(Preached on Sunday, February 14, 2010)
While he was in prayer, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became blinding white. -Luke 9:29
If you reckon that this story is a bit way out, then you are definitely on the right track. If your mind catches, like the second and third gears of an auto not quite meshing when being shifted manually, when you try to understand this story, then Luke would rejoice! We should puzzle over this picture that Luke frames for us. We should feel out of our depth, because we are out of our depth! Far out of our depth!
In telling the transfiguration story, Luke is attempting to convey the confounding mystery of Jesus the Christ. It is a mystery which in the final analysis is “inaccessible to human mind and tongue” (to quote a New Testament scholar.) This is a story of enlightenment – an epiphany story. That is why we read this story every year on the final Sunday of the Epiphany season, immediately before shifting gears and beginning our journey through Lent toward Good Friday and Easter. Epiphany, you will remember, is the season which began several weeks ago with the coming of the Wise Men and celebrates God’s revelation of God’s self through Jesus the Christ.
Traditional Transfiguration Day sermons often focus on what is revealed about the nature of God and the person and mission of Jesus through this story. They usually explore what the story tells us about Jesus – how he is like Moses and Elijah, how, in spite of appearances, his true nature is a glorified nature, how this even served as confirmation for Peter, James and John that he was the Messiah. They also might focus on the struggle of the disciples to understand, to comprehend, their slowness to take it in.
Those are all important points. But I don’t want to focus on any of them this morning. I want to step back and look at what this story tells us about how Jesus and God engaged in this revelation. What it even means that God chose to reveal God’s self in this way. And what it might mean for us in how we share our faith with others – a faith in a God who is revealed to the world in this manner.
Gods have always been revealed through mighty acts of power. Think of Zeuss and the Olympians; think of Ra and the pantheon of Egypt; think of Shiva – all revealed as mighty beings which controlled the powers of nature and even human lives. Even Yahweh, the God of Israel, was initially experienced by the Hebrews through their Exodus from slavery in Egypt as a God who was mightier and more powerful than the gods of Egypt, including the Pharaoh. But the God revealed through Jesus is a God revealed through vulnerability. The Wise Men found the new king of Israel born not in the palace of Herod in Jerusalem, but in an out of the way house to poor peasants in Bethlehem. God was very vulnerable with Jesus at his baptism: proclaiming Jesus as God’s beloved, chosen child. Here, today, in the story of the transfiguration, Jesus is vulnerable in revealing his true nature to his closest followers, allowing the divine light of love and beauty and sacredness to shine forth in their presence.
This vulnerable nature of God shining through Jesus is revealed in the parables and healings of Jesus. Through them Jesus demonstrates tremendous compassion for the outsiders. The vulnerability of God and Jesus is revealed when he shares a last meal with his friends and takes on the role of a servant to wash their feet. It is demonstrated in the garden of Gethsemane when he was arrested and abused and on the cross in the manner in which he confronts and embraces his own death. It is even demonstrated in the resurrection on Easter when Jesus is revealed quietly to his closest followers and not grandly, dramatically to the world.
The entire story of Jesus’ life reveals the nature of God to be demonstrated most clearly through the power of love. God is not revealed as one who forces God’s will on human beings. God does not coerce, or intimidate, or brow-beat, of manipulate human beings in any manner. God is love. God’s will is shared in love. God’s manner is gentle, caring, never-say-die, love.
The way God shared God’s self through Jesus is the way God invites us to share ourselves with each other, with our neighbors, and in return, with God’s self – through love which is vulnerable in honesty, openness and acceptance. This is especially true in regards to how we share our faith. God, through Jesus, revealed God’s love through vulnerability. We are invited to be vulnerable in the same manner. We are not called to hound and harass people into salvation. We are not called to intimidate and manipulate people into a relationship with God. We are not called to frighten them into getting right with God. We are called to share openly, honestly, and gently with people, who we are.
That is a lot easier said, than done. Vulnerability is a frightening practice. In fact, all the definitions for the word “vulnerable” carry negative connotations, beginning with the first one: “susceptible to injury; unprotected from danger.” Generally we do not view vulnerability as a positive quality. That is why the apostle Paul’s statement to the Corinthians in a passage chosen to accompany this reading in the lectionary is somewhat unsettling. Paul tells them “But when one turns to God, the veil is removed.”
Paul saw this as a good thing, but I am not so sure most of us would agree. There are times a veil sounds pretty appealing to me. A veil protects me. It forms the first line of defense in the battle to keep the outside world from seeing the person I’m afraid to display. A sheer piece of metaphorical fabric is all it takes to hide my true feelings, my doubts, and my fears. With the veil on, I’m comfortable telling all those little white lies that get me through the day. The veil is my stealth technology, my armor of avoidance. With increasing frequency, it’s more than simply metaphorical. It’s my iPod earbuds hanging from my ears or my phone plastered to my face or my huge Top Gun sunglasses – anything that creates a buffer zone between you and me.
Of course, there is good reason we like our veils: because we are not totally comfortable, or sure, about who we are and about revealing our true nature to the world. When we do, we become vulnerable – open to attack, to being rejected, and to being hurt. We are not sure we are worthwhile and lovable.
But Paul goes on to say that “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. In other words, the same glory which shone forth from Jesus on the mountain is present in each and every one of us. This light is not some alien force. It’s at the heart of our very existence. We may not always see it, but it is the way God sees us: as God’s beloved sons and daughters who are forgiven, accepted and chosen for the sake of the world. That is the truth about who we are: we are beautiful because we are loved; we are gifted and special because God is at work in our lives. The more vulnerable we can be with God, the more we can begin to see the truth about ourselves.
And when we do, then we can begin to share who we are with other people, in a gentle, vulnerable manner which begins to help them see who they truly are: the beloved, accepted, forgiven children of God, too. How do we do this? The story gives us an important key. When Peter blurts out his idea for responding to Jesus’ vulnerability about staying on the mountain top and basking in the glory of God the voice from the cloud reminds him to “listen to Jesus.”
The first step in sharing our faith in a vulnerable manner is not to say anything at all, but to listen. The poet Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear a word you say.” Before we even begin to speak and share with people it is important that we communicate with our lives and our actions the vulnerable love which we know from God through Jesus. Remember, when God chose to reveal God’s loving nature God did so through a vulnerable, loving human being. When we look at Jesus’ life it jumps out how he listened to people before he shared with them. He wanted to hear their story, their hurts, their pains, what they needed.
In the same manner the first step in sharing our faith is to listen to our neighbors. Develop a practice of asking people to tell you about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. Listen. Don’t listen in order to make a response, but to really hear their story. Listen to really hear who they are, where they are hurting and what their needs are. As you listen you will find yourself accepting them and loving them as Jesus accepted and loved people. That does not mean you must condone everything they have done, but it means listening beyond what they have done to the hurting, love-starved person they are. As you do that, you may then begin to help them find their own answers and begin to help them discover the divine light shining in their own lives.