FINDINGS II
Last
Epiphany - C - February 14, 2010
Exodus 34: 29-25; II Corinthians 3:12-4:2;
Luke 9: 28-43
 By Harry T. Cook
2/8/10
RUBRIC
The lectionary blesses its users each year on this Sunday
next before Lent with a version of what is known as the "transfiguration." A fixed
feast day is actually appointed to celebrate that "event," but it falls each
year on August 6, which also, since 1945, is the commemoration of Hiroshima.
For that reason alone the day and liturgical intention often get lost in the
shuffle. Not to mention that in the Northern Hemisphere, that time in August
usually finds people away from home at the seashore or along inland lakes
fleeing the dog days and disinclined to dress for church. Notwithstanding, the
day and its themes catch up with us between the Sundays of Epiphany and Ash
Wednesday.
The general topography of the Christmas-to-Passiontide
lections in any given year (A, B or C) seems meant not only to tell the New
Testament's varying Jesus stories but to re-introduce that personage by stages
until the denouement at Easter.
The transfiguration narratives are part of that
re-introduction as the myth-laden story of the experience on a mountain
reprises the divine setting apart of Jesus in the several baptism narratives
with variations on the "This is my son" motif.
In the off-again-on-again chronology of the synoptic
gospels, the transfiguration is placed well along in the accounts of Jesus'
public career. Inasmuch as the gospel lections for the Sundays after Epiphany
are themselves stories in post-baptismal life of Jesus, so the transfiguration
serves as a pause in the action for a reminder of who the evangelists -- the
first Christian theologians -- wanted their auditors and readers to believe
Jesus was.
On a trip that includes several countries, one is required
to affirm his or her identity from time to time as borders are crossed. The
evangelists, imaging the voice of Yahweh, used the transfiguration of Jesus as
a re-affirmation of their idea of his identity: "Thou art my son . . ."
WORKSHOP
As has been observed, the vagaries of the church calendar
take us several chapters ahead in the Lucan narrative to the transfiguration,
and, with it, to the accompanying readings in Exodus and Corinthians, which are
thematically related to the gospel lection. Both Moses and Jesus are depicted
as ascending a mountain upon which each has an exchange with The Other. Moses
is depicted as coming away with the written covenant (Exodus 24:39). Jesus came
away with the divine imprimatur (Luke 9:35) reiterated from his earlier
baptism.
In all three of the canonical gospel accounts of the
transfiguration (there is none in According to John -- except see John 12:27ff)
Moses is present, joined in each case by Elijah. In Exodus, Moses' face is
aglow. In Luke, Jesus' "countenance was altered" (RSV), "face was changed"
(RSV). Mark and Matthew merely say Jesus was "transfigured" (metemorphōthay).
Matthew adds that "his face shone like the sun," which is closer to the image
of Moses in Exodus.
Three persons are said by Luke to have accompanied Jesus on
his mountain retreat: Peter, James and John, all of whom Luke has already
classified as "apostles" (5:14-15). What did they represent to Mark who initially named them and to Matthew and
Luke? One obvious answer is that the three are depicted as authenticators of an
other-world experience and were therefore required for the narrative. Another
proposition is that the event is a retrojection of a post-crucifixion vision
shared by several of Jesus' followers and is plunked down in the gospel story
as an occurrence on the way. A third possibility is that placing them at the
transfiguration was a means by which the evangelists could authenticate those
they believed had been among first-hand witnesses to the Jesus figure's extraordinary
nature.
Luke omits what Mark and Matthew include: the "tell no man"
of the experience until it should make sense in light of the resurrection, to
which all three will bear witnesses of varying force - Mark being the most
reluctant of the three (see Mark 16:8). Luke does mention that the three "kept
silent and in those days told no one of any of the things they had seen"
(9:36b). "In those days" suggests that eventually they would tell the story at
such time as it would resonate with events to come.
Another interesting aspect of the transfiguration narrative
is the presence in it of Moses and Elijah -- the law and the prophets: Moses
the archetype of Torah, Elijah of its prophetic interpretation. A returning of
Elijah who is said not to have died but to have been taken bodily into the
heavens (2d Kings 2:11) was to herald messiah's coming. Messiah was to be the
fulfillment of the prophetic promise.
In what better company could Jesus be placed by those
promoting his image than Moses and Elijah?
The three synoptic evangelists precede the transfiguration
narrative with a passion prediction (Mark 8:31-33, Matthew 16:21-23 and Luke
9:18-22) and a subsequent exhortation to discipleship (Mark 8:34-9:1, Matthew
16:24-28 and Luke 9:23-27).
The three (passion prediction, exhortation and
transfiguration) constitute the pattern of discipleship: the mapping of the
sacrificial path, the call to sacrifice and the promise of seeing all of that
in a redeeming light. If the transfiguration is, in fact, a retrojection of a
post-crucifixion vision), what becomes transfigured in that case is not so much
the figure or countenance of a dead messiah but the lives of the ones who
intentionally follow his ethic.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
Seeing or appreciating a person for who he or she is, rather
than what you have assumed about that person, is what transfiguration is. As
such it is a two-way street: The thing or person is transfigured in your eyes,
meaning that you are transfigured, too.
A man in a certain town was much feared by the children in
his neighborhood. His house was surrounded by huge growths of shrubs which blocked
all the windows. Seldom was the man seen to leave his home. On the rare
occasions he appeared out of doors, he talked to no one and no one talked to
him. Children would scatter in fear.
The man died, and in due course it was found that he had
willed a million dollars of his
estate to the welfare of the children of his village. Overnight, the man was
beatified in the eyes of those who assumed he had been a dangerous old crank.
Who was transfigured in that transaction?
Would that contemporary Christians would see the Jesus
figure for who he probably was: an itinerant teacher of ethical wisdom trying
to help people see the great liberating truth that the "kingdom of God" they
sought through the advent of a messiah was within them, and had been all the
while.
If Christians see themselves as that kingdom (or
dispensation), they will be transfigured, and the face of the church will glow
with an authenticity that has pretty much alluded its countenance from the
beginning.
| |
