Transfiguration - !0 February 2013

{Late, I know, but present}

"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

• As I begin this talk today, I'm thinking of something an acquaintance of mine was discussing on-line. A third person asked that if Jesus was God, how could he be tempted by a creature like the devil? The person I knew responded that since Jesus was human “on his mother's side”, that side of him could be tempted. I would have to take issue with this, but I didn't because the setting would mean that would receive more comments than I would want to deal with. Most of the comments would not be pleasant.
• The mistake I found in this conversation is seeing Jesus as half-human-half divine, dividing Jesus up as we might our ethnic heritage. It isn't the same as saying a person is, say, half-German and half-Danish. Jesus is not half-God and half-human on his mother's side. He is completely human AND completely God.
• You might be wondering what this has to do with today's readings. If Jesus reveals his divinity to his disciples on the mountain, what becomes of his humanity? If he walks down the mountain with them in his humanity, what has become of his divinity.
• I've heard it said that Jesus was “faking it”, never really living as a human being. I've also heard it said that he was temporarily a human, sort of “slumming” it in human form. That of course, is the side of the discussion that accepts the divinity of Jesus. Others deny this, saying he was human and that was the end of it. A prophet and a teacher, maybe, meaning whatever that might mean, but not any sort of divine being.
• So, were do we see the real Jesus? Is the real Jesus the glowing figure transfigured on the mountain top? Or is the real Jesus the one that walked down the mountain with his friends? Then what was the reason for the event we call the “Transfiguration”?
• I really think this whole thing is not a matter of “either/or”, but rather a matter of depth. Luke puts it this way: “...while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.” In this experience, the disciples get a glimpse of all that Jesus is, not a divine being hiding under the guise of a man, or a man with some delusions of godhood. Neither was he a sort of combined being with one foot in heaven and one foot in the mud of the earth. To see Jesus in glory, speaking to Moses and Elijah and to see him at their side is to see the real Jesus. You cannot separate him into parts without doing violence to who he is, just as you can't divide any of us into component parts without losing sight of the whole.
• There is the issue for us today. If we see Jesus as simply a human, we deny his divinity and his ultimate power to save and redeem. If we see him as divinity dressed up as a human, we are in danger of losing our connection with him. If that connection is lost, salvation is lost as well, for it is Jesus' taking on of human nature that allows us to be redeemed.
• The moment on the mountain experienced by Peter, James, and John could be seen as a revelation of Jesus as “God-with-us”, and if that were the only moment of revelation, there would be disappointment. If it is a moment of seeing and plumbing the depth of all that Jesus is, we know him as “God-with-us” in the other moments of his life with his disciples and with us now.
• I suppose the real point is this: the disciple's mountaintop experience showed them all that Jesus is in a way they could never come to on their own. This did not change their experience of him in their everyday lives and they might have come to understand that they knew him as he was in the entirety of the life of Jesus.
• In knowing the story from the Gospels, we actually have an advantage on the disciples of Jesus. We know the outcome of the story, which they did not. We have come to know Jesus through the experiences of the disciples and the early church; That is exactly why the Gospels were written. Through the Gospel writers, we stand at the manger in Bethlehem, on the mountain of the Transfiguration, at the cross on Calvary, and at the empty tomb and the upper room. We know what they came to know.
• Our faith shows us the way to understand and comprehend what is told to us. But what has become clear to me is that we see the so-called “real Jesus” all through-out the Gospels. His preaching, his healings and miracles, his Transfiguration, and his death and resurrection, all show us that he is “God-with-us.” His eating and drinking, his companionship, his sadness at times, and his joy at other times shows us that he is -for lack of a better term- “Us-with-God.”
• In truth, what ever we think of Jesus, he is more. As both God-among-us and a human with us, he is the way salvation comes to us and indeed he is our salvation. He is the bridge between humanity and God and indeed brings both together. There is no difference between Jesus in the Transfiguration or Jesus before or after. We are blessed to have both and to know and follow him as “God-with-us” and as “Us-with-God.” He makes the difference for us.