Given that I preached blindfolded on Epiphany Sunday, you may think that today’s readings would be a good call for a repeat. While slightly tempted, today is all about the removal of the veil, so I’ll take a pass on preaching this one blindfolded. No, today I would rather preach about horses.
With all the excitement of the parades and other festivities that pass our front door during Mardi Gras season, one of the most amazing things is the mounted patrol unit of the Lafayette Police Department. These horses are usually at the front of the parade, and they are majestic beasts! They are tolerant of the touch of children and yet responsive to the command of officers.
I remember some time back asking Rush Caldwell – our local equine authority – how they manage to train these horses and why they don’t have blinders on like the ones I used to see pulling carriages in Savannah, GA.
She told me it was simply a matter of vision and purpose. A horse is not a predator, therefore its eyes are on the side of its head. It can see almost 360˚, with the exception of a blind spot in the front and in the back. Blinders keep the horse focused on what’s right in front, which is ideal for pulling a carriage with a driver in charge. A police horse, on the other hand, has a different relationship with the rider. The horse needs to be able to react to stimuli, but also needs to trust the rider to set priorities. They are united in a synthesis of purpose and objective.
“How do you train for that?” you might ask. Well, I’m not sure how the Lafayette police do it, but one way is what they call tarp training. Tarps make noise when walked on. They can make soft surfaces feel untrustworthy. They represent a wide variety of stimuli that are just unknown and therefore scary, so a tarp needs to be introduced in ways that build confidence. The horse is lead over it, ridden over it, and eventually even caressed and covered with it in ways that create confidence in the relationship with the rider. Not everyone agrees that it’s the best way to do things, but it’s one of the ways these horses can be trained.
I share this with you today, because – even though we are predators by nature – our faith invites us to a broader view of the world. In fact, I would go so far as to say that our faith is like the tarp that trains us, whereas sin is the veil that blinds us to anything but what’s right in front of us.
Before I go too far with this I want to acknowledge that we are moving toward our celebration of the torn veil in the temple. The veil that separated us from the presence of God has been removed, and I am here to remind you that behind the various veils we like to separate ourselves with is nothing less than the image of God: the imago dei in which we were created.
So, let’s get into that. Our Old Testament Lesson tells the story of Moses, transformed by his encounter with God and hiding behind a veil. He hid his face because it glowed such that no one – not even his own brother – would face him. Yet the reality was that his face reflected the presence of God. His face demonstrated that God was active and present and not actually destructive but instead creative and transforming. Let’s face it. Nobody really wants that.
Moses’s veil demonstrated not only that most people don’t want to be transformed into something beyond their own control, but that you cannot hide your true self from the presence of God. In the end, all that an encounter with God does is reveal what you were made to be in the first place. You were made to demonstrate the presence of God in a very specific way.
We can debate all day what the “image of God” truly is, but I believe that being made in God’s image is about being a demonstration of the presence of creativity, the activity of fidelity, and the experience of a truly common unity between us and all of creation.
According to Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, it is this reflected image that we are constantly being refined into. By degrees, over time we are called together and apart by our hope in the actions of God.
I want to take a moment and say that we have to be real careful with Paul’s words sometimes. This particular passage could easily be read to say that our Jewish brothers and sisters are just spiritual knuckleheads who haven’t understood what God made plain. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is true that we believe that God has been revealed in a particular way in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We need to be able to proclaim that and be ok with it without disparaging the possibility that the God we serve is bigger than the God we can conceive.
We need to know that because otherwise, our faith will become more like blinders and less like a tarp. We need to know that our faith is the source of hope, not the origin of our fears. We need a faith that caresses us with the comfort of this truth: that Jesus unveiled God’s active and transforming presence for us and for all of creation.
From him, let us take this example. He is constantly forming a community and bringing others into a shared experience of the presence of God. He begins all activity with prayer. He acts as a conduit for others to experience God’s presence. He heals, calls out, and casts out the untrue part of us – the part that does not reflect the image of God – and he leaves people amazed at what God has done.
Jesus is constantly laying out the tarp of faith, so that even the fear of death – his death and our ours – may not have the final word. We may never understand it, but through the crinkling tarp of our faith, we are caressed with hope during opportunities and trials.
Whether it’s a broken window, or a chance to support our ministry partner, C.U.P.S., through parking sales, or a family member’s illness, or an argument with a loved one, or a promotion at work, or a problem at school, or a meal delivered, or a chance to usher, sing, read, teach, listen, or learn; whether it’s a contribution to the work of the Presbytery or the General Assembly or Living Waters for Cuba or this congregation; whether it’s tutoring a person in need or just being kind and present to someone when you really don’t want to, that is when we live like the veil is truly lifted.
What truly matters in all of this is not so much what you and I do, but what God has done through Jesus and continues to do through you and me together. We certainly must listen for the voice of God through the opportunities of our days, but we also must hear God’s confirmation of the baptism of Jesus. “This is my son. My chosen one. Listen to him.”
When we listen to the words of Jesus and the example he set, we will hear the crinkle of the tarp of faith. We will hear that sound and it will drown out the voices that say that there are groups of people we do not have to love. We will hear that sound and it will drown out the fears that say that we’ve never done things this way or that. We will hear that sound and it leads us to one conclusion:
the presence of God has been revealed, and now it is up to us to speak that truth.
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