The Transfiguration, by Raphael
We’ve had some tricky readings lately and of course, I’ve no idea what you’ve made of them here, so who knows how my take on today’s gospel will sit with your last few weeks! Luke’s Gospel has taken us on a bumpy ride, and we are living through a chaotic time here and now, what with pandemic, climate change, and warmongering leaders. What, in the midst of all this, can we make of the Transfiguration story, which, on the face of it, was a transforming – and peaceful! – experience?
The account of Jesus’ transfiguration appears in all three of the synoptic gospels – the three evangelists felt that it was something they needed to tell people about, and they had to find a way to bring the story into the lives of people who heard it. They wanted a way to show Jesus representing the new temple, embraced by the Shekinah, the holy light of God. In the eastern Orthodox churches, the Feast of the Transfiguration is very important. It’s called an Epiphany, a manifestation of God. (Which is why it sits here in our calendar, as the climax of the Season of Epiphany.) Western churches lost something when they ‘downsized’ it. Where the western churches thought that strain, dryness and desolation were an inescapable prelude to experiencing God, the Greeks thought these were disorders that must be cured. Their dominant motif was Mt Tabor, rather than Gethsemane and Calvary.
This story is filled with Jewish images. The choice of Moses and Elijah to attend Jesus is significant. These two major prophetic figures were said to have had had unusual deaths. Moses, said the book of Deuteronomy, died alone, and was buried by God – and ‘no one knows his burial place to this day.’ In Jewish thought, that mystery was explained by saying that Moses had not really died at all, but that God had taken him directly into the divine presence. The same fate, rather more picturesquely narrated, was said to have been Elijah’s destiny. Elijah was taken up directly into God’s presence, by a fiery chariot, drawn by fiery horses. That’s why, in rabbinic tradition, Moses and Elijah were thought of as the ones who would arrive, with the promised Messiah, at the end of time. And, because they had in a sense conquered death, the evangelists pictured them as talking with Jesus.
The transforming brilliance that came upon Jesus was also part of a long tradition. God’s holy light, called the Shekinah, had always connected the people of Israel to God’s presence, and marked the place of God’s dwelling place with Israel. Now, for the Christians, the life of Jesus was the new dwelling place of God.
But – we can’t leave Jesus on Mt Tabor. Nor can we stay up there with him. We have to bring the story of the Transfiguration into our lives today, in Aotearoa-New Zealand, in the 21st century, and we can’t live on the mountaintop, and be part of the realm of God. Remember Luke’s account of what we call “The Sermon on the Mount?” In Luke’s account it is really the Sermon on the Plain. It happened after Jesus came down from the mountain and was surrounded by his disciples and the people wanting help or simply wanting to be where he was. In the same way, we have come together for a time apart – and that has been reflected this morning in our liturgy. But it’s never more than a time to catch our breath, to reconnect, to put aside the everyday stresses, and then to go out and go on with the work. We can never say, well that’s that, add a final full stop and close the book! We live with contradictions all the time.
Israel always struggled with the contradiction between the exclusivity of its faith – the ‘chosen people’ of God and God’s call to all the nations. Israel couldn’t keep itself apart. Even back in the time of the Exodus, there are hints in the story of other nations grappling with encounters with the living God. Moses had a foreign wife, and his father-in-law Jethro was a foreign priest, who taught Moses how to order the life of his turbulent people.
We too grapple with the contradictions in our minds. We struggle to come to terms with the realisation that no one group of people, or no one individual can claim to represent God, or the whole truth. In the convulsions that our world has suffered in the last decades, we have to learn to listen to other voices. In our own country, with its growing number of immigrants from different cultures we must listen to the different voices. God for the 21st century is a universal God.
It’s never easy to listen to other cultures. It’s more than being what we call ‘tolerant.’ It’s being realistic enough to own that we’re as rooted in our own culture as any Somali immigrant or Afghan refugee, and that the differences are real and may never disappear. Dialogue only happens when both parties respect each other – and then to listen anyway.
This time is a particularly good one to be reminded of the importance of listening to the other. This month we celebrated Waitangi Day – the day when representatives of two peoples signed a new treaty. Te Tiriti O Waitangi – the Treaty Of Waitangi is the founding document of this nation – whether we like it or not. It’s a living, breathing document, affirming inalienable Maori rights – and sanctioning the rights for others to belong. It provides the basis for settlement, government and a life together. It arose out of a desire to create space for two peoples to live in this country, each with their own rights and responsibilities. It’s a covenant, and covenants always require both parties to work together in order to move forward. Like the covenant between Jahweh and Israel. Like the new covenant made between God and humankind in the incarnation. – the day when the two cultures in Aotearoa made a covenant
Any partnership is challenging, and any covenant is challenging. It’s particularly hard among humans when one half of the partnership doesn’t really, honestly, consider itself to be eye to eye with the other. Far too often, one partner considers, OK, we know best, and that the way forward is to bring our partner up to our level and our way of doing things. Even with the very best of intentions, this is not partnership! Partnership requires more than signatures on a piece of paper. It requires a change of heart and mind that can be quite fundamental.
And in this month of celebrating ‘one people’ we are on a journey that recognises how far we actually are from being able to way, with truth, ‘we are one.’ We have the Coronial process for the Mosque victims beginning, and we still hear the voices of hatred on the fringes. We have the ‘Abuse in care’ enquiry, and we are reminded that this country has a sorry, continuing, history of violence against children. We have the protesters encamped in our cities, and they have a whole raft of grievances that they encourage each other to proclaim. However should we be responding to all this?
Jesus shows us inclusiveness. He talked with everyone who moved towards him. He never, ever set himself apart. And he never suggested to his disciples that only a special group of people would be permitted to approach the living God. The incarnation marked the beginning of another long journey, and a gradual shift from seeing God as ‘out there,’ occasionally making dramatic interventions into our world to seeing God truly ‘with us’ – with all of us.
Our God is the ‘one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.’ Remember Psalm 139? ‘If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the furthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me.’ Wherever we go, God is there. We are in God, and there is no place we can be, and be outside God.
This is not the God who wants us to measure up. Who has an ‘in’ group and an ‘out’ group. Who will take vengeance on our enemies. No, the God in whom we live and move is the God who is the divine lover. God is in love with us. God yearns for us. As one contemporary scholar, Roberta Biondi, puts it: ‘God is besotted with us.’ As lover, God is compassionate. God is passionate about earthly justice. And that means that we can’t sit on the mountaintop in rapt contemplation.
I once did a balloon ride, drifting in peace and silence, but every now and then, icy cold air would roll down the sides of the balloon into the basket, reminding me that I couldn’t survive long in that cold. And I can’t drift about in isolation and silence either. Where life and work goes on for me is right down in the sound and restless bustle of the city – even though that city is changing around us every day.
The Transfiguration teaches us that Jesus reflected God’s light, and showed us the way we must go. He wasn’t impressed with Peter’s impulsive desire to build a permanent sanctuary for him. He brought the light down from the mountain, and called on his disciples to take it to all the world. You can’t be an isolated little island in God’s realm. Life with God is about living in relationship. For us, because of the culture we’ve been born into, it’s about living within the framework of our Christian traditions, just as much as being Jewish, or Muslim, is about a relationship with God lived within the framework of those traditions.
It’s not easy of course. There’ll be times when we feel that we’re moving in the light, and there’ll be times when we feel that the darkness is overwhelming. It’s right that we celebrate God’s light, but we also need to affirm that God will meet us in our dark times, and stay with us there.
And nothing takes away the mystery. There will always be times when our experience of being in relationship with God goes beyond our rational world. We can’t domesticate, and tame, and categorise the glory – the radiant presence – of God. But we are called to live and work in God’s created world, and to live in God’s realm.
- In a world of restless change
- Standing for love and faith and justice;
- In a dark confusing time
- Bearing the light,
- The shining light of Christ.
– Colin Gibson.