“Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.”

— Exodus 24:18

This Sunday many of us will celebrate Transfiguration Sunday. And as long as I have been doing this, reading these texts and preaching these sermons, I continue to live with many mysteries in the Revised Common Lectionary.

In the first scripture reading for Year A, the Lord summons Moses to the mountain with the promise of the Decalogue, the commandments upon which the Torah is based.

Some think of Torah simply as law. I suppose that works, as far as it goes. But as my Hebrew professor liked to say, “There is a perfectly good word for law in Hebrew, and that is not it.”

Torah is closer to gift. Or teaching. Or lifelong instruction, wisdom about how to live in relationship with God, handed over and lived out bit by bit. I don’t know how many, if any rabbis would fully agree with me on that, but they would certainly share my critique that “law” does not quite capture the fullness of its meaning.

The Lord offers Moses the tablets of the Ten Commandments, but Moses receives Torah. Moses takes Joshua with him and asks the elders to wait for their return, leaving Aaron and Hur in charge of caring for the people. Moses climbs the mountain, and the glory of the Lord descends and settles there for six days. On the seventh day, God calls Moses to enter into that glory, which appears like a devouring fire.

As the story continues, God gives Moses all kinds of instructions. Our reading ends by telling us that Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. And we know that in the ancient Near Eastern world, forty does not mean a precise number. It means a long time.

It took a long time for God to show Moses what a relationship with God looks like. It took a really long time to impart holiness and sacredness and love and patience and joy and prayer and sacrifice and hope and trust.

God already had all of these. Moses seems to have learned them on the mountain, in the devouring fire. The rest of us, well, we are usually down the mountain. And we know what we are capable of. We know about golden calves. We know about falling back into old patterns of selfishness and demand.

Moses spent a really long time on the mountain with God until Torah became part of him. Jesus was transfigured before his disciples’ eyes in a moment. For the rest of us, transformation often takes a lifetime, a lifetime of practice, a lifetime of learning how to live in right relationship with God, a lifetime of grace claiming us and reshaping us, little by little, bit by bit, until we too, can learn to live within the devouring fire of God’s glory.

Beloved, may God’s transforming word transfigure our lives and our world a bit more this week, through your words and your actions.