Sermons - Transfiguration (2/23/2020)
Ex. 24:12-18; Ps. 99; 2 Pet. 1:16-21; Mt. 17:1-9
So some of you know that I’m allergic to nuts. Eating tree nuts, in particular, causes me to go into anaphylactic shock – my throat starts to swell shut, which can be quite serious, although I’ve been fortunate not to have ever been in any real danger. It’s a fairly common allergy, and I’ve noticed that in our preschool the Healthy Snack guidelines posted in the school kitchen say to always make sure anything that’s brought for the kids in the preschool doesn’t have any nuts. It’s something people are very aware of today – but when I was a kid, back in the days of Moses, there was much less awareness of these things. All I knew as a young child was that I didn’t eat nuts. That’s just the way it was.
So one day, in fourth grade, I forgot to bring my lunch to school. Left it in the car. Lunch time rolls around, and everybody else takes out their lunch and started eating. I tried – probably not very well – to hide the fact that I didn’t have a lunch, but eventually the bell rang and we all started going outside for recess. But the teacher stopped me. One of the sisters had made something for me to eat, so while everyone else went outside, I went back into the classroom, where I was left to sit at my desk alone with a peanut butter sandwich. Which I knew I was not supposed to eat. What to do? I looked around and thought I’d slip the sandwich into the trash and get on with recess.
But just as I arrived at the trash can, who appeared but the principal, Sister Benigna. This was an unfortunate name, because there was nothing benign about Sister Benigna. She referred to her ruler as the Board of Education and was known to frequently apply its lessons to my classmates’ fingers. We were all terrified of Sister Benigna. And now, instead of escaping to recess, I was now headed to Sister Benigna’s office. Where I was informed that I was being very rude to Sister Emerentia, who had so kindly seen that I didn’t have any lunch that day and had so generously made me a peanut butter sandwich. I tried to explain that I am not supposed to eat peanut butter, but I didn’t communicate that very well; she thought I just didn’t like peanut butter. And so she told me, and I quote: Jesus suffered for us, so now you have to suffer for Jesus. And, although it took all afternoon, with a lot of crying, and a lot of milk, I eventually got enough of the sandwich down to go home when the day was over.
It was years later, as an adult, I presume in my mid-20s, that I told this story at a family gathering. And my parents were shocked. I had assumed they knew all about what had happened, but it turns out they had no idea – and they were quite angry about the whole thing. I guess I didn’t tell them that I had been a bad boy and spent all afternoon in the principal’s office, I didn’t tell them that I had been rude to Sister Emerentia, I didn’t tell them that I had eaten the forbidden peanut butter sandwich. And apparently no one from the school had said anything either. I don’t remember being told not to say anything about what happened, but the fact is that I didn’t say anything about it for years. And while I don’t think anyone meant for my experience that day in the fourth grade to be so traumatic, I must say that it’s very easy for me to understand how children and even adults who are abused often don’t tell anyone about it for years, if ever. Especially when perpetrators make it explicit: You can’t tell anyone about this. You’ll get in so much trouble. No one will believe you. Yes, I understand very well why people who have been mistreated feel pressure to keep things quiet. I’ve experienced firsthand the misuse of religion to enforce silence.
So, last Sunday, during Sunday School we were looking at the gospel story of the Transfiguration. The curriculum we use invites our students to imagine and share their thoughts about several parts of the story – imagining the light coming from Jesus that is so bright you have to hide your eyes, imagining Jesus helping us up and telling us not to be afraid. And the last point in the teacher’s cheat sheet I was using made an explicit point about the end of the story where Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about what they had seen – and right there in that moment, I had an immediate and visceral reaction: No. We are not teaching kids that there are things God wants you to keep secret. No way. Not in this congregation. I will have no part in that.
And that’s not just because I’ve seen personally how the demand for secrecy has been used to manipulate and harm people, especially in churches. It’s also the opposite of what Jesus teaches. “There is nothing secret that will not become known,” Jesus said. “Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.” (Lk. 12:2-3) And it’s not just Jesus who teaches this. There’s a saying among people in recovery, “We are only as sick as our secrets.” The grace of God is meant to allow us to face difficult truths confident that we are secure in God’s care, that we have nothing to fear from God and so we have the freedom to acknowledge anything, to be ashamed of nothing. Get up, Jesus told Peter and James and John on the mountain of transfiguration as they fell on their faces in fear. Get up, you have nothing to fear. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You belong here with me. That’s what I understand the gospel of Jesus to teach.
And so, ever since Sunday School last week, I have been grappling all week trying to understand the last line of today’s gospel reading. “As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’” Tell no one about the vision. Why would Jesus command something so at odds with everything else Jesus says and does? Why is this something to be kept quiet? Why could Jesus possibly want Peter, James, and John to sign nondisclosure agreements about what happened on the mountain? What is going on here?
I am not sure, even after a week of trying to figure this out, that I have a real answer to this question. I take some comfort in knowing Jesus didn’t say, Never speak of what happened here, only Don’t speak of what happened here until Easter. Because obviously Peter, James, and John did eventually speak of it. That’s how we know the story, because, after Easter, they did tell what happened.
And I suspect that Jesus knew that, if Peter and James and John had tried to tell the story before Easter, they probably would have gotten it wrong. So I don’t think that Jesus just didn’t want anyone else to know the secret mystery of the mountain of transfiguration. It’s more that Peter and James and John would not have told the story truthfully until they knew its ending. In the transfiguration Peter, James, and John had a vision of Jesus as the presence of God in human flesh; but until they experienced the cross and then Easter, they could not have known what that meant.
The second reading today describes this same movement from the vantage point of Peter himself. When Peter says that he and the other apostles saw the majestic glory and heard the voice from heaven on the mountain, the second letter of Peter insists that this is simply the testimony of someone who was actually there, and not some “cleverly devised myth.” And what does that mean, a “cleverly devised myth”? Well, I think I’ve already given you an example: The myth that Sister Benigna told me in the fourth grade: Jesus suffered for you, and now you have to suffer for Jesus.
A myth is a story that’s normally told by a person with power, like a principal, to a person without power, like a fourth-grader, that has this moral: The very thing that I, the powerful person, want you to do just happens to be what God wants you to do. And if you even think about disobeying me, that makes you a very bad person in the eyes of God. You don’t want to do what I’m telling you to do? Jesus suffered for you, so suck it up and suffer for Jesus.
The story of Jesus in the Scriptures is, in fact, actually the opposite of this kind of myth. In fact, God does not want us to suffer for Jesus. Rather, in Jesus God has come into our world to fully occupy the place of suffering and shame so that we need never be alone there. Then God raises Jesus from the dead to show us that we have nothing to fear from being in the place of suffering and shame, if that is where we happen to find ourselves. So myths claim to reinforce the powers that be with the claim of divine authority. But the gospel subverts the powers that be by testifying to the manifestation in a particular place and time of a God who invites us into a life that cannot be touched by death.
This is a distinction that Peter comes to recognize after Easter. After Easter, Peter can tell the story of the transfiguration as a witness of the glory of the One who was crucified and rose again. Before Easter, if he had the opportunity, Peter probably would have told this story as a cleverly designed myth – I was chosen to see a vision that God has chosen Jesus to be the Messiah and so you’d better listen to him and to me, or else!
We read the story of the transfiguration each year on the last Sunday before Lent. It is a foreshadowing of the glory of God that awaits us – but if we dare to speak of it apart from the one who was crucified and who rose again, it is not the gospel that gives us life and freedom but just another religious myth that oppresses and silences. The Lent and Easter seasons to come are an invitation to us to refocus and reorient ourselves around the dying and rising of Jesus. By doing this, we are invited to recenter our faith in the life-giving gospel that is opposed to every cleverly designed myth.
And the story of the transfiguration itself is just one example of how the perspective of Good Friday and Easter changes everything. Without Easter, Peter and James and John would probably have told a cleverly designed myth about a mountain and the cloud and the shining face and clothes of Jesus and the appearance of Moses and Elijah and the voice from heaven. But after Easter, what Peter and James and John remember is the voice that said, This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him – and when they listened to Jesus, what he said to them was: “Get up and don’t be afraid.”