In a Glass Darkly (Transfiguration, Luke 9:28-36, February 3, 2013)

In a Glass Darkly

The Festival of the Transfiguration – C
Luke 9:28-36
February 3, 2013

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Let’s just be honest: the story of what is called “the transfiguration” of Jesus is a troublesome one.

Matthew and Luke both took the basic sequence of events from Mark’s gospel.  Mark tells us that Jesus and his disciples were in the far north of Galilee at Caesarea Philippi.  Jesus asked what people were saying about him.  The disciples volunteered a few responses.  Then Jesus asked them who they thought he was.  Peter blurted out that Jesus was the Messiah, that is, “the anointed one.”  Jesus ordered the disciples to say nothing about this to anyone.

Then he started to tell them what was going to happen to “the anointed one,” namely, that he was going to go to Jerusalem.  He would suffer at the hands of the leaders of religious and political establishment, be put to death, and rise from the dead after three days.  Peter could not bear to hear this and said so.  Jesus rebuked him with the famous line: “Get behind me, Satan!”  Not a particularly nice way to talk to your friends, but there it is.  

Then Jesus began to tell his disciples (according to Matthew and Luke) or the disciples and the crowd (according to Mark) that only those who take on Jesus’ pattern—taking up their own cross and giving up their lives for the sake of the good news—will be Jesus’ disciples.  Like teacher, like student.  Discipleship is not a matter of mastering a certain body of knowledge, but of living a life that conforms to a certain pattern.

This was hard to swallow.  Perhaps for that reason we have Jesus’ assurance at the end of this episode that “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” 

But what does that mean?  What does it mean to “see the kingdom of God”?  What does it mean to “taste death”?  On the face of it, if we don’t force the reading, it seems to be that Jesus is promising that the end of history would occur before the last of the disciples had died.

But the years passed and the original disciples of Jesus began to die.  The “kingdom of God” remained unseen.  There was still injustice.  The poor and weak still suffered in a world rigged in favor of the rich and strong.  The world went on, untransformed, as the whole generation of Jesus’ first followers grew old and died.

Luke’s readers had not seen the promise kept.  Jesus had gone on to Jerusalem after these conversations.  He had gone on and he had been arrested.  He was put to death by the authorities, whether at the hands of the Roman occupiers or their local collaborators.  Jesus had challenged the ruling classes by calling into question their claims to divine authority and they had responded by killing him.  Where was the “kingdom of God” in that?  Where was the “kingdom of God” in being executed as an enemy of the state?  Where was the “kingdom of God” in Jesus’ death on a cross?

Where indeed?

We might ask similar questions.  We’ve had a rough year in this country that has renewed old controversies most political insiders had considered to be dead.  2012 saw 16 mass shootings in the United States, leaving at least 88 dead.[1]  The tipping point that ended the silence of course was the shooting in Newtown, CT, that resulted in 28 deaths, including 20 children.

But it’s really been worse for us than that.  These headline-grabbing mass shootings are just the tip of the iceberg.  Every day seven children and teens die from gun violence, one Newtown every three days.  In the three decades beginning in 1979, nearly 120,000 children and teens died from gun violence, more than the number of U.S. military combat deaths in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined.[2]  

We might hope to distance ourselves from these disturbing numbers.  Iowa, after all, isn’t California, Illinois or New York.  These things are rare in Iowa.  That’s true, but nearly true enough.  Iowa is a safer place for children and teens than, say, Illinois, twice as safe in fact.  It’s four times safer than the most dangerous state in the nation which I was surprised to learn is not California or New York, but Alaska.[3]  But saf-er doesn’t mean safe.  Not for the 197 children and teens who were killed in Iowa by guns in the first decade of this century.  What I find especially disturbing is that nearly three-quarters of these died at their own hand.  Fourteen young Iowa lives a year on the average ended their lives senselessly in self-inflicted and meaningless violence.  

So what I want to know is this: Where is the kingdom of God?  Where is the kingdom of God in these deaths?  Where is the kingdom of God in these lives that ended too soon and left such misery and grief behind them in exchange for promise and potential snuffed out in a violent instant?

Where indeed?

There are no easy answers to that question.  In the end there may not be any answer that truly satisfies.  Not unless we find an answer that restores these victims to their lives and gives them back to their families and us.  There are no easy answers.  But there are hints and suggestions and gestures that point in a certain direction.

One of them is in the story itself as Luke tells it.  Unlike the other accounts of the story, Luke tells us what Jesus was talking about with Moses and Elijah.  Our translation says they “spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem.”  But our translation doesn’t tell us the overtones of the original.  In the original the word that is translated “departure” is eksodos.  That’s the name of the second book of the Bible, Exodus.  Yes, you can translate eksodos as “departure.”  But “departure” is a pretty weak word to describe the events of the Book of Exodus.  The “departure” in the story of God’s people is a story of liberation.  It marks the creation of the people of Israel.  It is an account of emancipation from slavery to the Empire.  

The fact that the disciples are on the mountaintop, the glory of God made visible as nearly blinding light, the presence of Moses the leader of the liberation and Elijah the tireless denouncer of Empire, all remind us of God’s mighty acts of deliverance in the past.  The God who is present here, whose glory shines around this meeting of Lawgiver, Prophet and Messiah, the God who speaks from the cloud on the mountain, the God who has frustrated the designs of empires to set the people free, is present once more.

In the presence of this God and saturated in the memories of release, rescue and relief, we cannot read eksodos as simply “departure.”  Jesus’ “departure” will be more than his exit from the scene.  It will be an exodus, a deliverance of God’s people, a victory over Empire, and a triumph over oppressors.

How?  We aren’t told, at least not yet.  Luke doesn’t tell us how; he only tells us where to look.  We are to look into the heart of the suffering, surrounded by scorn, into death itself.  There is where the act of liberation is taking place, there is where God is at work.  There—if we had the eyes to see—is the kingdom of God.

Does that make Jesus’ death a good thing?  Does it mean that his suffering is somehow to be viewed positively?  Some people view the cross as the place where Jesus satisfies a wrathful God by giving God his own suffering as some sort of payment on our behalf.  Are they right?  Is that what we mean when we say that Christ died for us?

I don’t think so.  I don’t believe so.  But neither does that mean that we can tell this story of good news without telling the story of Jesus’ death.

Does that make it all better?  No, not at all.  We still have our questions and our deep conviction that some things ought not to be, that some things are just wrong.  Among those things that are just wrong is that a single child should die violently.  No reasons that we can understand are adequate to make things okay. All of our explanations fall short.  

Luke points us toward something besides an explanation.  Luke points us toward the possibility that God is not absent from the senselessness of these violent deaths in our country and in our state.  Luke points us toward the possibility that beyond our ability to understand it the transfiguration is about Jesus’ death and Jesus’ death is about the Kingdom of God.  Luke points us toward the possibility that it is in the very taste of death itself that we will see the Kingdom of God.

That doesn’t make it okay, that seven children are shot and killed each day.  But it helps me just a little to know that if there is suffering at the center of the glory on the mountaintop, there is also hope at the center of suffering, the hope that dares to be born when optimism dies, simply because against all evidence God is not absent.  This strange and disturbing story opens up a place for hope.  Today on this wonderful and disturbing day in the church’s calendar, God invites us to live in that hope.

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[1] Zornick, George. “Sixteen US Mass Shootings Happened in 2012, Leaving at Least 88 Dead.” The Nation. Accessed February 9, 2013. http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead#.

[2] Protect Children, Not Guns: Key Facts. Children’s Defense Fund, January 3, 2013.

[3] Protect Children, Not Guns: Gun Violence in the States, 2000-2010. Children’s Defense Fund, January 18, 2013.