Op-Ed
Pentecost 9B, the Transfiguration
By the Rev. James H. Gambrill
Editor's Note: This sermon was submitted with the author's permissionby local resident Ted Little. We thank Mr. Little for sending this piece, and welcome similar submissions from other priests, pastors and parishioners of our local churches to share their thoughts on faith, God and religion with the York and Ogunquit communities. E-mail your submissions to editor@yorkindependent.net.
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, and you heard again Luke's story of that most mysterious event. It began when Jesus took Peter, John and James away from the crowds and up a mountain for peace and prayer. But as Jesus prayed, his face looked changed, and his clothes turned eye-blinding white. Then the three disciples saw two towering Old Testament heroes, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus.
Poor Peter. Intending to compliment Jesus' rising prominence, Peter suggested that they should make dwellings for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, to show that the three were of equal importance in the Jewish tradition, that, in fact, Jesus had mounted to the pinnacle position for a Jewish prophet. But God had a different idea. Out of a cloud that covered and terrified them, God said, "This is my son, my Chosen; listen to Him." And then the disciples found Jesus alone.
I hope the meaning of this passage will be clear to you. The Transfiguration signals a sea change. It led to St. Paul's theology that faith is the only entry requirement to God. It is one of several augmented seventh chords God played in the gospels to show an intention to move God's plan of salvation into a new key. As in the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, where the composers introduce certain note combinations to signal an imminent change from minor to major, from conflict to resolution, from old to new, so God declared in narratives like this, that Jesus had lifted the Old Testament's ancient ethical thought and its structure for God-human relationships to a different plane. That is to say, in Christ, God is doing something new and has told us so. Luke's vivid images of the Transfiguration offer us the new thought that while the Old Testament remains the foundation of our faith, God has, in Christ, presented us with new ways of relating to each other and to God.
In Christ the toxic marinades of vengeful (eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth; Lev. 24:20) cruelty and harsh punishments and strait-jacket laws of parts of the Old Testament are poured off, and with them, the static controls that, though once necessary, had stifled humankind. As Jesus declared, the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath. These are not liberal or laissez-faire or squishy ideas; they are revolutionary reinterpretations of our place in God's universe. So, in the Transfiguration's picture of Jesus supplanting two great stalwarts of the glorious Old Testament's past, I believe God signals that God is for all humans, not just for the Hebrews; God signals that we are no longer at the mercy of the 3,000 year-old Old Testament book of Leviticus and its 600 laws governing every aspect of human conduct.
No, God has done something new. As Paul said in Galatians, God welcomes us by grace. We are justified and made right with God by our faith, and not by our works (Gal. 2:16). And so, we are encouraged not to pick and choose disingenuously like the fundamentalists among those 600-plus laws of Leviticus to support ancient rules that they like, such as that book's strictures against homosexual conduct (Lev. 18:22, 20:13), and to ignore positions they don't like, such as Leviticus' endorsement of slavery (Lev. 25:44), its condemnation to death of people caught in adultery (Lev. 20:10), its demands for isolation of menstruating women and new mothers as unclean (Lev. 12:1-8) and its taboos against the consumption of pork and shrimp and lobster (Lev. 11:1-47) - which would be the end of the State of Maine! We don't have to separate Leviticus' wheat from its chaff.
As St. Paul said, in Christ, we are made new. We have not received the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption to live in the full love and freedom of Christ. In Christ, there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, nor any of those other divisive categories.
God makes all things new. But you and I may have trouble entering the new way because much of the world worships law and order before it worships God; much of the world believes there is a computerized system of scoring for getting into heaven, and all we have to do is scope it out, and much of the world loves hard and fast rules and black-letter laws about who is and who is not acceptable to God. So, much of the world is still fighting the idea that God's way is different, but the Transfiguration sets a framework to guide us as we wrestle with the ubiquitous questions of faith.
To us, John conveyed the beautiful words that Jesus is the bread of life that takes away hunger and thirst forever. Jesus is a vein of gold for us to mine. But like the three disciples who witnessed God's Transfiguration of Jesus into the one who surpassed the mightiest men of the Old Testament, so the Anglican Communion, most other Christian churches, and the United States as a nation, disagree amongst ourselves about what is actually golden, what is nourishing and thirst-quenching about Jesus, about God in Christ.
Some still insist that spiritual nourishment flows to us from believing that the entire Bible is in every respect completely and literally true and demands our obedience; and that the world was created in literally six days 6,000 years ago and that with the Bible, God's word to the world is closed and finished with no more thought or change or openness or brains necessary.
But we've learned there is something new: God in Christ transfigured offers instead the inspiration that comes less from the age of the world's rocks and more from the love of the Rock of Ages (William Jennings Bryan); more from God's new key of ever-growing and expanding and deepening embrace of humankind than from the rules of Leviticus.
Some find spiritual nourishment in clutching Jesus for their own personal, private savior and in being born again with an exclusive right to enter God's kingdom.
But there's more than that. The Transfigured Jesus revolutionized our spiritual and ethical map. The bread of life comes to us as His partners - called to reach out to all God's creatures, especially the least of Jesus' brothers and sisters: all God's creatures, the sick, the imprisoned, the depressed, the transgendered, the poor, the minorities, the AIDS victims, the African refugees from genocide.
For some, spiritual thirst is slaked by their conviction that they and their churches have a monopoly on God's truth and that all others will be judged harshly by a vindictive God for, say, undergoing an abortion for whatever reason or endorsing stem cell research for the benefit of those with Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's disease.
But I think not. God has now signaled that the Christ who came to live with us shares our thirst and that, however random and cruel it may sometimes appear, God's universe tilts toward justice; and that as science opens up more and more cures for human diseases and problems, God invites us to open ourselves with inquiring and discerning hearts to an environment of perpetual change.
Some find their spiritual hunger assuaged by believing that God has decreed different roles and standing for men and women in church and society for all time, and any new direction is trendy, liberal and against Christ.
But in Christ, God feeds our brains and our hearts and our souls to search for God's presence in our personal challenges and in the world's problems and opens all positions to every one of us.
Some feel fed by believing that our country is God's special beloved, infallible province. But God in Christ invites our recognition that the special gifts we have received bestow now privilege, but rather, entitle the world to expect more of us as a nation - in ethics, treatment of prisoners, active concern for the air we breathe and the water we drink and the atmosphere that we have polluted - that it is just as patriotic to help save our country from dying as it is to die for our country (William Sloane Coffin).
So many want certainties to paper over their doubts and fears that the world is getting away from them, and that the old-time religion, whatever that was, is being undermined by liberalism, by secular humanism, by the separation of church and state, and by birth control and by the rising cries for equality of homosexual persons. These people run for reassuring cover to Jerry Falwell, Pat Dobson and Pat Robertson and a thousand others who preach with certainty the rules of Leviticus and a static, prudish morality.
But in the Transfiguration, God feeds and nourishes us by doing something new in Christ: by raising Jesus above Moses and the Old Testament saints, and by moving the universe's symphony - beyond vindictiveness and prudishness and a self-righteous hatred of those different from us - into a new key of radical acceptance across class, caste, tribe, gender, denominational and sectarian lines and into God's offer unshackled and abundant life in Christ. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, Alleluia.
