountain at the time Jesus became transparent, and the glory of God shone through, they remained the same thick-headed, blindfolded people they’d always been. They kept on with the same misconceptions. They kept believing that they were becoming the gatekeepers, guarding the secret religion. They kept believing they could be the carnival barkers, limiting access to only those who paid them. THEY weren’t the ones who were transfigured. Only Jesus.

It took his death and resurrection to change them. Only when they realized that the risen, glorified Jesus trusted them to carry the message, trusted them to reveal all secrets free of charge, unlimited access to everyone, only then did they begin to reflect the glow.

The same is true for you and me. We hear people tell us that being Christian is all about What you do. But that’s wrong. We hear people tell us that being Christian is all about What you believe. That, too, is wrong. Being Christian is all about Who you trust, Who you are in relation with, Who you are willing to share your secrets with.

When we take off our own veils, when we turn to Jesus as the Light of God, when we begin to trust him with our deepest secrets, we also begin to glow with the glory.

In a world of secrets, we all try to say, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” In a relationship with Jesus Christ, there isn’t anybody behind the curtain, there isn’t any curtain, we see only Jesus, and we, too, begin to glow.
---------

Don Hoffman, Creston Christian Church
crestnch@televar.com
Creston, Washington, USA

        To be Christian is to cease saying, "Where the Messiah is
        there is no misery" and to begin to say "Where there is
        misery there is the Messiah." The former statement makes
        no demands; the latter is an assignment.
                                        --Fred Craddock

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