Transformers
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Transfiguration Sunday- February 18, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts:
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 /Luke 9:28-43/]
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror are being transformed from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. [2 Corinthians 3:17-18]
We are called to be transformed and to be transformers. To me that is the essence of the Christian life, that we are called to share the Divine life, the Divine nature, and then we are, like the great hymn says, “changed from glory into glory, ‘till in heaven we take our place.” When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, what we remember today, he gave his disciples a glimpse of the Divine Glory and as he went down from the mountain of transfiguration and continued his journey to the hill of Golgotha and the transformation that the cross brought he gave them also a glimpse of glory. To be transfigured is, as the dictionary tells us, “a change in form or appearance: METAMORPHOSIS b: an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.” So, in itself, we’re talking about a transformation that, in its turn, brings transformation, a change; that alters our form, but changes us into what we are and not into something we’re not.
Now I think we’ve fairly well established that most of us simply don’t like change. As a consequence I think that is why many people are actually afraid of freedom, because it involves a risk and it involves a possibility that we may have to change, may have to be different as a result of it. You see, to open ourselves to be really free means taking risks, and risks, unless you’re an incredibly savvy venture capitalist or a whiz at futures trading, aren’t something we like to take. Nevertheless, to become free, the kind of freedom that comes with the presence of the Spirit of the Lord, involves taking the risk of loving as God loves and working for change in the same way that God does, from the heart. That’s very difficult for us and I’m convinced that is why we’ve taken the example of Jesus and the good new he preached and routinely reduced it to a set of moral instructions or rules. I so like what the French Biblical scholar of the last century Alfred Loisy said, “Jesus came preaching the kingdom and what came instead was the church.” I’m sure if he’d lived later he would have added, “what a let-down.” When we reduce everything to institutions or rules it minimizes the risk and gives us some controls or limits. When we take it and reduce it even further to assenting to a list or outline of things I “have” to be believe. If all I have to do is assent to the ‘Four Spiritual Laws,’ then it’s cool, it’s checked off the list, but it doesn’t make me free, it doesn’t bring transformation, from glory to glory, it just brings another kind of bondage to a different set of rules or expectations.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Several weeks ago our “Faith and Film” series screened an engaging film called “Chocolat.” Many of you, I am sure, have seen it; the film has been out for a while now. The story is set in a rural French village back in 1959. The people are staunch Roman Catholics because the local nobleman, who is also the mayor, is a staunch, rule-following Roman Catholic. Life in the village is ordered, the great motto is “tranquilite” (tranquility), life is rigorous and each person knows his or her place, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. There is no risk and there is no freedom and as a result there is “tranquilite,” but is there really?
Then one day the north wind blows in a young woman and her daughter. This strange woman proceeds to open a chocolate shop. It seems innocent enough, but she does it right at the beginning of Lent! Oh! Temptation! Degradation! Lent is to be observed as a time of strict self-denial and the mayor will make sure that it’s so, even for the parish priest (whose sermons he reviews and often rewrites)! Not to mention that this woman is, well, different and that she and her daughter befriend the misfits and the outcasts of the village and she doesn’t even go to church. How horrid! How improper! Good, moral, upstanding Christians can’t stand for such things – can they?
I won’t give away the whole of the story; some of you know it already. Suffice it to say that, finally, the wonder and the glory of Christian freedom breaks through this unlikely agent of change and, of all days, on Easter Sunday, and people’s face change. Even the mayor undergoes a transformation. There are smiles on faces, there is laughter, and people begin to feel as though they are no longer bound to dreary lists of rules and regulations, or other people’s expectations. Easter does what it is meant to do – they are transformed. They are free.
Could it be that Paul is trying to tell us that the glory of God is within us, if we can overcome our fear to remove the veil that holds it in? When Paul talks about the glory of God what does he mean? The Irish Biblical scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor gives some insight in his little book Becoming Human Together. He tells us that humanity is not only in the image of God, but God’s glory as well. He writes: “A defective product reflects no credit on its maker. The human creature, however, honors its Maker when it is what the Creator intended it to be. ‘Glory,’ therefore, is a synonym for ‘life’ understood in the sense of authentic humanity. . . . [Christ] is the exemplar of authentic humanity. He is the first human creature since the Fall to give perfect honor to the Creator by being what he was and because of him other individuals can acquire this status . . . The purpose of the gospel is to permit the human race to achieve authentic humanity.” [p. 74-75] God’s desire is for us to become fully, truly, authentically what God made us to be and, as Irenaeus said so long ago, “God’s glory, human beings fully alive!”
The manner by which we achieve this authenticity is not by following rules or by believing formulaic doctrines, though doctrine, teaching, can be helpful to the process. We become what we were intended to be by living as we were meant to live. This involves a process of transformation, conversion, change, and that’s why Paul uses the phrase “from one degree of glory to another.” I think Murphy-O’Connor says this so well: “Acceptance of the humanity of Christ as the model and standard is the beginning of the process, and this is what Paul intends to suggest by the allusion to contemplation. But contemplation alone is not sufficient. A real change must take place. [Believers] must be ‘conformed to the image of his Son’ (Rom. 8:29), and such conformity takes place only through imitation: ‘You became imitators of us and of the Lord’ (I Thess 1:6); ‘Become imitators of me, as I am an imitator of Christ’ (I Cor. 11:1). It is a question of a mode of being, a pattern of behaviour, as Paul expressly emphasizes, ‘I beg you, become imitators of me. My purpose of sending Timothy to you . . . was to remind you of my ways in Christ’ (I Cor. 4:16-17). To the extent that their behaviour expresses the creative love that distinguished the humanity of Christ the believers posses ‘glory.’ They are a credit to their Creator.” [p. 75]
For us to become authentically human we have to become like Christ, the “new Adam” who restored the lost likeness of God to humanity, made in God’s image and likeness. As the Church fathers told us, we retained the image, but lost the likeness. As Jesus demonstrated self-giving love, so are we to show it in our daily actions and attitudes. There are going to be some days when that will be easy to do and others when it will seem almost impossible. Yet, that is our call if we are to be transformers and experience the “glory to glory” of Christian life. Sometimes the glory comes in the most unlikely manner and from dealing with the most unlikely people or situations. If we don’t stay open, or if we try to limit how God can act, we may miss the moment of glory.
I had a ministerial colleague whose little daughter loved to dance. One year at the annual meeting of the National Association there was as big band following the closing banquet and dancing. This friend and his little daughter went dancing and the crowd cheered them on. Some time later he took her to a father-daughter thing at school and he thought his daughter would be itching to dance. Not so. She didn’t want to; she wasn’t pleasant to her friends or anyone else, including her daddy. She just wanted to go home. So home they went and her dad asked her what was wrong. Her response – “It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, Daddy. So, I didn’t like it.” She was expecting a big band, not a dj, and a ballroom, not a gym, and no one cheered when she took the floor. So, it was a disappointment because it didn’t meet her expectations. Christian life is like that for a lot of people. They hear about glory, but they don’t realize that it takes work and that we still have to deal with problems, like difficult people, or illness, or unpleasant situations. So, they exclaim, “It’s not the way it’s supposed to be,” and they want to go home.
Peter never wanted to go home from the mountain of Transfiguration, because he didn’t want to back to the ordinary, he didn’t want to go back to the problems. Peter couldn’t understand that the moment was not to last forever; it wasn’t something that one could live in, because one glory had to give way to another, better, greater glory. Peter wanted to build three shrines for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, but Jesus was not meant to be made equal with the Law or the Prophets, which Moses and Elijah represent. He came to transcend, to transfigure, to transform them by showing us the wonder of God’s love. God’s love poured out for us in complete identification with the human condition, even to death. The Transfiguration was, indeed, a shining moment, but it was meant to light the way to another mountain: Calvary. The moment of revealed glory was a foretaste of what would come in the Resurrection. Before that moment could come they had to leave the mountain and go back down into the valley; back to face the demons that keep people from experiencing true humanity, true freedom, and becoming transformers themselves.
What the disciples glimpsed as the Transfiguration is to be the daily experience of the Christian. Moses came down from encountering God with his face veiled, as much to keep the glory on it in as to protect the people from the brightness. We, dear ones, can come into the presence of the living, Creator God with faces unveiled. You see, we’ve all experienced God’s presence. We have the wonder of the Word, the Eucharist/the Lord’s Supper, Baptism – why don’t we glow? For us the glory is to grow from day-to-day, the only thing stopping it is, well, us.
So, shall we drop our appeal to comfortable rules, comfortable expectations, and uncontrollable situations and put ourselves into the hands of God? All of us need to put aside the fear of change, the fear of being different, and the fear of freedom, and let the Spirit of the Lord into our lives in a new and powerful way. Perhaps if we take the risk of being free as God intended for us to be, of being authentically human, we will experience and reflect what Jesus did on the mountain of Transfiguration? Luke tells us that “while he was praying he was changed.” Is it not true that the purpose of prayer is to bring our lives into alignment with the will of God? As Soren Kirkegaard put it, “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes the one who prays.” If we open ourselves to God through prayer and seek to conform our lives to the example of Christ, we’ll experience the transformation, the transfiguration, of our lives from glory to glory and our faces will shine because God’s Spirit is present in us.
Christian life isn’t about rules. Christian life isn’t about being afraid of people, or afraid of change, or of not having our expectations fulfilled. What it is about is glory. Christian life is about being transformers – from glory to glory.