Transfiguration for Transformation

By

Reverend Litton Logan

February 18, 2007

Scriptures:

Luke 9:28--9:43 (NRSV)

²⁸Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. ³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. ³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. ³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. ³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” ³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

Sermon:

          In the fourth chapter of Luke, which we will look at more closely next Sunday, we read the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  In response to the temptations, Jesus rejects using his special relationship to God in self-serving ways as well as he rejects the use of sensationalism or sectarian power models to reach the hearts and minds of people.  His response was to trust in God’s word and leadership and to just say “No” to lesser and superficial ways of kingdom building.

Jesus instead goes to the people as one of them not as an earthly ruler in power and majesty.  He tells people the Kingdom of God is here and now in his ministry and yet to be fulfilled in their lives, and the lives of those who are to come after them.  The kingdom to come is to be realized in lives of ordinary people identifying with and living as Jesus did even if the results may be a cross.

          In today’s scriptures, traditionally referred to as Jesus’ Transfiguration, we see again a rejection of another earthly model of kingdom building.  Only this time the rejection is by God.  Today we heard God reject cultural and religious traditionalism in favor of the new thing God is doing in Jesus.  In short, listen to Jesus, he, not religious or cultural traditions, has the latest word from God.

Jesus and several of the disciples have gone up to a high place to pray.  While Jesus is praying, something happens to him—his face and clothing start to glow, reminiscent of Moses encountering God on Mount Sinai.  In Jesus’ glowing experience, the disciples see two men standing and talking to Jesus.  Luke is the only one of the Gospel writers who tells us what these men talked about with Jesus.  The conversation between Jesus and the two men later identified as Moses and Elijah concerns Jesus’ “exodus” or his upcoming journey, which will lead him down this the mountain he is on and up the hill of Golgotha.  I hasten to point out that in the Old Testament and Jewish lore Moses and Elijah because of their favored status with God were taken up to heaven without experiencing physical death--a favor God did not to extend to Jesus.

In these moments of transfiguration—a mountaintop experience if you will--Jesus receives confirmation of his earlier insights concerning his death in Jerusalem.  In Luke’s Gospel, from this moment on, Jesus’ ministry moves steadily and inexorably toward Jerusalem and his crucifixion.

Let me interject at this point, that to equate Jesus’ Transfiguration to a human “mountain top” experience, or an epiphany, is a bit inaccurate.  Jesus’ transfiguration is not some supra mundane, emotional, or spiritual experience common to ordinary people.  Jesus’ transfiguration, like Moses’ experience, is a divine, world-shaping event, not just some inner glow, or spiritual insight that many of us may have experienced.  Yet, Jesus’ mountaintop experience does have some striking commonalities with the average person’s encounter with the Holy, which we will look at later.  

In Jesus’ reality-shaping Transfiguration, it is made very clear that in Jesus God has fulfilled the essence of the Law of Moses and the words of the prophets.  Jesus truly speaks forth the word of God to all people, for all times, and to all human situations. 

Jesus, like Moses, has demonstrated his mastery over the sea and fed the multitudes in the wilderness.  Jesus will confront the political and religious powers of his day; he will cleanse lepers, and raise the dead just as the prophet Elijah did.  However, in Jesus, we see God going beyond the Law, beyond the exhortations of divinely inspired prophets, or even their miracles.  We see the fullest possibilities of God in human flesh coming to confront, comfort, and redeem ordinary human beings regardless of ethnicity.

The disciples witness this world, transforming scene.  However, Peter, as usual, does not fully grasp the import of the moment.  He is eager to commemorate the event and to freeze it within his understandings of his Jewish religious traditions.  In honor of the moment, Peter suggests that they build three booths, shrines, or dwelling places reminiscent of the Jewish Annual Feast of Booths, which celebrated the end of Israel’s wilderness wanderings.  Immediately, in contradiction to Peter’s suggestion, a cloud like the one Moses experienced on Sinai appears and from it comes the voice of God that again affirms Jesus as the holy son and tells the disciples to listen to him.  I like the way one preacher said it--God said, “Shut up, stop thinking, and listen!”

The Hebrew people followed Moses in the wilderness of their rebellion and they listened to Moses and tried to follow the Law.  The people and their leaders rebelled against God’s laws and ways and Elijah—symbolic of all the Prophets--confronted them and called them to repentance and covenant renewal.  In Jesus’ day, the people and their leaders have again gone their own way and turned their backs on the essence of God’s laws.  However, now God has sent Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One, God’s son—so shut up with the traditions, stop thinking, and listen to him. 

Now, faithfulness to God’s will is more than keeping the Law and conforming to the words of the prophets.  Right relationship to God and to others is to be found in listening to Jesus and internalizing his way of life even it leads to a cross. 

The word transfiguration is often used synonymously with concepts like metamorphosis, transformation, makeover, change, conversion, transmutation, or alteration.  However, I see a significant difference in definition especially in today’s scriptures.  A Transfiguration is an event of the moment.  Jesus’ countenance changes in the moment.  This moment of encounter however produces a transformation in Jesus’ life and ministry.  Prior to his transfiguration Jesus has had various insights to his life’s calling and to what lay ahead of him in Jerusalem but the Transfiguration experience, however, not only affirms what lays ahead in his “exodus but transforms him, makes him over from hat point onward.

Personal makeovers, alterations, transformations are big business today.  Many people spend a lot of money to have their appearance changed.  With this sermon on my mind, I remembered standing in a super market checkout and seeing the face of Michael Jackson with his bleached skin, facial alterations, straightened hair, and peeling, nose job on the cover of one of the tabloids.  I remember thinking, “Wow, talk about someone unhappy with himself.” I remembered him as this nice looking African-American kid with this dynamite voice singing with the Jackson Five.  In that tabloid photo, he looked really weird.

The growth in elective, plastic surgery, and the self-help, pop-psychology craze in this country tells me that many people aren’t happy with who they are or how they appear.  At the root of all these changes, I believe, is people’s unhappiness with themselves as compared to either some personal or some cultural ideals.

In this vein, I believe that Jesus’ transfiguration and its concomitant transformation of his life was the results not of his unhappiness with himself and his spiritual life but rather from his sincere desire to conform to the divine ideal for his life whatever that meant.  While in prayer he had a special, life-affirming experience that convinced him the journey that lay ahead of him was necessary and of God. He was going to be faithful to his insights no matter what.

That was Jesus’ experience and the transformation of his life to comply with God’s will.  Let us look for a moment at our lives.  I am sure we’ve all experienced moments whether in worship, prayer, meditation, or out in nature when we’ve sensed a special quality or an over-plus to a moment beyond the obvious.  Sometimes in such moments, we become acutely aware of our surroundings and ourselves in very profound ways.  We may even physically flush, feel ourselves glow or become light headed or giddy.  In such moments, some sense of “reality-over-plus” breaks into our consciousness.  In that moment of transcending insight, we frequently become more attuned to the “Divine Something” that always resides in the ordinary.  Such moments can become life changing if we allow them.  We can leave such moments of transfiguration a new person, transformed, with a new sense of direction and purpose for our lives all because we left ourselves open to novel possibilities of God for our lives in those special moments.

However, some people like Peter want to make such experiences static moments of religious tradition.  They want to institutionalize them if you will.  Others want to use such experiences for self-aggrandizement. They want to live in the super-ordinary, commemorate it, revel in it, and its telling and retelling.  They go to great lengths to try to duplicate these moments in unbridled emotionalism, acute fasts, exhaustive religious retreats, and times of extreme meditation.  I believe when people do such things they are looking for the high, the rush, and the escape from the ordinariness of their lives into some transcending moment at the expense of what I believe is the truest purpose of such moments.

My friends, such divine glimpses into the extra-ordinary amid the ordinary are never ends unto themselves; they are never for the individual alone.  Such moments of insightful awareness are the means of not only personal transformations but of world transformation.  Those moments are gifted moments from God that affirm us, call us, commission us, and spiritual equip us with the resolve to serve God’s unique claim on our lives no matter what.

          Please note that Jesus and his disciples did not stay on the mountain.  Jesus did not consent to make an institution or an end-all of the moment.  Rather, Jesus took the affirmations and insights of that moment and headed back down the mountain and up another high place in Jerusalem.  The insights of that moment became an affirmation of his calling in life and for all those who would follow him. 

How has your personal encounter with the Holy transformed you?  Yes, you’ve had one. All of us who can honestly proclaim Jesus as “Lord” have had an encounter with the Holy—some more dramatic than others, but an encounter nonetheless.  The question is how has that encounter transformed us from the core of our being and influenced our every day life?  How has that moment of spiritual insight transformed us as we came to understand that Jesus, his teachings, and his example, are God’s authoritative reference for our being truly human in this life? 

Some people deny the reality of such moments as just so much woo-woo, airhead stuff, or momentary lapses in reality.  Others would make such moments ends unto them selves.  To do this is to stunt one’s faith development and service to God and others.  Yet, there are other people who take such moments as confirmation of God’s claim on their lives and set their sights on whatever God has in store for them—even Jerusalem and a cross.  These people remain open to and anticipate the novel-God-possibilities in their lives from moment-to-moment to the betterment of themselves and the world.

I thank God for those divine laws that order the human community, morally and socially.  I thank God for the prophets of all ages who address God’s worlds to the immorality, injustices, and inequities in human society.  Nevertheless, I am most thankful that God personified the essence of all the laws and the words of the prophets in Jesus the Christ—Love God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  In love, we fulfill all God’s laws and respond to all the words of the prophets, by God let us make no laws that abridge the Law of Love.

          Can you recall those moments of encounter with the extra-ordinary, the holy, in the ordinariness of your life?  What difference did those moments make, if any, in your life and in the world beyond yourself?  Did you fix your encounter with the Holy to just that moment?  Did you minimize those moments as just some spooky experience?  On the other hand, did your encounter with the Holy affirm you as loved and called by God, which set you on a journey of service, self-denial, and, yes, even a cross of self-sacrifice if God so calls you?  I encourage you to revisit those moments of holy encounter, let them re-power you; redirect your life’s journey—no matter what.

          If you have never had a life transforming encounter with the Holy, why not?  God stands ready to welcome and transform your life.  Listen to Jesus and respond to the Holy Spirit’s call at work in these special moments of your life as you stand between heaven and earth in the presence of God—transfigured for transformation.