The Last Sunday of Epiphany: The Transfiguration of Our Lord
Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Psalm 99
O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
I saw the “Son
of God” on Friday! Not in blindingly white robes on a mountain with Moses and Elijah,
but on the screen at Tinseltown! Perhaps you have heard about this new movie,
based on footage of TV’s miniseries The
Bible and produced by Touched By An
Angel’s Roma Downey and her husband? I knew that it wouldn’t be great
cinema and had heard that it was both predictable and melodramatic—but I grew
up on Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea and am an avid collector of Celine Dion
ballads—so I took a chance that there would be a Transfiguration scene, and I
headed over to check it out.
I won’t advise
you to rush to see this movie or to
avoid it. Scholars could have a field day with some historical inaccuracies,
and movie-makers could slam it for cheesy sets and stilted dialogue. What I
found interesting, though, is how the film’s writers played with the Bible’s
chronologies and characters to get across their own particular understanding of
the Gospel. At first, the blatant changes from scripture irritated me, but then
it hit me: That is just what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were doing, I
realized with a smile: retelling the story so that it would speak Good News to
their own communities. What interests me for this sermon, then, is to examine
what kind of Son of God has been created
for our community of American Christians by this film … And more specifically,
is he different from the Jesus of Matthew’s Transfiguration story that we read
today?
The Jesus in Son of God is distractingly handsome. As
one critic put it, “he would be the best-looking guy in the room at an
Abercrombie & Fitch catalog shoot.”[1]
He is very laid-back, far from the angry revolutionary of Reza Aslans’ recent Zealot book. Trying very hard to sport
the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic half-smile, this Jesus floats from scene to scene,
oozing confidence, grace, and ease—until the Passion draws nigh, that is, and
the film decides that it needs to be sure we know that he is suffering mightily
for our sins. Most of all, though, the movie’s Jesus is full of compassion, and
that resonated with me. I liked the way the film portrays the scenes of his healing
miracles—as real miracles, yet more focused on the love that Jesus has for the
sufferers than on the miraculous gestures. I liked how the writers emphasize
the brutal oppression that the Jewish people suffered under Roman rule, and how
this Jesus speaks to his disciples of changing the world, of bringing hope into
the darkness of their lives. I liked the way the film shows him doing my own
favorite “Jesus-thing”: shaking up the certainties of the Pharisees with a just
a gentle little twist of words that turns everything upside down. The
Resurrection appearances are also tastefully done, I thought. Like the earthly
Jesus, this Resurrected Christ also emphasizes the call to action, the call to
us as disciples to go out and change the world. So, all in all, I was
comfortable with this Jesus: a handsome and compassionate face of God; a clever
and peaceful agent of change in the world. He is a Jesus who could fit nicely
in the understanding of Evangelical Christians, who seek a loving friend, a
personal relationship, with their Lord. He is a Jesus who could fit just as
nicely in the understanding of “progressive Christians,” who find hope in
social change and want a pacifist, liberator-Jesus whom they can imitate in
word and deed.
Yet, there was
no Transfiguration scene in Son of God.
I was hopeful when the movie began the story of Jesus’ birth with the scene of
the wise men following the star to the stable. “Perfect,” I thought, “they are
starting with Epiphany, the manifestation to the gentile world of Jesus as
God’s Son! Next, they’ll have Jesus’ baptism, and then his transfiguration, and
each time they can have God’s voice from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved
Son…’ Yes, Son of God! They are so
clever to tie Epiphany into the title of the movie!” I marveled. But they
didn’t do it. Even Jesus’ baptism was only given a hurried flashback of a few
seconds, as Jesus remembered his murdered cousin John the Baptist. A friend
reminded me that transfiguration would be difficult to portray on film, and
that is true. Yet, the filmmakers didn’t shy away from portraying miracles or
the resurrection appearances—equally as difficult to film. Goodness, they even
did a rather tasteful job with Jesus’ ascension into heaven! They certainly weren’t reticent to portray
Jesus as the Son of God. After all, that’s what they named the movie! This was
no purely human Jesus teaching us good life lessons. So where was the
Transfiguration?
I believe that
the transfiguration got left out of the movie for the same reason that it troubles
us when we read about it. I think that we American Christians these days want
our Jesus to be our personal friend, to be someone that we can imitate and
understand. We want Jesus to be the compassionate and friendly face of God, not
some brilliantly dark mystery just as perplexing as the Father. But Jesus, of
course, is never just what we want him to be.
Barbara Brown
Taylor gives a wonderful sermon on today’s text in which she criticizes the
directions of most sermons on it. To preachers, she advises, tongue in cheek:
“If you have to say anything at all [about transfiguration], then you’re better
off sticking with the Bible commentaries. Just say the thing about Jesus
surpassing the law and the prophets, poke a little fun at Peter [wanting to
build a tent up there], bury the rest. It might have been God. Then, again, it
might have been last night’s Thai food.”[2]
I’m afraid that’s what we usually do—bury the inexplicable mystery that might
make us sound like superstitious fools. We try to lay out what this strange
story of transfiguration means. We start to make the story about us and our own
mystical experiences of God. We try to find the “take away” or relate it to
current events, making the image about something that we can do and understand.
As preacher Fred Craddock writes, “[N]ot all [understandings of Jesus] fit the
contours of our lives, not all [understandings of Jesus] can be consumed
without remainder in moral examples and ethical preachments.”[3]
We do need moral examples, scripture
texts that we can try to apply to our lives, ethical guidance for the tough
road that we walk in the world. We were just talking at Pub Theology on Tuesday
about how thirsty we are for scripture to speak to our lives and guide us in
our political and moral choices. But whenever we seek such guidance, we need to
keep in mind that encounters with God—in scripture and in the world—are
dazzling encounters that blind us as often as they enlighten us. There are no
easy answers. The Transfiguration reminds us, with its blinding white light and
its mysterious divine cloud on the mountaintop, that Jesus is more than our
friend and teacher, that Jesus’ story is more than compassion and answers to
the world’s troubles, that God’s Son has a streak of strangeness in him.
What I like about Matthew’s
description of the Transfiguration is that Matthew’s Jesus steps out of the
blinding light and away from the divine cloud and comes over to the disciples,
who have collapsed in the dust with the kind of awe that is akin to terror.
Jesus comes and touches them saying, “Be raised up and do not be afraid.”
Matthew’s transfiguration gives us the recent film’s compassionate Jesus, smiling
and gently touching, at the same time as he gives us the strange Jesus,
enshrouded in divine mystery. Craddock says that Matthew’s transfiguration
scene is one of “disturbing consolation.”[4]
That’s what God always gives us, isn’t it? Disturbing consolation. Clarity that is mystery. Jesus in the face of a homeless man. Jesus in the
face of our enemy. A glorious Presence in the midst of terrible pain.
On the other hand, a Jesus who only
consoles, handing us the miracles for which we clamor, the easy freedom for
which we long, the satisfying personal relationship that we would crave from loved
ones here on earth, that isn’t a real Jesus, is it? I think that if I had been one of the
disciples in the film, I probably wouldn’t have gone with Jesus to face the
perils that awaited them all in Jerusalem. The rabbi that the film’s disciples followed
promised to change the world; he was clever with the religious authorities; he
was compassionate and did some miraculous things …. But without the
transfiguration, without seeing the glory of God in him and being raised up in
love all at the same time, I don’t think that I would have risked my neck by
following him to the Cross. Today, too, I need a glimpse of Transfiguration
before Lent, glory before passion, light before darkness. Compassion alone
won’t make me strong. An example to follow won’t make me brave. A handsome
friend is not the God who creates from nothing and raises me up to a new kind of
courageous life. No matter how glorious the end of the film, I need “disturbing
consolation” along the way.
[1]
Peter Hartlaub, “‘Son of God’ Review: Jesus Biography a Mixed Blessing” found
at http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Son-of-God-review-Jesus-biography-a-mixed-5274945.php
[2]
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Bright Cloud of Unknowing,” found at
http://day1.org/5560-the_bright_cloud_of_unknowing.
[3]
Fred Craddock, “Christ is not as we are,” found at
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=705.
[4]
Ibid.
