In
C. S. Lewis’ marvelous tale, The Voyage
of the Dawn Treader, a group of adventurers sets out intending to sail into
the uttermost east of the magical world of Narnia, hoping to find the country
of Aslan, the Lion, the Son of the Great Emperor. As they voyage far beyond all
land, the salt brine turns sweet. Then we read,
For a long time
everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were all silent. They felt
almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently they began to notice
another result. As I have said before, there had been too much light ever since
they left the island of Ramandu – the sun too large (though not too hot), the
sea too bright, the air too shining. Now, the light grew no less – if anything,
it increased – but they could bear it. They could look straight up at the sun
without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen before. And
the deck and the sail and their own faces and bodies became brighter and
brighter and every rope shone. And next morning, when the sun rose, now five or
six times its old size, they stared hard into it and could see the very
feathers of the birds that came flying from it.
This is something of what Paul gets at with his
description of the church as she draws nearer to the coming Kingdom. Paul
insists that while Moses had to damp down the result of God’s glory, he intends
to preach it bareface: no rhetorical reverse-Ray Bans to take the lightning
edge off the gospel, no soft-sell of the searching strobe light of salvation.
But the real kicker comes in verse eighteen: “But we
all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are
being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the
Lord, the Spirit.” Under the Law, Moses only dropped his veil when he retreated
to the tabernacle to be alone with God. Under grace we mutually unmask because eyes
strengthened by repeated drafts of living water can increasingly endure
unbearable doses of divine luminosity. Our sisters shine brighter for us, and
we shine brighter for them. The glory of the gospel is that it empowers me to
bear the weight of my brother’s glory.
Who
Was that Un-Masked Man?
Doug
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