Seeing Jesus with New Eyes (Transfiguration Sunday C)

Gerard David, Transfiguration of Christ (1520), 

in Church of Our Lady, Bruges Belgium

Seeing Jesus with New Eyes
Last Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
7 February 2016 9:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist 
Trinity Parish Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon

Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]

God, give us grace to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

One of the strangest social events I ever attended in my life took place in December 1991 at the Soviet Embassy in Beijing China.  It was the annual end of the year reception to which many of Beijing’s elites were invited: fine Russian foods, hot cups of rich borscht, scarlet with a white cloud of sour cream in each cup, blini and sour cream, succulent lamb dumplings called pelmeni, huge mounds of beluga caviar on chipped ice, and a full table of Stolichnaya vodka chilled below the freezing point of water, poured out gelatinously into half tumblers, not shot glasses.   The Soviet Embassy was huge, the largest embassy compound of any country in any country on the planet:  its large Stalinist architecture was designed to make people look little, and to inspire awe and fear.  It was a fortress, whose secure battlements were installed after Red Guards had attacked the compound during the Cultural Revolution.   I was second secretary for press at the U.S. Embassy, far too low a rank to be invited to what was considered one of the most exclusive events in Beijing.   Besides, the U.S. and the USSR were enemies in the Cold War.  Both countries had stringent rules limiting contact between their officials and requiring extensive reporting, and both embassies invited only the bare minimum required for politeness from the other to events—usually political officers or suspected or declared intelligence officers. I was surprised to be invited, since I was none of these.    Much to the alarm of our embassy security officer, I had been friendly with soviet colleagues during the year, even to the point of playing volleyball with some at the diplomatic beach compound in Beidaihe during a short summer vacation: things were changing politically in Gorbachev’s USSR.  So when I got the invitation, I was the envy of several of my more ideologically inclined embassy colleagues.  This was especially so since the August coup attempt had rocked Soviet society to its core: Communist Party rule had ended and the Soviet Union was breaking up.    This reception was like being invited to a birthday party of someone who had just died. 

What made the whole thing so odd was this:  in years past, whenever we met with soviet colleagues, they all wore the mask of loyal and dedicated communist apparatchiks.  Even on the beach that summer, there was still a cool reserve remaining, especially among the military officers.  In Beijing in May and June of 1989, people had taken off their masks briefly during the democracy demonstrations, only to put them on back firmly and quickly after the Tiananmen Massacre and subsequent political crackdown.  I had learned to expect as a default what we called “the red mask.”  But here at this party, the hosts were clearly sad for the loss of their country.  And they were showing their sadness.   Drinking perhaps too much vodka, they then opened up throughout the evening: each had his or her own voice.  I had ongoing work contacts the Embassy’ cultural affairs shop and had never seen any difference of opinion or belief between its officers.  But now the minister counselor for culture was telling me that he was Georgian, not Russian.  And though the Foreign Minister, also a Georgian, had already declared that he was headed to his homeland after the breakup, my colleague said he was staying with Russia, since his wife was Russian and all his kids lived in Moscow.   People who had been faceless ciphers, and intentionally so, now each expressed their individual backgrounds and large parts of their stories.  About half of the Embassy staff was leaving, to return to their non-Russian republics or start up small embassies of their own countries in Beijing.  It was strange indeed. 

What I learned that evening was far broader and deeper than the biographic and political details of people in attendance.  I had always had an image of the faceless, non-descript soviet diplomat.  I thought of them as Russian, generally.  But that evening, masks came off, and I saw a very different reality.  I would never again make blanket assumptions about this nationality or that partisan affiliation.  There was always just too much hidden. 

It was an important lesson:  in this life, we see only a tiny slice of reality.  We see it from one perspective only.  We base our perceptions and judgments in our prior experience, limited as this is, and generally are unaware of our blind spots.  Moments where we are able to see things with new eyes are rare, but most valuable. 

Today’s scriptures all talk about hidden things becoming obvious, about moments of clarity when our little slice of reality is shown obviously as deficient and limited.  

The Hebrew Scripture lesson today has Moses going to the Holy Mountain and returning with the brightness of God still on him.  In today’s Epistle, Paul contrasts the fading glory in Moses’ face with the ongoing glory he sees in Jesus.   The Gospel is Luke’s telling of how Jesus is transformed and surrounded by glorious brightness before his close disciples’ eyes.  

Peter and his companions react to the great bursting forth of unexpected light from Jesus in a strange way.   Seeing him alongside the two great icons of the Jewish tradition—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets—Peter suggests that he build three Succoth—temporary shelters or booths—in their honor.   He thinks perhaps Jesus is on par with them. That’s why he wants to build the Succoth. But the narrator comments, “He didn’t know what he was saying. He was scared witless.”
 

The glory of God shining forth from the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter's assumptions.   His initial reaction is based on his limited experience and perspective.

But God sets Peter straight.  A light-filled cloud appears and covers everything. A voice identifies Jesus as the first thing, the real item. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to what he says!’   The cloud disappears, and all that remains is Jesus himself.  Moses and Elijah are not longer around. 

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples, a moment when they see Jesus with new eyes.  They don’t fully “get” what it means until after Jesus’ death and resurrection: that the “glory of God is shining in the face of Jesus,” that, “Christ is the image of God” (2 Cor. 3:18), and that, in the words of John’s Gospel, “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.” 

The Transfiguration is about seeing Jesus with new eyes.  That is what today’s 2 Corinthians passage is about:  as we look upon the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus, we ourselves are transformed, and more able to accept and embrace the new.   Paul rhetorically contrasts this with the fading glory on the face of Moses coming down from the Mountain. 

We must not read the 2 Corinthians passage in an anti-Semitic or supercessionist way, in which the whole, complete, and pure Christian revelation is seen as replacing the partial, benighted, and wrong-headed Jewish one. Paul wrote this passage as a Jew, and his contrast is not between Judaism and Christianity, but rather two competing Jewish visions of Law and Grace.

Paul tops his argument by using a very un-Jewish image.  He describes the transforming effect of such moments of clarity by referring to the pagan myth of metamorphosis, or shape changing:  Zeus shifting shapes into swans, or bulls, or handsome young men; the Olympian Gods changing human beings into constellations, flowers, trees, or even echoes.  Paul says that when we look upon Christ’s glory, we undergo metamorphosis.   We become more and more like Christ. He writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” 

Sisters and brothers:  we often see Jesus with the eyes of our prior experience, with how we were taught.  We might see him as God only pretending to be human.  We might see him as meek and mild, and always teaching gentleness.  We might see him as a supporter for what people call family values, or the work ethic.  We might see him as a great liberal and rationalist.  Or a great conservative and moralist.  We might see him as a rabbi, a wandering philosopher, a revolutionary agitator, or a simple peasant activist.  But all these ways of seeing Jesus are based on limited view and selective sight. 

The story of the transfiguration, and Paul’s call for us to be transformed—these tell us to keep looking.  Read scripture.  Look into your heart in moments of silence.  Let the work of scholars who show new aspects of the Jesus story in scripture ferment in our hearts.  Serve the poor, and welcome the strange, and look to see Jesus in them. 

God will give us new sight, and we will see Jesus with new and better eyes. And we will be changed. 

In the name of God, Amen.