Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 18, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Well, it’s Transfiguration Sunday again, one of those things we preachers are expected to preach on every year. And the Transfiguration is such an odd story. It’s such an odd word. Transfiguration. What in heaven’s name is that supposed to mean? And what is it supposed to have to do with us? I mean, so something really weird happened to Jesus once a long time ago. So what? Why should it matter to us? Well, I’m quite sure I don’t have any definitive answer to those questions. I do, however, have some thoughts on the subject that I want to share with you. So bear with me as I try to make some sense out of the Transfiguration.

We begin with the word itself. It’s an odd word. We don’t use it to apply to anything but this story about Jesus. We don’t say that anything or anybody else is “transfigured.” Luke doesn’t actually use the word transfigured, but Mark (from whom Luke got the story) does. There the Greek word is a form of our word metamorphosis. Insects go through metamorphosis. In a story by Franz Kafka called Metamorphosis a man turns into a giant bug. But we don’t use transfiguration for anything except this story.

We do however use another word that means essentially the same thing. That word is transformation. In both transfiguration the prefix “trans” refers to change. In one word the figure of something is changed. In the other the form of something is changed. As we say in the law biz, that’s a distinction without a difference. They mean the same thing. So transformation means change, but it doesn’t mean just any old change. It means radical, deep change. Changing our hair do is change, but it isn’t transformation. Changing how we live our lives, changing how we are in the world—that’s transformation. Transformation is changing who we are in the world. Our readings this morning are about transfiguration, that is,they are about transformation.

Specifically, they are about transformation that has to do with the glory of God. In the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, Jesus is transformed into the image of the glory of God. In the Bible the glory of God is often represented by supernatural experiences. In Exodus Moses sees the glory of God on the mountain top in thunder and lightening. In Luke’s version of the story of the Transfiguration the glory of God shines through Jesus as the whiteness of his clothes and in a change of the appearance of his face. In this story God’s glory also is also seen in the appearance of Moses and Elijah to Jesus. Luke says they appeared “in glory.” Luke’s point in telling the story is surely that we are to see the glory of God in Jesus, and not just during his brief experience of Transfiguration. Luke is telling us that the glory of God comes into the world in and through Jesus.

Which is all very nice, I suppose, but what does it have to do with us? Well, I think that what it has to do with us is that we too are called to be transfigured, to be transformed into manifestations of God’s glory. That probably sounds odd to you. How can the likes of us be transformed into manifestations of God’s glory? Well, I can tell you that in eastern Orthodox Christianity not only transformation into a manifestation of God’s glory but actual deification is the goal of the religious life. In western Christianity, in both Catholicism and Protestantism, we’re all hung up on how we get saved. Catholicism and Protestantism may give slightly different answers to that question, but they ask the same question. In Orthodox Christianity salvation is pretty much taken for granted. God took care of that in the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and we don’t really have to worry about it any more. (They’re right about that, by the way.) What we have to worry about is becoming God. And the Transfiguration is really big in Orthodox spirituality because it is the image of the union of the human and the divine in a human person. Jesus Transfigured is for Orthodox Christians the image of what we are all called to become.

We see the same image of the life of faith in our reading from 2 Corinthians. That reading is troubling to me because it sounds so anti-Jewish. It was probably a bit confusing to you because we didn’t read the story about Moses that Paul is referring to with all that talk about Moses and a veil. Don’t worry about it. Paul is trying to say that the Jewish Law actually hides the glory of God from the people. I’m not so sure of that. I’m sure it’s not true for devout Jews today and through the millennia. So we’ll just put Paul’s Jew bashing here to the side where it belongs. That certainly isn’t the truth in this passage for us.

The truth in this passage for us lies in one line, chapter 3, verse 18, which reads: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” NRSV That’s a bit obscure I grant you. I find Paul frequently to be so obscure that I think the man must have thought obscurity a virtue. Here’s what I take from these lines. We see the glory of the Lord, of God, in the human form of Jesus. We ourselves are being transformed into that same glory that we see in Jesus. For Paul that was the goal of the life of faith, transformation into an image of the glory of God.

And you may be saying: Great. Now I’m supposed to become an image of the glory of God. How the blankety blank am I supposed to do that? I’m not God, you may be saying. I know I’m saying that. There’s nothing divine about me, or so I think That probably isn’t true, actually, about any of us, but the main point this morning is different. The main point is that transformation into the an image of the glory of God really is possible for us. It’s possible for us because we see that image in the person of a real human being, Jesus Christ.

To be transformed into an image of the glory of God, all we have to do is be like Jesus. All? Isn’t that asking an awful lot? Well, yes it is; but it is not asking the impossible. What would it mean to be like Jesus? It would mean first of all being a person of peace. It would mean being a person who rejects violence as the solution to any problem, personal or political. We can do that. Manny has done it. I’ve done it. It isn’t easy. It means standing against the way of the world, which is violence. It means being called idealistic and unrealistic. It means being told again and again that your way won’t work. It’s not true that it doesn’t work, but that’s what the world thinks. It means standing in opposition to the policies advocated by both of our major political parties, one of which is actively engaged in or is supporting violence and the other of which thinks passing a nonbinding resolution not against war but only against making an existing war worse—which the Senate can’t even manage to do—is actually doing something. Being a person of peace isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible.

Being like Jesus means being a person of compassion and not of hatred or anger. That’s not easy either, but it’s possible. It takes a lot of work. Hatred and anger seem to be natural human emotions. They come up all the time. Being like Jesus doesn’t mean not having those feelings, it means recognizing them when they do come up and being able to set them aside.

Being like Jesus means being a person committed to justice for the poor, the despised, and the marginalized. That isn’t easy either. Our culture tells us that the worthwhile people are the successful people, the popular people, the powerful people. Our culture tells us hundreds of times every day that that is how we should try to be—successful, popular, and powerful. And wealthy of course. Most of all wealthy. After all, if you aren’t wealthy you can’t spend obscene amounts of money on luxuries just so some corporate CEO can get his billion dollar bonus. Being like Jesus means resisting all that. It isn’t easy, but it can be done.

So that’s what I think the Transfiguration is all about. It shows us the glory of God in Jesus, and it calls us to reflect that same glory of God by becoming like Jesus. The story of the Transfiguration calls us to transformation. Our church is being transformed before our eyes. We’re growing and we’re changing. With the help of the Holy Spirit we are laying the foundation for the next generation of Monroe Congregational UCC. Our church is being transfigured. What about us personally? Are we? Are we changing into the image of the glory of God in Jesus Christ? I pray that we are. It’s what the life of faith is all about. Amen.