The view from the Mountain of Transfiguration (Mount Tabor), Israel, January 2020.
How do you know who someone really is?
How do you know who you yourself really are, at your core, of your essence?
It’s been said that you can tell who someone is when they think nobody is watching – that how I behave behind the wheel when I’m alone in my car says more about who I really am than how I behave in this pulpit. I confess there are differences in behavior between those two locations. Behind the wheel, my language is, well, saltier. I am, let’s say, less poetic, less serene. Yet there are important parallels. Serious parallels. I have a great fear of harming someone while operating an automobile – it may be my greatest fear – and that is deeply connected to the ethics and values that I proclaim here. When driving, I’ve fallen into the habit of slapping my own hand when I notice that my attention faltered, or I broke a driving rule. Compulsive and silly? Or a way to see that I’m authentically an ethical person? You decide.
But there are far deeper “who are you, really?” discernments going on in human life, particularly these days, when genderqueer and transgender persons are finding stronger voices and better advocates. We live in an age of great liberation for transgender persons, but this is also an age of great peril for them, made like all humans in God’s image, but challenged to reveal their true selves to a world that unthinkingly prefers to cram them into one of two boxes. It is all too easy to be polarized in this discernment, allowing it to descend into a culture war, with transgender persons caught in the dangerous middle.
The medical field in particular struggles to comprehend and respond ethically to transgender persons, and one particular struggle centers on the question of who, finally, decides who a young person is, through the lens of gender. If a teenager tells their doctor, “I am transgender,” how and when does the doctor accept this to be true? And what is the subsequent protocol for care? Historically, this basic assessment was the rub: can we be confident of a person’s true self simply because they asserted it for themselves? For many of us the answer comes quickly: yes, of course we can and should trust and respect a person when they tell us who they are. But this remains a struggle for young transgender persons, their parents, and medical providers. “This is who I am,” a human being says. That sounds pretty straightforward. But it takes time, compassion, and skill to build an authentic relationship with someone, and support them well as they discern what is best for them.
Today, when we see who Jesus really is, there seems to be no lengthy discernment or uncertainty about it. And we don’t catch him in an unguarded moment when he thinks he’s not being watched. He is in broad view, atop a mountain, blazing with light. He is human and yet more than, or other than, human: he is who we’ve known him to be, but he also is not just that. He is our friend, yet he is also a stranger. He is a man, yet he transcends all people and is beyond our safe categories and neat binaries. Who is Jesus?
Let’s look more carefully. Jesus is in conversation with two particular people. And above all that, riding the clouds of the storm, is the voice of God, telling the world who Jesus is. It all seems so evident, so obvious, so straightforward: “This is my Son, the beloved,” God says; “listen to him!”. All right, then. It seems we know exactly who Jesus is. His dazzling garments reveal him as the Human One, the fulfillment of all that we were created to be, and in this he outshines even the searing fire of God’s presence on Sinai. He converses with Moses and Elijah, taking his place of preeminence above the Torah and the prophets — their fulfillment, and their deepest meaning. We see in the Transfiguration the resurrected body of Jesus Christ: we see that at the end of all our struggles as Christ’s Body, we too will shine with resurrected light. We know, then, who Jesus is.
But do we? There are other things going on here that say more about who Jesus is. This is not a straightforward majestic theophany. There is nuance. We may learn once again that it is dangerous to meet one’s heroes; we may be in for some disappointment; the Person we so want to know may reveal uncomfortable and even upsetting things about himself.
“Listen to him,” God says, and right away we have something upsetting to worry about. Just before this mountaintop vision, in the previous chapter of Matthew, Jesus had rebuked Peter for not listening to him, and the topic Peter avoided was the most serious one of all: that the Messiah would suffer and be killed. We hear this several times, this memory of the disciples resisting the bad news of the crucifixion. Now, we may seem different, living so many centuries later that we can boldly depict the crucifixion artistically on our wall, gazing unafraid at the body of Jesus fastened violently to wooden beams. For us, the crucifixion can easily remain a soft form of art, and not something upsetting, even revolting, as it was for those who were traumatized by actually witnessing it.
But if we are truly going to listen to Jesus — and we must, if we truly want to know who Jesus is — then we must listen to the truth that the Risen One is also the Crucified One, and we must reflect deeply on what that means for us.
This is part of what it means for us: we, who want to be raised with Jesus, must also follow him to the cross. We must, in some way, be crucified. Jesus is the One who rises in resurrected glory, but not as the triumphant end to a movie: the vision of the Risen One transfigured in glory sustains us in the coming excruciating wilderness, where, following him, we will be tested, we will be confronted, we will be injured and broken. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the One who does not avoid the wilderness, the rough road, the hard challenge, the bitter cup.
I’ve had some time this past week to reflect on hard challenges and bitter cups, in my own small way. I got Covid, finally, after three years of dodging it, three years of noticing and reflecting on my robust health, three years of (I confess) quietly congratulating myself for being so healthy, so vigorous. Nope: that’s not the real me. That’s a fantasy ‘me’ who doesn’t actually exist. The real me is vulnerable: I’ve known this all along and have taken precautions, but it was hammered home for me this week that I can be infected with viruses, and I also can be a transmitter of viruses. (Part of my recovery this week has been taking sober stock of others I may have infected before I had symptoms and entered quarantine.)
I relearned this week that life with Christ is not just a health kick, as much as I love that idea. I also realized that I am not a very insightful patient: I fail to see God’s healing hand when I am ill; I preach a good game but I don’t yet fully understand that spiritual healing and physical curing are not the same thing. I was reminded that if I am part of the Body of Christ, I need to draw close to sickness and suffering, not recoil from it, and from those who are directly experiencing it. I got sick. God was there. I still need to listen to God in the midst of sickness.
Looking beyond one sick person, our mission in the neighborhood is an excruciating wilderness for us, another Way of the Cross. We will come close to sick people, hungry people, cold and lonely people, and they will be uncomfortable mirrors for our own vulnerability. The Transfigured One sends us here, directly into this wounded neighborhood, and tells us that we, like Christ, will be crucified. We will be broken open in self-giving love. It is not fair; it is not fun; it doesn’t make sense or fit neatly into boxes. It is our cruciform life in Christ. It is who we, as Christians, really are.
But don’t miss the ending! This is an eschatological vision, a vision of the End, this Transfiguration. Today we stand on the far side of Lent, but Easter beckons, and today we glimpse a vision of the Risen One. And surely you heard him speak comfort to his friends, as the vision faded and he returned to their side: they were overwhelmed with fear — flooded with fear! — and he came to them, he touched them, and he said, with God’s own piercing grace but also God’s own soothing balm, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”
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Preached on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A), February 19, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9