March 2, 2014
Transfiguration - Who are you?
- Exodus 24:12-18
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. Transfiguration Sunday is always the last Sunday before Lent begins. It is also the last Sunday of the church’s season of Epiphany. Did you know we have been celebrating a season since after Christmas? Epiphany began on the Sunday the magi followed a star to find Jesus. It ends in the dazzling light filled vision of Jesus on a mountain top. And on that mountain top heaven and earth, history and future all come together with sun, cloud, past prophets, and a voice from above to reveal the unique and beloved nature of God’s son. Epiphany began with the revelatory promise of the change a child’s life will bring to the world and ends with the freedom that Christ’s death and resurrection will bring. The season begins and ends with light, as the light of God’s love is made real in Jesus and his new way of living.
I have preached four Transfiguration sermons before this Sunday. I was really at a loss on how to preach it in a new and interesting way. That’s why I am grateful to the internet and for other preachers’ ideas on this Sunday that we celebrate every year. I especially liked Alyce McKenzie’s new way of thinking about this story. Alyce is a professor of preaching at Perkins School of Theology and she suggested that we try to find ourselves in this story of transfiguration. After all, transfiguration is just a churchy work that means transformation or metamorphosis, and we know what that means don’t we? – it means change. And we’ve all had to make changes at some point in our lives haven’t we?
So think about when you read a book. I assume many of you read books all the time. I usually read about a book a week. I love to read before I go to bed and on Sunday afternoons before I take a nap – in other words, don’t call me Sunday afternoon because I am reading and napping! Mark and I have hundreds of books in our home. Our children love to read too and it really is our family past time.
When someone reads a book, he or she usually tries to identify with the main characters of a story. We do the same thing when we watch a movie, or TV or a play. We do this identifying subconsciously, but we do it. When you are watching or reading a story you look at the characters and either try to find one that has some quality that you have or that you’re like, or you pick out a character who has some quality you lack and would like to have. If there is no one in a story you can identify with, you won’t finish the book, you won’t watch the TV show, or you’ll walk out of the movie.
The Transfiguration story has six characters, but has no one we can fully or clearly identify with. The dazzling Jesus is the Son of God and we don’t want to be presumptuous and think we could be all that he is. Moses spoke to God face to face, and Elijah, instead of being buried was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. I am not like either of these prophets in any way that I can think of. The disciples who are busy being dazzled and babbling are frankly too human or silly or stupid for most of us. I don’t want to be like them.
But let’s not give up on this story. Let’s try to find a way to identify with one of them. So I’ll start with Jesus. Of course we shouldn’t be so bold as to fully identify with Jesus, the Messiah. But there is something we have in common with Jesus – our humanity. As a human, I think Jesus was probably pretty tired at this point in his ministry. As we have learned in our gospel stories, Jesus has healed, and taught and at this point in the narrative he has told the disciples that he is going to have to suffer and die. He has done so much and as scripture tells us, when Jesus got too tired he would remove himself from the people and go away for a time of prayer to get away from the crowds. Maybe Jesus is wondering how effective his ministry has been. He has fed the crowd with loaves and fishes – but the people are hungry again. He has performed miracles of healing – but the people still have sickness. Jesus knows the Pharisees and the Sadducees are plotting against him. His three most trusted disciples want to build memorials to keep Jesus with them always and his other disciples seem to be confused about who he is. Perhaps Jesus is wondering, “Do they really understand the cost of following me? Will they follow me as I head for Jerusalem?”
So if you know what it’s like to be tired and to have people constantly asking you for something, or if you have people who are always criticizing you and working against you, or if you’ve even been filled with dread about what lies ahead – then you have something in common with Jesus. If you know what it’s like to feel those things as a direct result of serving God, then you have even more in common with Jesus.
Moses and Elijah are also up on the mountain. Jesus could certainly identify with these two – they represent revered leaders for the Jewish people and they represent the law and the prophets. The Jewish people believed that the Messiah would have to be in the same mold as these two leaders. And even today a place is set at the Seder meal for Elijah because Elijah must come back before the messiah comes. Moses, just like Jesus saw and heard God on a mountain top – and his face too had shone.
But on the human side, we remember that Moses hadn’t wanted to be a prophet and had made excuses to God to get out of it. So if you know what it’s like to make excuses to God, you have a little something in common with Moses. Moses also gave in to the Israelites when they were complaining and rebelling in the wilderness. The consequence of that was that while God took Moses to the top of Mt. Nebo to survey the promised land, he couldn’t enter in to it. So if you have ever compromised your faith convictions for popular opinion, then you have a little something in common with Moses. And if you have ever felt the pain of separation from God because of your actions, you also have a little something in common with Moses. Moses was fearful and he made mistakes, but he was still a great prophet and servant – so maybe we can all have something in common with Moses. Moses knew about both the suffering and the glory and he had come back to tell Jesus and the disciples about the glory.
Most of us have a hard time relating to Elijah, the fearless prophet who, rather than dying was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire. Of course he was the same prophet who ran away and hid in the hills under a broom tree and begged God to take his life when Queen Jezebel’s forces came after him. So if you have ever said to God, “This is the end of the line. I am not following you anymore. You didn’t tell me how difficult this would be,” then you have something in common with Elijah. Elijah knew about the suffering and the glory and he had come back to tell Jesus and the disciples about the glory. Many people in Jesus’ time expected that Elijah would return to signal the coming of the Messiah. And sure enough, on this mountain he did just that.
And then there is Peter, James and John. The Message translation of this Matthew passage has Peter babbling over building memorials to Jesus, Moses and Elijah. The NRSV translation uses the word “booths.” No matter what the word is, I think Peter just wanted these three great men to stay up on the mountain forever. Perhaps Jesus didn’t want to leave either. I wouldn’t presume to say.
But I will tell you a story. When I was near the end of a very long labor with our daughter Hadley I was clinging to the hand of the gentle and kind nurse who had been with me for the last 12 hours. (Mark was there too, but I kept telling him to go out of the room and get me drugs. Unfortunately Hadley was in distress and I couldn’t have any drugs, but that is another story.) The nurse’s shift was over and she had to go home. I really didn’t want this sweet and encouraging woman to leave me but in her practical way she said to me, “If one of us has to leave, it better be me. Because you’re the only one who can have this baby.”
The two prophet’s shift is over, leaving Jesus with a job that only he can accomplish. He is the only one who can lead this new Exodus and teach, heal and challenge all the way to Jerusalem – the city of his death and the city of his resurrection. And he can do this because he is God’s son and God tells us to listen to him.
Jesus has just told his disciples about his death and resurrection right before the transfiguration story takes place. So when Peter, James and John go up on that mountain they may have been in shock about what was going to happen, or probably they couldn’t comprehend it. And then Jesus turns all white and basically starts to glow. What would you have done with that? Wouldn’t you have been scared to death like they were? Would you have tried to build something that would remind you and others of what you saw? If you have ever had a need to see or build something concrete rather than just feel or experience it, then you have something in common with Peter, James and John. Being open and attentive to the mystery, glory and experience of the spiritual requires skills many of us have not developed. After all, we are Presbyterians! We tend to live at the bottom of the mountain and that spiritual mountain top experience can be frightening!
And although the disciples said they would remain silent, and I guess they did, I bet when they came down that mountain they couldn’t think of anything else for days. And as the gospel story continues these three men become leaders of the church and even die for their faith. Somehow this experience on the mountain has changed them and has changed their relationship with Jesus. Their identity is transformed by their new relationship with Jesus, the Son with whom God is well pleased – and they become leaders and courageous martyrs. When you think about it, we all are transformed by the unique identity of Jesus don’t you think? Transfigured, transformed, changed – that is what the divinity and the humanness of Jesus can do for us.
So who are you? Who could you relate to in the story? I think this story is put here in Matthew’s gospel to allow us another moment, a mountain top amazing moment, to try and identify and understand who this Jesus really is. We are being given the challenge to be attentive to the mystery and experience of the power of God at any time and in any place.
Whether you are a Moses, or an Elijah, or a disciple, Jesus’ character is one with whom we can identify in his humanity. And Jesus is a character who identifies with us in his divinity. In him we behold what we want to be become. In us he lives as a presence that empowers us to become the people God created us to be. As the apostle Paul says in 2nd Corinthians, “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3: 18) Thanks be to God, Amen.
Sources:
“Attentive to Mystery and Prophecy,” Seasons of the Spirit – Epiphany, 2013 – 14.
“Finding Ourselves in the Story: Reflections on Transfiguration Sunday,” Edgy Exegesis, by Alyce M. McKenzie.