“To Lift the Veil of Ignorance”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
Transfiguration Sunday, February 14, 2010
Text: 2d Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Indelibly etched in the memory of all who lived through the middle period of the 20th century is the image of a mourning Jackie Kennedy, draped in a waist-length black veil, as she watched the funeral procession for her husband, President John Kennedy. Five years later first Coretta Scott King and then Ethel Kennedy would wear black veils in mourning for their assassinated husbands. By the time of former President Lyndon Johnson’s state funeral in 1973, the long-standing custom of the funeral veil seems to have vanished. When Ted Kennedy died last fall, everyone wore black, but no one wore a veil.
In our time, the veil is worn most frequently by women in Muslim societies. During the terribly repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, all women were required to wear the burka, an all enveloping garment that covers a woman head to foot. A rectangular patch of semi-transparent cloth serves as a veil over the eyes. The burka is still standard issue for women and older girls in Taliban controlled regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Less severe variations on this theme can be seen elsewhere throughout the Muslim world.
The veil is prominent in our three biblical stories today. In our first lesson, Moses, fresh from a direct encounter with Holy God, puts on a veil after revealing his glowing countenance to the people. In Luke’s Gospel, at the Transfiguration, three disciples of Jesus are veiled in a cloud and they are terrified. This veil is lifted for them when they hear a voice saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to Him.” St. Paul uses ‘veil’ as a metaphor for whatever prevents us from seeing the full truth about God.” Removing the veil is not something we mortals can do at our own initiative. Rather, St. Paul credits the Holy Spirit for lifting the veils that blind us and for effecting in us a transformation ‘from one degree of glory to another’ . . . .”1
One of my Presbyterian colleagues writes:
Paul had enough experience in ministry . . .to know
that no one falls head first into the pool of God’s transforming
love.
(No one) emerges fully formed as a perfect reflection of Christ.
The work of God’s justifying and redemptive Spirit
moves in human lives from one degree of glory to another.2
Not so glorious to our modern ears is the great apostle’s harsh criticism of our Hebrew ancestors. Paul writes of their “hardened,” closed minds. He says the ancient Hebrew scripture serve as blinders to them. In times past, such criticism has been shamefully put to use to persecute our Jewish brothers and sisters. One corrective is to acknowledge that we have a perspective St. Paul could not have had back in the first century. At the time he was locked in a protracted conflict with synagogue leaders and temple elders. As Christianity emerged from 1st Century Judaism, Paul was engaged in a sometimes life and death struggle. Simply put, Christianity as a sect within multi-faceted, First Century Judaism enjoyed the protection civil authorities granted to religions of antiquity. Apart from the synagogue, Christians were subject to family ostracism, economic boycott, persecution, even death. This may help explain St. Paul’s harsh words about the “old covenant” as a heavy veil obscuring a clear view of Christ as God’s representative.
In our own time and place we have our own obstructions to seeing the Risen Christ. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann asserts that we are blinded by our “isms:” consumerism, militarism, ageism, racism, sexism, capitalism, and nationalism.3
There is a lovely statue on the campus of Tuskegee University, between Montgomery and Auburn. The statue bears the title: “Lifting the Veil of Ignorance.” The monument portrays Booker T. Washington, school founder, standing over a freed slave and lifting a heavy veil so that the light of education can strike his face. The ex-slave, crouched low, has a book in one hand and is using the other hand to help lift the veil. His feet are poised to stand and step forward, out of the darkness. The young man is looking out into the world with wide-eyed hope. The caption under the statue reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from this people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”
Mary Hopkins recently gave me a book that chronicles the extraordinary story of Greg Mortenson, a former world class mountain climber, who has committed his life to lifting the veil of ignorance in the remote villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Back in 1993 Greg Mortenson failed in his effort to reach the top of K-2, the second highest mountain in the Himalayas. On his way back down on this treacherous mountain, Mortenson lost his way and was taken in by a tribe of people in one of the harshest, most remote regions of northern Pakistan. When Mortenson witnessed the children of the village scratching out their school lessons in the dirt because they had no school, no chalkboard, no teacher, he carefully sought the permission of the village elders to return and build the children a school house.
Over the past 17 years this son of missionaries to Africa, trained as a nurse, has built more than 130 schools in northern Pakistan and the border regions of Afghanistan. His work has helped to lift the veil of ignorance for more than 51,000 children. Mortenson contends that our nation’s enemy is not Osama bin Laden and his wanna be’s, but ignorance. For Mortenson, the most effective “weapon” in the war against terror is not the gun but the school.
But Mortenson’s mission is a two-way street. He also works to lift our “veil of ignorance” about the people of this remote region of the world. In his remarkable book, THREE CUPS OF TEA, a best-seller worldwide, Mortenson extols the virtues of these tribal communities-- their vitality and resourcefulness; the remarkable skill they possess that enables them to survive under the harshest of conditions. Mortenson shares his knowledge of the sincere faith of these Muslim people--their devotion to prayer, their loyalty to community, and their commitment to good works.
In the current issue of “Christian Century,” there is an interview with a Christian layman who works in the travel industry. The particular mission of Rick Steves is to help his clients become authentically engaged in the local cultures of the foreign lands they visit. Rick tells the story of taking a group of American Christians to Turkey, where the Muslim faith predominates. He took his group to meet the mayor of a small village. The group was crowded into the mayor’s small living room, where the official proudly pointed them to the place on his wall where he hung his Qur’an bag, the most holy place in a Muslim home. He said to his American visitors, “In my Qur’an bag I keep a Bible, a Torah, and the Qu’ran, because Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all people of the Word, children of the Book, and of God.”4
To the God of all grace,
who calls you to share God's eternal glory
in union with Christ,
be the power forever! 1 Peter 5:10,11
Amen
1 Couser, Charlie, TEXTS FOR PREACHING, Yr C, p. 177.
2 Prim, Robert Warden, FEASTING ON THE WORD, Yr C, vol.
1, p. 451.
3 Brueggemann, Walter, THE PSALMS AND THE LIFE OF FAITH,
p. 119.
4 Frykholm, Amy, “Travelers’ Blessings, An Interview with
Rick Steves,” CHRISTIAN CENTURY, 02.09.10, p. 20.