Transformed

Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” (Matthew 17.1-9)

Each year on the Second Sunday of Lent, we find ourselves hearing the story of the transfiguration of Jesus. Because we are in Year A, the year of Matthew, we have his account of the event, although it closely follows the Marcan story, the primary source for both Matthew and Luke. Broadly speaking, there are minimal differences among the three texts. 

Each has Jesus going to a mountaintop, accompanied by his inner circle of Peter, James, and John. Once there, the disciples witness a change in Jesus’ appearance. Mark focuses on the blinding whiteness of Jesus’ clothes while Matthew and Luke note that his face as well as his clothes become white. Moses and Elijah appear alongside him. A voice comes from a cloud that states, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” Just as quickly, everything returns to normal. Or as Matthew says, “When the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone.”

What are we to make of this event? Matthew has Jesus state that it was a vision, telling the disciples afterwards, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” For us, a vision implies something that is seen by the eyes. However, there also is an auditory component because the disciples hear the voice from the cloud.

Overall, the transfiguration seems to serve the purpose of identifying again who Jesus is, as did his baptism. We find the same voice from a cloud stating, “This is my beloved Son.” In this instance, the words, “Listen to him” are added to the identification of Jesus as the beloved. Some, therefore, choose to understand the transfiguration as revealing to the disciples the divinity of Jesus. 

If so, it follows closely the revelation of the Most High God atop Mount Sinai to Moses in Chapter 24 of the Book of Exodus. The similarities are almost too many to count. However, the point is the same. Forever after, Moses was known as the one who had seen God “face to face,” and his own face wore a brilliance that was blinding to the Hebrew slaves, so much so that he had to wear a mask over his face to shield them from the blinding light.

An argument could be made–and should be made–that the transfiguration serves to show the disciples a vision of the post-resurrection state of the Risen Lord. In other words, his glorified state after he has been raised from the tomb, a state of being that clearly exceeds any normal appearance and defies easy description. That explanation is supported by the final words that Jesus addresses to the three as they come down the mountain, telling them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Whichever way we wish to understand the transfiguration–either as a revelation of Jesus’ divinity or of his post-resurrection state of being–it is clear that the word transfiguration points to an elevated or higher state of glory than one finds in human form. While it is described in terms of an outer change in appearance, the word actually conveys the belief that the truth or essence of the inner person is now revealed.

This distinction is important because many sermons today will direct us to be transfigured as Jesus was, implying that we also have divinity buried inside of us waiting to be revealed. That is a stretch so far as I see things. At best, we can hope that transfiguration is something that awaits us on the other side of the divide, not on this side.

Until then, I think a much better word to use today, one that is within our reach, is the word transformation. In fact, that actually is the word that Matthew chooses to use. When he talks about the change in Jesus’ appearance, he uses the Greek word metamorphothe. It is the root of our common word metamorphosis, which carries the meaning that the form of something is fundamentally changed. The usual example is that of a cocoon being changed into a butterfly.

I like the word and I like the image because it offers us a realizable goal as we continue our journey through these forty days and for the days thereafter that will constitute the remainder of our lives. While we will have to wait until we are resurrected from the dead on the last day before we can say we are transfigured, we won’t have to wait that long to say that we are transformed.

Assuming, of course, that we do the work that is required in transforming ourselves from who we are now–a cocoon–into the person we can become–a butterfly. Transformation also implies that we are meant to become something more, something better just as the cocoon is shed to allow the emergence of the butterfly.

Stated another way, God has implanted in us an end–telos in Greek–that is supposed to be our destiny once we have completed the process of transformation. However, being creatures imbued with free will, unlike the cocoon, we can choose either to stay in our primitive state, refusing to be transformed, or we can choose to move towards our end, gradually being transformed into the state that God desired and destined for us if we allow ourselves to be changed.

This is an important distinction. Transformation is within our grasp, only requiring that we comply with God’s desire for us. Transfiguration is not within our grasp, but only is granted to us in a post-resurrection scenario when the dead are raised from the grave by God, our state elevated or raised to that higher state of glory by God.

Of course, as anyone knows from experience, transforming ourselves is not an easy matter in and of itself simply because we have the burden of sin in its many forms weighing us down and keeping us locked inside a cocoon. For too many of us, we are comfortable in our cocoon, squirming and squiggling in our self imposed, insulated hideaway. 

Or, we convince ourselves this is who we are supposed to be, not allowing the possibility that there is more for us. Of course, this is the storyline in Tina Paulus book, “Hope for the Flowers,” that was a favorite of my generation, the story about two caterpillars Stripe and Yellow who believe they are supposed to climb to the top of the pile of caterpillars, competing and climbing over everyone else, only to learn in the end that they have been deceived. When they drop to the bottom, they suddenly find themselves changed into butterflies, soaring in the air.

When we see our job or responsibility is to be transformed into the person that God calls us to be, then we spend our days doing the things that will bring us closer to that transformation and we avoid those things that will hinder our movement towards that end or goal. Our days are spent in the work of transformation, not stagnation.

I must admit that this is one of my pet peeves about the traditional Lenten practice of giving up something for these forty days. Typically, this ends up taking the form of denying ourselves desserts or coffee or, if we’re really brave, time spent on our electronic devices. The tradition is rooted, of course, in Jesus’ fasting or not consuming food in the desert.

The problem is that foregoing desserts for a few days is never going to be transformative. Not in the real sense of making a fundamental change in our person. Usually, when the forty days are done, we go back to sweets and coffee, and we go back to being who we’ve always been. Nothing about who we are has undergone any radical change. 

I suppose giving up some of these creature comforts for these six weeks may benefit us in some small way; if nothing else, reminding us that we don’t need to indulge ourselves at every nook and cranny. But these typical Lenten practices simply don’t get to the heart of the matter, which, of course, is the whole point–what is in our heart, not what is or is not in our stomachs.

It is going to take something much more substantial over the long haul than skipping a piece of cake for forty days to change the nature of our hearts. We’re barely scratching the surface if we stay at this level of self-denial. A professor at Loyola Chicago a few years ago decided to go deeper, choosing not to use her car for forty days, requiring her to walk to many places or to take public transportation.

Denying herself use of her car taught her many things and opened a new world to her, for example, learning to stop and smell the roses once again, something she had long forgotten how to do. While she didn’t ask anybody else to follow her example, she did put before us a much more radical understanding of giving up something for Lent, one that has teeth in it. Hers was a change in lifestyle, not a change in diet.

So, the question before us today with the story of the transfiguration is what are we doing to move us further along the way on the transformation of our persons, implying a fundamental change in how we think, how we talk, how we interact with others. Put bluntly, when these forty days are over, are we going to be a better person than we were before we started? Or, are we going to go about business in pretty much the same way as we always have done?

Are we any kinder, any less opinionated, any more tolerant? Are we gentler, less quick to judge, any more open to people who are different from us? Have we moved an inch towards alleviating the needs of the outcast and the downtrodden, or are we locked into our rigid beliefs about the poor, the disadvantaged, and the foreigner? These are just a few of the questions that we can and should be asking ourselves as we look deep into our hearts.

It is only when we delve into the depths of our heart that we find the possibility of transforming our lives to reflect a more just, a more compassionate, and a more generous approach to life. Only a change of heart can transform us into something better, something kinder, something closer to God’s vision for us. The heart is the workshop of transformation.

Obviously, there is only so much that can be done in forty days, but the purpose of these days is to remind us of what we are supposed to be doing every day that we’re walking in this world. If we take seriously the call to transformation, changing our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, then we have to wake up every morning with the desire to move ourselves further towards the person that God calls us to become.

This side of heaven, our Creator has a hope for us, a desire that our hearts will be as full of love as his heart is. He can nudge us along, but he can’t make us take the path of transformation. That is something we have to want for ourselves. Today, as we hear the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, we ponder whether we find ourselves locked into our cocoons or are we growing our wings to fly like butterflies.

–Jeremy Myers