Monday, March 04, 2019

Transfigurations


 

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

March 2, 2019

You know those images that kinda transform before your eyes depending upon your focus or perspective? You know, if you focus one way it’s an hourglass but when you shift your focus you see two faces? Like the one on the back of the bulletin? That kind of thing?

Have you ever had an experience of the world like that? Where something you thought you knew and understood is suddenly revealed otherwise, and you can never see it quite the same, quite so simply, ever again? Have you ever experienced another person that way? Have you ever experienced yourself that way?
The apostle Paul wrote about “seeing in a mirror dimly” before coming to the clarity of seeing face to face, and seeing faces for what they are. We spend so much of our lives seeing dimly – seeing others through reflections and refractions of broken glass, and, if we’re honest about it, seeing ourselves the same way.
Did you see that story about the guy in Alabama who mean-tweeted at comedian Patton Oswalt? Oswalt had tweeted a snarky remark about President Trump and the guy in Alabama – who is, honestly, a walking-talking stereotype of a Trump-supporting southern redneck – angry-tweeted some stuff about Oswalt’s acting.
Oswalt was about to get into a tweet battle with the guy, but, as he scrolled through some of the man’s tweets he realized that the man was a vet who’d been through a run a bad luck and poor health, and, at the moment, had a Go-Fund-Me page to help cover serious medical bills.
First, let’s stipulate that such pages stand as utter condemnation of the incredibly unjust health care system this country still has, but this is only partially about that.
In any case, rather than tweet down the man’s throat, Oswalt donated $2,000 to the man and tweeted out to his 4 million followers:
This dude just attacked me on Twitter and I joked back but then I looked at his timeline and he's in a lot of trouble health-wise. I'd be pissed off too. He's been dealt some s***** cards — let's deal him some good ones."
The guy’s fundraising effort had been in the hundreds of dollars; it’s grown to around $50,000 now, and the Alabaman man says that “when he wrote those angry tweets he was in a bad place, angry at himself for letting his health deteriorate: ‘It was easy to snap back and snarl,’” he said. But “the empathy shown towards him changed him. He’s begun to think: ‘People are good.’ […] One-on-one, ‘people are caring, generous, helpful.’”[1]
Who knew that Twitter could prompt transfiguration? But, then, transfigurations are a lot more common than most of us imagine. They happen all the time, in fact, in all kinds of places, to all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways.
About a dozen years ago I was struggling with depression and having a hard time keeping myself in any kind of shape. I have run for exercise off and on since I was a teenager, but I had never thought of myself as a runner. As some of you know, one of my younger brothers is an accomplished middle-distance runner who still competes as a masters runner in national cross-country team events. The last time I finished ahead of him in a race he was 14 and I was a senior in high school. About two weeks after that he finished ahead of me in our first cross-country meet of the fall and I’ve never been close since.
He went on to college on a cross-country scholarship and became all-conference. He’s a runner. How can I call myself one compared to that? Looking through the broken glass of time, accomplishment, sibling stuff, doubt, and all the rest, what do I see?
But, in the midst of the depression I was wrestling with, I had a brief – like 90-second – conversation with David LaMotte that reframed a great deal for me. I didn’t know David well at the time, but he was in town to sing for Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, on whose national steering committee I sat.
We were in the sanctuary at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. I was doing some set up for a worship that evening and David was doing a sound check. He noticed me checking out one of his guitars and said, “do you play?”
I said, “I’m a campfire strummer but I’m not a real musician.”
He stopped me and said simply, “if you make music, you’re a musician.”
If you make music, you’re a musician. If you make art, you’re an artist. If you write poetry, you’re a poet. If you run, you’re a runner.
In that brief moment, I was transfigured. I can’t say I haven’t struggled off and on with depression since, but I will say that, for me, exercise has always been the most helpful treatment, and within two years of that conversation I’d run a 10k for the first time in about 25 years, and a 15k for the first time in my life.
Neither of them swiftly, to be certain. But, with perseverance I began running, and began to own the label: I am a runner. I also rededicated energy to song-writing and making music, and though I still find it somewhat challenging to say so, I am a musician.
So, what do this story about rage tweets or this overly long gaze in the mirror have to do with the text before us, or with anything more significant than Twitter feeds or a middle-aged runner who likes to make music?
Simply this: I am fairly certain that lots of folks around me called me a runner long before I called myself one, and lots of folks around me called me a guitar player long before I called myself one, and I would hazard a guess that the Alabama guy has had friends along the way who have seen him very differently than he saw himself as he tweeted out his frustrations at an actor he’d never met.
Transfigurations are usually pretty obvious to everyone except the one who needs to experience one.
I’ve been thinking about that this week with respect to our United Methodist friends.
It seems pretty obvious from the outside looking in that a community grounded in John Wesley’s conviction that God’s love is the foundation of our lives ought to have figured out by now a more loving embrace of its LGBTQIA children.
It seems pretty clear that a community that sings its founder’s songs – as we did with our middle hymn a few minutes ago – and proclaims his convictions about God “who save the oppressed and feeds the poor, and none shall find God’s promise vain” – any such community should understand that God’s love knows no bounds and surely includes those too long excluded by the church.
Perhaps the transfiguration the United Methodist Church needs to experience would come in seeing the best in themselves the way that others already see them. For example, I see the Methodists faithfully engaging through welcoming community of Wesley Seminary, where over the years they’ve welcomed a whole lot of their Calvinist friends, including me and Susan Graceson and Billy Klutz and Madeline Jervis to name but a few.
And I see them standing on the sidewalk outside Foundry Church handing out water to folks who’ve been walking in the Pride Parade through June heat and humidity. The folks at Foundry have been living out the love of God for all of God’s children as faithful Methodists for a long, long time.
If the whole of the church could see itself the way communities like Wesley Seminary and congregations like Foundry are seen, the glass would become clearer. They would see one another face to face, and experience transformative grace. They would see themselves, I believe, as already transfigured by the grace of God.
I think that’s what actually happens to Jesus on the mountaintop.
I’ve preached before on this passage and focused on how the church tends to be like Peter: we want to stay on the mountaintop in a fine house and not return to the injustice, the racism, the heteronormative messiness of the fray in the valley. That’s still an important lesson from this text, but as I read it this time I couldn’t help but think the transfiguration of Jesus was also for Jesus’ sake.
After all, just prior to this story in Luke’s gospel, Jesus has been off praying alone. When the disciples come to him he asks them, “who do people say that I am?” In that conversation Peter proclaims to Jesus, “you are Messiah – the anointed one of God.” Traditionally this is all read as part of the “messianic mystery,” but I think it’s way more likely that Jesus had to figure out who he was just like every other human being does.
So just a few days later, whe Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain, he has this shared experience of seeing himself differently. In the transfiguration on the mountaintop, Jesus’ friends see him differently as he takes his place alongside the other great prophetic figures of their tradition – Moses, the lawgiver who led the people out of bondage, and Elijah, the prophet who speaks truth to the king concerning abuse of power and neglect of the poor and calls the people back to their roots.
Peter has already proclaimed that Jesus is the messiah, as his followers see him with Moses and Elijah, perhaps Jesus also sees himself as he is seen by those closest to him. Perhaps he never had any doubts about his own identify. I doubt that, but who knows?
I do know this much: after Jesus, Peter, James, and John came back down from the mountain Jesus stops asking who people say he is and starts calling people to follow him. His itinerant teaching and healing become more purposeful, and soon thereafter he sets his face toward Jerusalem to proclaim liberation for his people and to confront the abusive powers that be.
Transfiguration, in this case, is not some magical event that alters reality but rather a profound shift in perception that alters how reality is understood. Such shifts in perception clear the way for equally profound changes in how we see ourselves and how we choose the live as a result of seeing through the glass clearly.
So, how do you see yourself with respect to the things that you tell yourself matter most? How do others see you in that regard? What are the gaps between your self-perception and the ways others perceive you with regard to the things that matter most to you?
Are you looking in a mirror dimly or are you seeing and being seen face to face?
Transfiguration might be as simple as wiping the glass clean, because when we see clearly – ourselves and others – we discover that we are seeing children of the living God. When we see one another clearly we find that we are seeing a reflection of the face of God.
That side of transfiguration – where we see clearly as we are clearly seen – we find it far simpler, natural even, to follow John Wesley great and simple teaching: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the time you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
Amen and amen.

posted by David Ensign at 6:16 AM