2012-02-19 Establishing an Identity

ESTABLISHING AN IDENTITY

Scriptures:     2 Kings 2:1-12, Mark 9:2-9

I began last week with a confession.  OK, here’s another one:  I hate Transfiguration Sunday!  If casting out demons and healing lepers strains our credulity, this being transformed with glowing white clothes and ancient, legendary figures (Moses and Elijah) around him just really offends our contemporary sensibilities.  Talk about your ultimate magic trick!  Chris Angel or Lance Burton or David Copperfield couldn’t top Jesus here (or even Elijah in our Old Testament reading, for that matter).  And that’s really the problem, isn’t it?  Reading these two scriptures in a straight-forward way does make these stories seem like magic, which tends toward fantasy, which makes it difficult for us to take them with any degree of seriousness that would help us to know how to apply what is happening here to our own lives.

One way to understand transfiguration is to think about it liturgically – although, frankly, this is not terribly satisfying.  Transfiguration Sunday is the final and climactic Sunday in the Epiphany season, which itself is the culmination of the Advent and Christmas seasons, and it is thus the next step toward Lent, Good Friday, and Easter.  During this season we have been remembering the epiphanies (or manifestations) of Jesus:  the Magi’s visit, Jesus’ baptism, Jesus’ healing miracles – and transfiguration is the culmination of all of these.  It also points to the glory beyond the resurrection – to Jesus’ ascension – and the parallels between the transfiguration and the resurrection are striking:  both have two shining men (on a mountain and in a tomb), as well as fearful observers, in addition to a glorified Jesus.

The purpose of this event liturgically is to demonstrate to the disciples (and to us) Jesus’ true identity.  Wikipedia summarizes it nicely:  “The Transfiguration not only supports the identity of Jesus as the Son of God (as in his Baptism), but the statement ‘listen to him’ identifies him as the messenger and mouth-piece of God.  The significance of this identification is enhanced by the presence of Elijah and Moses, for it indicates to the apostles that Jesus is the voice of God ‘par excellence’….. The Transfiguration also echoes the teaching by Jesus that God is not ‘the God of the dead, but of the living’.  Although Moses had died and Elijah had been taken up to heaven centuries before, (as in 2 Kings 2:11), they now live in the presence of the Son of God, implying that the same return to life can apply to all who face death and have faith.”

If you’re of a theological turn-of-mind, these observations may be helpful as a way toward understanding the identity of Jesus.  But I rather imagine most of us are still back in the “he did what?”…”and his clothes became what?”…”and who were those masked men around him?” reaction to this rendering.  No wonder good old Peter was somewhat flummoxed and reacted to all that was going on around him by wanted to erect three tents and just stay there until all the awe and wonder had worn down.

But we don’t really want to be like Peter, do we, and just stay in this place.  We need to figure out what’s really going on here so we can move on and take the events of the transfiguration account into our own psyches in order for them to help us with what is going on in our worlds.

One way to do that is to pose the same question I asked of you last week about the leper whom Jesus healed and his surprising response and the crowd that saw all this happening:  Who do you identify with in this story?   Who reminds you of some traits that you have?  What are some qualities that this person has that perhaps I lack, so I can find out a way to become more alike?           Alyce M. McKenzie, Professor of Preaching and Worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in her meditation on the transfiguration starts with a bold identification.  She says, “Let’s start with Jesus. Of course, we can’t presume to fully identify with Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.  But there is something we have in common with Jesus: our humanity.  As a human being, I suspect that Jesus was probably very tired at this point.  That’s usually when he tried to get away for a prayer break, to get a mountaintop perspective.  As a human being, perhaps he was wondering how effective his ministry had been to date.  From the mountaintop perhaps he could see a crowd gathering, asking one another, ‘Where did that miracle worker go with his loaves and fishes?  We are hungry again!’  Perhaps he could see crowds gathering, asking themselves, ‘Where did that healer go?  We still have sickness!’  Perhaps he could see the Pharisees clustered together, plotting against him.  Perhaps he could see the rest of the disciples, milling about in confusion.  Perhaps he wondered, ‘Do they really understand the cost of following me?  Will they follow me as I head forJerusalem?’”

Here is a picture of a weary Jesus, a doubtful Jesus, a Jesus beset on all sides by the crowd.  Hardly the hero of a drama that includes those eminent patriarchs Moses and Elijah, is he?  Yet, Alyce McKenzie’s description does make him more accessible to us.  She adds, “If you know what it is like to be tired, to have people seeking you out for what you can do for them, and other people criticizing you and working against you, if you have ever been filled with dread at what lies ahead, you have a little something in common with Jesus.  If you know what it’s like to feel those things as a direct result of serving God, then you have even more in common with Jesus.”

What about identifying with Moses and Elijah?  Pretty imposing Biblical characters, aren’t they?  But they have their human side as well.  Alyce McKenzie again:  “…Moses hadn’t wanted to be a prophet in the first place and had made excuses to God to get out of it.  (If you know what it’s like to make excuses to God, you have a little something in common with Moses.)  He had given in to the people, when he just couldn’t stand their murmuring and complaining and rebelling another second, with the consequence that, while God took him to the top of Mt. Nebo to survey the promised land, he couldn’t enter into it.  (If you have ever compromised your faith convictions for popular opinion, you have a little something in common with Moses.  And if you have ever felt the pain of separation from God because of your actions, you have a little something in common with Moses.)”

Elijah’s a bit tougher because he comes across as a fearless prophet who, according to our passage from 2 Kings, “As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.”  Not something that’s happened to any of us, I would venture to guess.  Yet, this is the same prophet who when he found out Queen Jezebel’s forces were out to kill him ran like a scared bunny up into the hills and even begged God to take his life.  McKenzie says, “Any of us who have ever said to God, ‘This is the end of the line.  I’m not following anymore. You didn’t tell me about this,’ have a little something in common with Elijah.”

Peter, James, and John?  What about them?  Not only here but throughout the gospels they are painfully human and fallible.  But now let’s do a flip-side take on them.  Despite their fallibility and flakiness recall that they were all three leaders in the early church and died martyrs’ deaths for their faith in this transfigured Lord.  Identify with them?  If so, we identify with significance and leadership and what it means to be true disciples.

The point I am making with all this talk about identifying with characters in a story is that the transfiguration isn’t just a story about Jesus and Moses and Elijah or about Peter and James and John.  It is a story about us – about the ways we choose to live out our lives in relationship to the Gospel.  We’ve all heard bout mountain-top experiences (and this transfiguration story is the granddaddy of them all!).  We also know (unlike Peter) that we can’t continuously live our lives there in the midst of those experiences.  We have to come down the mountain, just like Jesus did with his three disciples, and go on with the life of faith that we have chosen.  We live in the in-between time.  As I like to say to you during the Christmas season while doing W.H. Auden’s “For the Time Being”:  “To those who have seen/ The Child, however dimly, however incredulously/ The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.”

What we have seen and understood while there on that mountain-top along with Peter and James and John is Jesus’ identity – his transfiguration is in fact a manifestation of who he really is.  The heroes from Jewish history affirm it.  No wonder the three disciples are in awe.  No wonder they want to capture the moment so it will never again elude them.  No wonder Jesus needs to caution them not to talk about what they have seen.  This is about themid-pointofMark’s gospel, and from now to the end of it the identity of Jesus as established here will play itself out through the events of Holy Week.

We are on the descent down from the mountain.  It is, indeed, “the most trying time of all.”  David J. Lose, professor of preaching at Luther Seminary inSt. Paul, says, “In the middle of February, Christmas is a distant memory.  The Super Bowl is over, and no doubt the groundhog has seen his shadow.  The economy is still sluggish, jobless rates are too high, and an election cycle is in full swing….. [But] we are needed ‘down here’.  Most of life is lived in the valleys and on the slopes, not on the heights.  Mark’s gospel has sometimes been characterized as preaching a message of ‘glory through suffering.’  A better designation might be ‘glory through service,’ because Jesus regularly invites his disciples to follow his example of meeting the needs of those whom society has ignored.  We are not called to seek out suffering for suffering’s sake, but our service to those whom society disdains may lead us to suffering.

“…God meets us in the valley and is at work there.  We humans [sometimes] imagine that we must retreat from society in order to meet God, maintain purity in order to stand in God’s presence, or achieve some measure of moral or religions holiness in order to merit God’s attention.  Yet in Jesus the flow of the action is reversed.  Rather than retreat from society’s needs he embraces them.  Rather than avoid those who are unclean or diseased he cures them.  Rather than condemn those who are sinful he forgives them.  When we meet others in solidarity at the places of disjuncture and fracture in their lives and our own, we find God waiting for us.”

In the transfiguration Jesus has shown us his glory.  But it’s a strange sort of glory, isn’t it?  We do indeed find God’s glory in the most unexpected of places.  We find it when we engage in seeking to heal the world, for in this way we come to an ever deepening understanding of the identity of Jesus, as did those disciples on the mountain top.  As Rodney Hunter puts it:  “Jesus’ mission was not to make a big deal of himself or to elevate his followers to positions of power, authority, and prestige through identification with him.  It was rather to point through and beyond himself to God and to God’s coming reign on earth, and to invite his followers to find their voice in bearing witness to this transforming, redemptive God.”

As Jesus establishes his identity there on that mountain top, so does he invite us to establish our identity as his followers.  We, too, shine with transfigured glory, but it is a glory gowned with service and sacrifice, not with dazzling raiment.  When Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed just before his death that “I’ve been to the mountain top”, it was because he had seen a glory that included the path of service he had chosen, and he could see what was in store for him.  Our lives – our identity – may not be as dramatic as Dr. King’s, but we, too, shine in glory when we assume the identity of servant and identify how it is that Jesus has come into our lives.

Since I’ve been quoting her a lot in this sermon, I want to give the final word to Alyce McKenzie who nicely sums up what this strange and seemingly magical event we have come to call the transfiguration means for Jesus and for the disciples and for us.  She says:  “Jesus is a unique character in this story and in all stories.  He is a character with whom we can identify in his humanity.  He is a character who identifies with us in his divinity.  In him we behold what we want to become.  In us he lives as a presence that empowers us to become what God would have us become.”

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/UnitedChurchofChrist

Las Vegas,NV

February 19, 2012