Jesus is Transfigured and We Are Changed

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

The first sermon I ever preached, in preaching class in seminary, was on the Transfiguration of Jesus. I told a story about a mountaintop experience while studying abroad in Türkiye. On my pastoral internship in Colorado, I preached on the Transfiguration of Jesus. In the Rocky Mountains, the metaphor tells itself. While I was serving as a campus minister, I never once preached on the Transfiguration of Jesus, because we worshiped on Wednesday nights, and the Wednesday closest to the Transfiguration is Ash Wednesday.

This story is in our lectionary rotation every year, as the last Sunday after the Epiphany, before we transition into Lent. There are a handful of stories that appear consistently in the gospels, and their presence usually tells us that they were beloved or important stories for the early church. This was one of those stories that everyone needed to hear, so it survived the various transcriptions and translations and councils and printing presses all the way to us.

Typically, preachers talk about the mystical magnitude of this mountaintop moment. Jesus’ face shines like the sun, and his clothes become dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah appear, and the voice of God thunders from the sky! It sounds very epic.

We are expected to connect this mountaintop moment to another, helped along by our reading from Exodus, when Moses’ face shines in the overwhelming presence of God. And the prophet Elijah encountered God on a mountain, as well, though his experience was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the silence—a still, small voice.

These two men are giants in the Jewish faith. Moses is the recipient of the Law and represents it in the tradition. Elijah is the foremost prophet, and every major prophet since—including Jesus—is thought, at some point, to perhaps be his return to life. Jesus routinely talks about “the law and the prophets” as the wholeness of Jewish history and tradition. He famously noted that the law and the prophets all hinge on the greatest commandment, to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Jesus is, himself, the culmination of the Law and the prophets.

The presence of Moses and Elijah on the mountain at his transfiguration cements his connection to them and to everything they represented for his people. If Jesus stands alongside Moses and Elijah, he is the real deal. This is, ostensibly, why this story had staying power. It’s a critical point in the legitimation of Jesus’ ministry.

In the chapters leading up to this one, Jesus is building his community, spreading his message, and healing people. Then he goes up this mountain with his friends, and something changes. His trek back down the mountain, and the rest of the Gospel According to Matthew, leads to Jerusalem. Toward the cross and the empty tomb. This moment in the text and in the life of Jesus is a peak, a pivot point, a crux.

He invites Peter, James, and John, specifically, to accompany him. These three are probably the closest friends Jesus has, because this trio has been singled out before. “Earlier in his ministry, Jesus is asked by a leader of the synagogue to heal his daughter, and Jesus allows only [these three] to follow him and witness the healing (Mark 5:37). Later, they [will be] the only ones specifically invited to come with Jesus deeper into the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-36)” on the night of his arrest. His relationship with these three men is special, in some way. He trusts them with important moments in his life and ministry, and I would guess he expects them to understand the significance of the events they witness better than anyone else.

It is likely that you have had a similar inner circle in your life, the friends or siblings or colleagues or family members that you feel closest to. These are the people who have accompanied you up and down various mountains and valleys of your life, seeing the truth of who you are—for better and for worse. They’re the people you call with news—good and bad—and the people you’re most likely to drop everything to attend to, yourself. These precious people know you best, and you them.

I like to imagine that this is the relationship that Jesus has formed with Peter, James, and John over the years. Jesus knew that, at the top of that mountain, everything would change. He brought them there, away from the rest of the disciples and the crowds, to see him more fully than he had ever been seen.

On this mountaintop, the full person of Jesus is revealed to his friends. All of the disciples have borne witness to the humanity of Jesus as they walk alongside him in ministry. Peter, James, and John bear witness, here, to the divinity of Jesus, the glory of God displayed dramatically on this mountaintop.

Jesus has always been this person, this man fully human and fully divine. But this moment reveals to his closest friends another layer of his innermost self. They now know Jesus more deeply than he has ever been known by anyone but God.

Traditionally, we read this story and we say that Jesus is changed. This Gospel author and the author of Mark write that he was “transfigured before them” while Luke says “the appearance of his face changed”. But as I read this whole passage, it is clear to me that who is truly changed are Peter, James, and John. They went up this mountain with one understanding of Jesus and of the road ahead, and went down it with absolutely blown minds. They saw Jesus shine like the sun; they saw Moses; they saw Elijah; they heard the voice of God thunder from the clouds above. Even though their experiences as disciples of Jesus are pretty unusual, this is not your average day-in-the-life, even for them. We know this, in part, because they fall to the ground and are overcome by fear.

Jesus is not the one who has been fundamentally altered by this experience. Rather, his true nature, the wholeness of who God created him to be, is on display. He has, if you will, come out to his friends—as the Son of God, as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, as the Messiah for whom they have long waited. He is who he has always been, but they can now see.

There is a parallel to be explored between this story and that of our queer and transgender siblings.

Created in the image of God, beloved as they are and as they are becoming, queer and trans people show their most trusted friends and family the wholeness of who they are. The experience of “coming out” or, as it has been otherwise described, “letting people in”, is not the moment at which queer and trans people become queer or trans. For as long as they have known the truth about themselves, they have been who they are. It is just the moment when we, if we are so lucky, are invited to see them fully.

Inviting Peter, James, and John to fully see him was a risk that Jesus took. What if they weren’t prepared for what it meant for them? What if they ran down the mountain, telling everyone that Jesus was a demon, possessed by something treacherous and unknown? What if they hurt him? What if they deserted him?

I am, daily, inspired by my beloved queer and trans friends and family, who live into the fullness of God’s image, despite the risk. I can learn from their example, and from the example of Jesus, to not shy away from my own wholeness. God created me to be this person, in this body, in order to bear God’s image to others. When I love this body, and this mind, and share my truth with everyone, I celebrate the God who created me.

Who are you, in your fullness?
Who do you allow to see the whole truth of who you are?
And, similarly, who shows you their true self?
For whom are you a safe place for the whole truth?

Today, having seen Jesus for the fullness of who he is, we follow him down the mountain, and spend the next several weeks journeying toward Jerusalem. As we enter the season of Lent, we repent of our sin and turn toward the God who sees us and loves us, just the same. Amen.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

You may have noticed an unfamiliar book of the Bible in our first reading. We heard from Sirach, a book in what’s known as the deuterocanonical books or the apocrypha. Those are perhaps also unfamiliar words! The short version is that there are a handful of books in the middle of the Bible that Protestant Christians do not regard as canon, while Roman Catholics and our Orthodox siblings do. The who/what/when/where/why of that is a story for another day!

Sirach is also known as the Wisdom of Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus. It is a book of ethical teachings similar in vibe to the more familiar-to-Lutherans book of Proverbs. Sirach is, like Proverbs, as well as Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Psalms—as well as other deuterocanonical books—part of a genre called Wisdom Literature.

I took an entire class in seminary about Wisdom Literature, which was so popular that it was basically only available to students in their final semester of coursework, and there was always a waiting list. It was taught by a Dominican Sister, who was barely five feet tall but whose severity was far outsized. I loved going to her class, and so when I saw Sirach as an option for this morning’s texts, I jumped on it. An adventure into the apocrypha!

The standard reading for this morning is from Deuteronomy, and has about half the same words as this Sirach reading does, so it is not a significant departure from the themes of the day. We’re talking about the law today. We’re talking about Torah, about the law that came to Moses from God on Mount Sinai, and we’re talking about how Jesus is regarded as a “New Moses” by the author of this gospel, because of his preaching on the law. We’re talking about the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

I am, by no means, a scholar of the Law of Moses. Fortunately, I have my trusty friend Dr. Amy-Jill Levine to turn to. As I mentioned at the meet and greet we did before y’all called me to serve as your pastor, Dr. Levine is one of my favorite preaching conversation partners. Her formal titles are University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies as well as Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences. Her work has influenced me significantly, especially in understanding and preventing the latent antisemitism that is present in a significant amount of Christian scriptural interpretation and preaching.

As a Jewish scholar of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, Dr. Levine helps me understand Jesus as a person and as a member of his community and society. She knows what his listeners would have known and what they would have expected him to say and do and be. Today will not be the last time you hear her name from me, and several sections of this sermon will be paraphrases of and quotations from her book Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thus far in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has proclaimed blessings on those who society rejects. He has declared us salt of the earth and light for the world. Next, he is digging into the law, letting us know just how central it is in our lives together.

There’s an adage that “God gave us the law because God loves our neighbor”. These rules are in place to help us build the kind of community that has no need for them, because our instinct is to treat each other with the kind of respect the rules demand.

Let’s dig in. “You have heard that it was said to those in ancient times,” Jesus begins, “‘you shall not murder’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’” You may recognize these phrases from the Ten Commandments and the laws laid out in the book of Leviticus. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He’s not just reciting the law.

He continues, “But I say to you, that if you are angry with a [member of the community], you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a [member of the community] you will be liable to the council” (Matthew 5:21-22a). And it isn’t just in the court of law that our behavior is managed, but also before God. Jesus lays out another hypothetical, that if “when you are offering your gift at the altar, you remember that [a member of the community] has something against you, you leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to [them], and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).

Jesus is not contradicting the commandment “you shall not murder” by any means. Dr. Levine says that he is “extend[ing], intensify[ing], and gloss[ing]” the commandments. It is not enough to forbid murder. All the violence that leads to murder, all the hatred that leads to violence, all the fear and ignorance that leads to hatred, and all of the separation that leads to fear and ignorance—those things are also affronts to our neighbor and to God. The community that Jesus is building, and by extension the beloved community that we are all called to build throughout time, will “walk as if they already have one foot in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus treats the other laws similarly. He explains that it is not enough to forbid adultery, but the lust that leads to adultery, and the objectification that leads to lust, and the patriarchy that leads to objectification are all an affront to our neighbor and to God.

His teaching on divorce is similar, though it must be noted that this is far removed from our current framework for marriage and divorce, and it is not literally divorce that is prohibited, but the social and economic abandonment that can result from divorce in a society that affords women no agency or franchise. In a marriage that is legally sound but emotionally, physically, or spiritually unsafe, divorce is not only permitted but essential.

What Jesus is doing here is what the Rabbis of old called “building a fence around the Torah.” Dr. Levine explains that “as a fence around a house protects what is inside, so the fence around the Torah protects the commandments by creating the circumstances that make violation more difficult.”

These extensions of the law make it easier to follow the law, by insisting on alternative ways of being that will lead us away from even approaching violations of the law. When our communities are healthy, rich with mutuality, committed to liberation and justice for all, it is far simpler to adhere to the commandments. When everyone has what they need, coveting what belongs to others is unnecessary. When relationships are solidly built on trust, lying and cheating are unthinkable.

In this portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, “moves several traditional commands beneath outward actions to the deep places where life-giving relationships are grounded. Do not simply refrain from murder, Jesus announces, but avoid anger and insult, and seek reconciliation with your enemy….Do not just refrain from adultery, but treat others as persons of value, rather than mere objects”. We are called to always regard other people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

As we approach the season of Lent, a time of self-reflection and repentance, consider the ways in which you are following not just the letter but the spirit of the law of God. As you engage with one another here in this community, as you interact with your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, your classmates, your supervisors or those you supervise, customer service professionals, acquaintances on Facebook…how grounded in these commandments are your behaviors?

As our friend Ben Sira has said, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. [God] has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given” (Sirach 15:15-17). As beloved children of God, blessed with free will, we have choices to make. Amen.

Salty and Luminous

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

In 2013, I was serving my pastoral internship at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Littleton, CO. You may not know this, but seminarians in the ELCA spend an academic year out of the classroom and in the parish, learning in a hands-on way from a supervising pastor just what a year in the life of a congregation looks like. It’s a time to hone our skills, test the waters, and face our fears. The fear I faced that year? Summer camp.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a real and true phobia of camp or anything, just a…general unease with outdoorsiness, an embarrassingly San Diegan inability to withstand the elements, and absolutely zero pairs of practical footwear.

However, I was the unmarried and childless intern, and so it was the least logistically complicated for me to uproot my routine to spend a week at Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp with our confirmation students. We were joined there by groups from all over the state, getting up and away to 8500 feet of elevation for some time in community and nature.

I was…trepidatious, to say the least. But I put on a brave face for those teens and I sat around a campfire with the best of them. Sure, I hadn’t brought any long pants—it was July! What did I know about elevation?—and had to buy a whole new Rainbow-Trail-branded wardrobe from the camp store, but I survived the experience.

Why am I telling you this not especially flattering story? The theme for that week was “Blessed to Be A Blessing” and the scripture we focused on was—you guessed it—Matthew 5:13-20. We spent the week wondering about salt and light and whatever a bushel basket is.

Whenever I hear these words from the Sermon on the Mount, I remember what it was like to sit outside with dozens of 13-year-olds, staring up at the starriest sky any of us light-polluted-city-dwellers had ever seen, contemplating our place in the universe and in the family of God. Whenever I hear these verses, I am transported back there, to those kids who are now adults, and I wonder briefly about where they’ve taken their saltiness and where they’ve shined their light.

It’s interesting that these second-person declarative sentences follow the Beatitudes we heard last week. Those were third person, describing people who may or may not have been present and listening. But these words, these truths, these are for you. Whoever you are. You are salty and you are luminous.

I appreciate that Jesus is not giving us instructions for how to become salt and light, but rather letting us know that we already are, just as we are. It isn’t “you will be salt and light if you…” or “in order to become salt and light you must…” or “the best among you are salt and light..” but just straight up.

You are the salt of the earth.
You are the light of the world.

You may be someone who prefers not to stand out in a crowd. Not especially interested in being the center of attention or the “city on the hill” as the case may be. You might choose to keep your light hidden under that bushel basket most of the time, only letting it shine when strictly necessary.

As the person who stands up here and does a lot of people’s worst fear—public speaking—every week, it is fairly difficult for me to empathize with this perspective, but I do respect it.

Fortunately for you, being the center of attention is not the same thing as being salt and light. You do not need to fling your salt everywhere like grains of rice at a wedding or winner-of-the-big-game confetti. You do not need to shine your megawatt flashlight into everyone’s eyeballs all the time.

“Like salt and light, God made you a small thing that can make a big difference for a larger whole.” [1] Those of us who have baked a batch of sugar cookies know that a pinch of salt in the dough balances the flavor beautifully; mistakenly using salt instead of sugar is a recipe for disaster.

Sunlight is critical to our existence, ensuring that we synthesize our vitamin D and keep our circadian rhythms rolling even in the winter. Anyone as pale as I am, though, knows that a perfect day at the beach is very quickly a sunburn when one is not careful. Your call to be salt for the earth and light for the world does require balance.

“Salt is for saltiness. Light is for shining.” [1]

You, beloved child of God, are not permitted to hide your light under a bushel basket, because it has been given to you to shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your God. Neither are you permitted to hoard your salt, such that everything around you is bland and boring and decidedly un-delicious. “God made us this way, blessing us with gifts that can bless the world.” [1] God created you just as you are, and continues to co-create with you into who you are becoming.

This is not an opportunity to compare flavors and brightnesses with the people around you, in order to feel better or worse about yourself. Your gifts are unique to you. “God made you to shine as only you can.” [1] When all of us utilize our saltiness for the enrichment of the world around us, and when all of us shine our lights out into the darkness of this weary world, we are coworkers in the gospel, bringing about the reign of God together.

You may feel like this is veering dangerously toward evangelism. You are right, it is. But remember, we’re not throwing handfuls of salt or brandishing torches.

There’s an idea attributed to Martin Luther about this. He wrote that the good Christian cobbler does not shine his light by marking every pair of shoes with crosses, but by honing his craft, working hard to make the best shoes his hands and tools can produce.

I have not yet met everyone so maybe one of you is, in fact, a cobbler by trade. But I’m willing to guess that not all of you are, and so you’ll have to find the analog that works for your vocation. What might it look like, in practical terms, to share what you have with those who need that, and to receive from others what they are uniquely gifted to give you? How might you encourage others to be saltier and more luminous? Give it a try and let me know how it goes.