Credibility

Text: Matthew 17:1-9

We have to ask ourselves: is this story credible?

Even for Peter, it is too much. Even for Peter—Peter, the most enthusiastic, observant, faithful disciple of Jesus—Peter, the disciple who just identified Jesus as the Messiah—even for Peter it is overwhelming and weird.

The presence of Elijah and Moses (who are long dead or at least lone gone from this earth), the bright overshadowing clouds, the voice (we figure it is God speaking), the strange transformation of Jesus into a being who shines like the sun. Peter’s response about the dwellings is strange but understandable because he is nonplussed. Is there any right response to what he has just witnessed?

This story appears in pretty much the same form in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a sign to us that the early followers of Jesus thought it to be pretty important. Even so, it seems like a glitch or interruption in the fairly smooth narrative of the Gospels. In Matthew (and the other two, more or less) the story appears in the physical middle of the book. And it appears in the middle of the plot, too. It is a hinge: before this event, we have been learning about Jesus, his teachings, and his ministry. Soon after it, the story begins to head slowly and inevitably toward the crucifixion. Because of its position between ministry and passion, the lectionary serves us up this story every year on the last day of Epiphany, just before Lent. It is on the cusp.

Still, it is hard at first to see what this story adds to the Gospels. We already know that Jesus is the son of God, the Messiah, beloved by God. The disciples know it, too. Peter had already declared that Jesus is “the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus had already said that he came to fulfill the law in the tradition of the prophets, represented in the story by Elijah and Moses. In other words, the story is not evidence. It does not prove anything new about the nature of Jesus to us or to the disciples.

It does, though, give us information.

Essential information, evidently, or it would not be repeated in each Gospel. It tells us a lot about the complex and unequal relationship between God, Jesus, and us. And it reminds us about the nature of divinity. The telling of the story itself is so important that we have to tell it the same way over and over again every year.

Jesus is transfigured, the reading says, a rare word these days. It is an unfortunate translation because the word in the text is the basis of the word “metamorphosis.” Which means changed in form. Jesus is changed somehow, but it is not like the old Jesus is replaced by a new one. Rather, it is the same Jesus who is revealed in a new light. Something that was always the essence of Jesus is visible when it was hidden before, or at least was understated or un-emphasized.

The story reminds us rationalists that there is more going on with Jesus. He is more than a wise prophet, teacher, and good friend. For all my talk last week about following Jesus, he is more than a good leader. There is something about him that draws people to him, something powered by the spirit of God and detected by everyone. It is mysterious. Ineffable, as theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel would say. Inexpressible. Not easily described. Even his disciples were at a loss to understand what just happened on the mountain, and they were there.

But even so, Jesus’s transformation is not ghostly either. Jesus is not primarily a spiritual creature. But both physical and spiritual.

It is complicated, a complication embodied in Peter, who in the Gospels has at least three different roles. He is Jesus’ friend, a person like every earthly friend. Sometimes a goofy, good natured one. At the same time, he is the one who sees Jesus for what he really is: the Messiah. He sees Jesus with a clarity that the other disciples lack. At the same time, he is the first bishop of Rome, the rock on which the church is built. He is the administrative and missionary force of the body of Christ in the world after Jesus’ death. He is wise and foolish; trustworthy and flaky; an enthusiast (a word which means filled by the spirit) and a bureaucrat.

Jesus goes up to the mountain for a strange and other-worldly conversation with an ancient prophet and a law-giver. But three disciples—James, John, and Peter—are also there. They are there only because Jesus has invited them along. They are invited not because they are needed as witnesses, but because Jesus has friends and colleagues in both worlds. He goes up to the mountain, and then he comes down to earth again.

One way for us to know Jesus is to think our way there. To learn, read, talk, and argue about Jesus. To take his words seriously. To evaluate them against the needs of the world. To invent theologies that, for example, proclaim him to be 100% human and 100% divine at the same time. To philosophize about what is going on in the sacraments. To ask what Jesus would have us do.

But for many, either frequently or rarely, we discover Jesus in ways that are inexplicable, surprising, and often astonishing. Amazement is the prevailing color of our lives and faith. Who is this Jesus who moves us so, to whom we seem so oddly and suddenly attached? Where did that attachment come from? How can it be?

The same Heschel writes about radical amazement. Amazement itself becomes the reward and the gift. It is a pleasure itself, like the pleasure of gratitude or the pleasure of beauty. All gifts to us given by God for no earthly reason. Just because evidently God wants to.

This openness to ineffable amazement is necessary for our faith, for otherwise, really, why bother? Why pay attention to Jesus? It is this, more than our thoughtful consent, that gives us the courage for our mission. That lets us read the Sermon on the Mount without ridiculing it, that lets us claim that renewal and restoration are always possible, that lets us serve others at the risk of our own loss.

The question is not, therefore, whether the transfiguration story is credible. The question is whether it somehow draws us to a God who is strange, good, and here.

Thanks be to God.