Matthew
17:1-9
A few years ago, the clergy
association out in Lebanon wanted to increase mutual understanding among
religious groups in that part of the state.
There were a few Muslims who had been moving into the area, and we thought
that we could build bridges among communities by having some formal
dialogues. Now let me say this: one
mistake we (the Christians and Jews) made was assuming that although none of us
fully knew everything about the traditions and beliefs of the others, that
there was some absolutely basic knowledge to build on. We (again, the Christians and Jews) have
lived in a world with neighbors of other faiths or no faith. The particular group of Muslims who had moved
into that area, though, had come here from a part of the world where they had
had no such exposure. We also assumed
that the difficulties that would occur would happen between the Muslims and the
Jews. After all, we watch the news. We know that the Iranians and the Saudis hate
the Israelis even more than they hate each other, right? So we were prepared, and in preliminary
discussions of programming, we had decided to limit discussion strictly to
religion and leave aside anything that had to do with the political status of
Jerusalem or who had started what fight and when.
To
avoid that kind of distraction, what we did was have people dispersed among
tables and write questions on index cards.
They’d be passed up to a head table where, one week, the rabbi and the
president of the synagogue would read and answer them, the next week a panel of
Christian clergy, and finally some folks from the mosque. After question time, people could talk at
their tables and have some snacks. The
first week it went just fine. The second
week, though, one of the Christians said something about Jesus being the Son of
God. That was when one of the Muslims
asked about how that term was intended.
Surely it was some kind of poetic expression. When the Christians said, no, we really
believe that Jesus was the human embodiment of God’s whole self, that he was
more than just a very, very good person, you could feel everything in the room
change. They rode out the rest of the
questions that had been handed up to the front, but as a group they left right
after that and didn’t come back the next week.
The notion that Jesus is – or even
could be – both human and divine is so much a part of our cultural makeup that
it holds no surprise for those who reject it.
For those who encounter it for the first time it is enough to startle
them at the very least. Being put out
there calmly as a matter of fact – “this is our belief” – was enough to induce
a sense of blasphemy among the Muslims, enough to keep them away from that
point.
Imagine,
then, what a mix of shock and confusion and fear and who knows what else it must
have put into Peter and James and John, for whom there was no one to put
anything into any kind of order for them ahead of time, to have seen their
friend and teacher all of a sudden morph into someone more than human before
their eyes. For them, this was not a
matter of words or ideas, but a physical reality that they saw and heard
directly.
“And he was transfigured
before them, and his face shone like the sun, and clothes became dazzling
white.” [Matthew 17:2]
Nor
would it have lessened their shock to see the company that he was keeping. Moses, who had died long ago, and Elijah, who
had been carried alive to heaven, were right there talking with him. Two figures who epitomized the Law and the
prophets, the fullness of the Jewish religious tradition that they all came
from, deferring to this carpenter who had shown up on the shoreline one day and
said, “Follow me.” This could explain
what there was about him that had led them to do that exact thing, to follow
him.
Then came a second punch. Peter had started trying to deal with his
nervousness by offering to do something, build something. It’s like they say happens when there’s a
dramatic event of any sort in Britain and someone’s first instinct is always to
make everyone a cup of tea. Don’t just
stand there; do something. But Peter is
interrupted.
“While he was still
speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice
said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to
him!’” [Matthew 17:5]
And
that’s the point where those of us who are accustomed to think of Jesus as both
human and divine sometimes metaphorically and sometimes literally leave the
room.
Listen to him?
By “listen”, we have to understand
more than turning our ears in his direction.
By “listen”, we have to understand what it means when someone greater
than anyone says, “Now, you listen to this man!” And, if you do listen, he says some amazingly
shocking things.
Both Matthew and Luke put a bunch of
those into brief collections in their gospels.
They are essentially the same, although the wording differs somewhat. Matthew’s version goes by the familiar term “The
Sermon on the Mount” and the one in Luke is sometimes called “The Sermon on the
Plain”. We’ve been reading through the
Sermon on the Mount throughout the season of Epiphany that ends this week and
if you didn’t notice last Sunday the gospel reading was long, and I included a
lot of the rest of it in my own sermon.
All that aside, what matters here is
that Jesus has told his disciples how to live, that he himself lived according
to his own teachings, and that now the very voice of God validates what Jesus
has said and will say, letting them know both to do what he says and to do as
he does.
Then, as if that were not enough,
Jesus informs them on their way down from this mountain, perhaps still
awestruck and afraid, perhaps elated at the experience of God’s glory,
definitely confused, that everything Jesus is doing is going to get him killed. That’s gut punch number three in this
reading. Jesus tells them that what
happened to John the Baptist (who had recently been executed) was going to
happen to him. A few days later he makes
the same announcement to the entire group of disciples, not just those three.
“‘The Son of Man is going
to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and on the third day
he will be raised.’ And they were greatly distressed.” [Matthew
17:22-23]
Here
is that same inconceivable mixture of divinity and humanity, weakness and
power, mortality and immortality, vulnerability and invincibility that continue
to perplex us all. Jesus is the Word
made flesh. He is also the one crucified
under Pontius Pilate, dead and buried.
Then again, he also rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. While we’re at it, he’s also going to be the
judge of the whole world someday. His
life puts ours to shame. But that’s not
what he’s trying to do. He’s the kind of
judge who’s really rooting for the defendant and his Spirit is sometimes referred
to as the Advocate.
Is it any wonder that it is so
confusing to try to figure him out? It
is so much easier to adopt absolute, either/or categories. That’s what Islam does. That’s the approach of the vaguely religious
agnosticism of our general society, with its “spiritual-but-not-religious” folk
and its “nones-and-dones”. Maybe, they
say, there’s a God but there is no way that God is tied up with our
limitations. Maybe, they say, there’s
some hope for humanity, but there is no way that we will ever really achieve or
fully embody the highest purposes of creation. Let’s not even touch the possibility that by “listening”
to him and obeying his words and example we might end up walking the same
path. No, it is much better for all of our
sense of safety if we say he is one thing and we are another; don’t let the
categories blur in any respect.
Humanity, here. Divinity, there. Now, keep everything in its proper
place. Sunday, here. Monday, there. Don’t mix them up. If Jesus, or even someone like Moses or
Elijah, shows up, build them some sort of shrine they can stay in, so that
regular life can go on as usual without interruption.
Of course, God breaks through our efforts
to do that. Abraham Heschel wrote,
“Awe is an intuition for
the creaturely dignity of all things and their preciousness to God; a
realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however
remotely, for something absolute. Awe is
a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to him who is
beyond all things.”[1]
So
beside the great witness of Jesus’ transfiguration before the disciples come unexpected
moments that transfigure those who listen to him, when the sense of mystery and
awe overshadows the world, and the certainties of gloom and the comforts of
fatalism are torn away, because something good and glorious and fearsome happens. The sun comes up with a big show of red and
orange. A flock of geese flies over. Just the right song comes over the muzak at
the grocery store just when you need to hear it. The broken-down car actually starts for once. You pray for a sick friend and they recover,
or they pass away peacefully after years of pain. One day you think of somebody who hurt you
deeply, and you realize the hurt isn’t there, and forgiveness begins to take
its place, or maybe somebody else forgives you.
Possibility (which we also call “faith”) returns, and with it come joy,
and hope.
Those solid-looking walls are
broken. A silent God speaks,
“This is my Son, the
Beloved; with him I am well pleased.
Listen to him!” [Matthew
17:5]
[1] from
Abraham Heschel, “God in Search of Man", quoted in Reuben Job and
Norman Shawchuk, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Nashville:
The Upper Room, 1983), 104.
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