Fading Radiance

The text for this week was Exodus 34:29-35

There are certain words that scare us.  They’re practically dirty words for some people.  One of those words is “vulnerability.”

Paul writes (in 2 Cor. 3:13) that Moses wore a veil “to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.”  Many scholars say this is a metaphor for a movement from the Mosaic Covenant to the New Covenant in Christ; additionally we can also take it for what it says: Moses wanted to hide the fading radiance from others; he wanted to keep the reality of his life from being seen by the people he was called to lead; he was afraid to be vulnerable.

Top Four from a Google Search of “Vulnerability”

1. Vulnerability “The ability to withstand the effects of a hostile environment” (Wikipedia)
2. Vulnerability (Computing) “a weakness which allows an attacker to…” (Wikipedia)
3. Brené Brown “The Power of Vulnerability” TEDTalk
4. “Susceptible to physical or emotional injury…susceptible to attack.” (Free Dictionary)

“Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.”(Brené Brown)

Interview with Brené Brown:

Why should we foster vulnerability in our relationships?

…there can be no intimacy—emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy, physical intimacy—without vulnerability. One of the reasons there is such an intimacy deficit today is because we don’t know how to be vulnerable. It’s about being honest with how we feel, about our fears, about what we need, and, asking for what we need. Vulnerability is a glue that holds intimate relationships together.

How does vulnerability relate to our capacity for joy?

As someone who spent more than a decade studying fear, vulnerability, and shame, I never thought in a million years that I would say that joy is probably the most difficult emotion to feel. It’s hard to feel joy because we are so keenly aware that it’s fleeting. When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, we lose the courage to be joyful. Joy is a daring emotion! We are going to let ourselves stop in a moment that won’t last forever, that can be taken away. We feel almost that “you are a schmuck if you let yourself feel too deeply because the bad stuff is going to happen.”

Bad stuff is going to happen and the radiance of joy will fade, so we veil our faces and hide the reality of what life is like from people we are blessed to share life with.

This passage in Exodus is not just about vulnerability in community though; what we read is about Moses not hiding his fading radiance from God. When Moses entered the Tent of meeting, he would uncover his face, allowing God to see the wear and tear of life on his spirit.

Can I stop for a moment and ask you to consider whether or not you are capable of letting God see all the wear and tear of life that might be sitting upon you?  Can I ask you to take a moment and set aside any expectations you may have inherited that tell you to be stoic in your faith walk and just be real and uncovered before God?

As a leader Moses felt the full brunt of the calling God had placed upon him.  He wrestled with the Lord on a regular basis, interceded on behalf of his “stiff necked people” on more than one occasion, settled disputes between the people (many of which had to be petty disputes), and lived with the realization that he was a pretty flawed human being who did not deserve to enter into the presence of God but was welcomed anyway.

Two quotes.  The first is from a Christian psychiatrist named Gerald May, from his book Addiction and Grace:

Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in life.

The second comes from Brent Curtis and John Eldredge in the book Sacred Romance:

From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to right doctrine, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self actualization, or something along those lines. He is concerned about all of these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our dreams, our heart of hearts.

It almost reads that the psychiatrist is saying we experience freedom in our vulnerability before God, but a tremendous number of people are afraid of taking that “risk.”  And the other authors/pastors are saying that God desires nothing more that raw honesty and complete vulnerability.  

Be a Moses.  At least in terms of letting God see and heal all the chips in your paint job, be a Moses. We cannot help but have certain degradation in our personal and spiritual “material readiness” the least we can do for ourselves is accept that God can and will receive us no matter how broken we know ourselves to be.

An extra piece for us to take from this is related to our faith communities.  My prayer has always been that we can/will cultivate communities of authentic vulnerability, communities that reflect the posture of God’s readiness to receive, communities that let the bruised and broken come just as they are, with no need to hide behind veils of false pretense; communities that say, “we know your radiance has faded, come stand in the light of God’s presence with us and we can be healed together.”