Scripture: Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9
I confess that when I started thinking about this sermon I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go. I didn’t have a topic at the front of my brain that I knew was going to be the core of the sermon, but there were three possibilities for preaching that did occur to me. There are always the lectionary scriptures, which are the ones read just now. I never feel obliged in any way to preach on the lectionary scriptures and don’t do so very often, but they are always there and they are always a possibility for preaching. Also, Lent begins this Wednesday and since our Ash Wednesday service is going to be a joint one and will be held at Trinity Episcopal, and since next Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, here at Sojourners will be a Lenten Fair and we will begin our morning with a brief worship service but without a sermon, I could focus my remarks this morning on the season of Lent and what that season may have to say to us or suggest to us. The third thing that occurred to me as a possible direction for preaching was Black History Month, which of course February is, and which I always want to acknowledge somehow in my preaching as well as in whatever other ways we may choose to do so as a congregation.
The simplest thing, and the most sensible thing probably, would have been for me to just choose one of those directions, whichever one seemed the most promising at the moment, and go with it. What seemed like more fun, on the other hand, was to try to go in all three directions, that is, to ask myself if those three things—the lectionary scriptures, the beginning of Lent, and the beginning of Black History Month—have anything to say to each other. I didn’t start with any idea at all what that might be, just that it would be fun to see where that would lead me. That could lead to a sermon that was forced and artificial and contrived, or it could lead to a cross-fertilization that might produce some thoughts I wouldn’t otherwise have had. As it turns out, the latter was the case for me. If it turns out to seem more like the former for you, I apologize.
Although I want to go in all three directions eventually, I can’t talk about all three things at once. Let me start with the scripture…which, I have to say, is not one of my all time favorites, the one from Matthew especially I’m referring to, the story usually referred to as the “transfiguration”. Why is this story not one of my favorites? I’m sure part of it has to do with the fact that a version of this story comes up every year in the lectionary, sometimes more than once, and since there were many years in my ministry when I was preaching on the lectionary passages every week, I just got tired of this one. The transfiguration—again? What am I going to say about it this time?
More substantively, I have never related very well, frankly, to what this passage seemed to me on the surface to be about, namely the glorification, even the deification, of Jesus. It has always seemed like, to me anyway, that this story is there to show us, to convince us somehow, that Jesus is something more than human, that Jesus and God are really tight, really, really tight, father-and-son-flesh-and-blood tight. Jesus was up there on the mountain and this mystical cloud descended on him, and some great people from the past appeared and his whole appearance changed so that he began to sort of glow, and a voice, the voice of God, spoke and said “this is my guy, listen to him”, as in “you better listen to him”…and so forth. (Sorry to be so irreverent here.) The implication being that we are supposed to respond to all this by believing in the more-than-humanness of Jesus and that we are to fall down before him in awe and praise like James and John, in other words that we are to worship him.
Well, I have testified before at various times and in various ways that Jesus is an important part of my spiritual life. This is deeply true for me and it is true on many levels. It is not just one thing, trying to follow his teachings for instance, though his teachings are important to me. But it’s not only that. It’s that his story touches me. It blesses me. It pricks my conscience. It opens up new possibilities for me, new ways to imagine my living. Jesus helps me reflect about God, helps me understand God better, helps me love God. Jesus is all tied up in my faith, in my spiritual life, but my spirit, my Christian spirit, is not all tied up in the glorification of Jesus. My Christian spirit has never related very well to the worship of Jesus. And the Jesus whose spirit draws me in to his spirit doesn’t seem to me much interested in my worship of him. I know sometimes Christianity has seemed to be all about the elevation of Jesus—he is the one to listen to and to follow and to believe in as opposed to anyone or anything else because he is God—but that has never been what I believe Christianity to be all about. It is not what I believe Christ to be about. And for that reason, the transfiguration of Jesus, which seems to be all about glorifying Jesus, has never been one of my favorite passages of scripture.
However, as I was thinking about all this—again—going over in my head all my issues with this passage—I had to remind myself that scripture doesn’t speak to us always in the same way. And in fact it mostly doesn’t speak to us by presenting some lesson that we are supposed to just accept; it doesn’t speak primarily by wagging its finger at us and telling us what we are supposed to think or believe or do. I know you can read scripture that way, but I have never found myself reacting very well when I read the Bible that way. What it does do is guide our spirits down certain paths of thought and reflection and prayer. And specifically what I began to think about this particular passage is this: It is not about, not really about, this encounter Jesus had with God on the mountaintop that reaffirmed for him and the disciples the closeness of his relationship to God. It is also not about, not really about, my encounter with Jesus and whether I accept or believe this glorified vision of who Jesus is. For me, what this scripture does is force me back on myself, it forces me to encounter myself, to ask myself what it is going to mean for me to let this person, Jesus, occupy such a prominent place in my spirit. If being a Christian, for me, is not all about exalting Jesus, what is it about? That is a question not about Jesus, but about me.
I picture the scripture not as presenting Jesus to me and telling me to look at him and listen to this story and believe that he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but rather telling this story, which ends by the way with Jesus touching the disciples and telling them not to be afraid and then with this sentence: “And when the looked up they saw no one but Jesus himself alone,” and then turning to me (if you can picture the scripture turning and speaking) and saying something like, “Well, dear Christian, you who have chosen to bear the name of Christ, what is that going to mean for you?” Is your Christianity going to be all about glorifying Christ, or is it going to be about something else, and what is that something else?
Looking at this scripture in this way, the connection to Lent is not hard to make. Some of you may be familiar with the writer, novelist, diarist, preacher, theologian Frederick Buechner. He has a little book called Whistling in the Dark, subtitled “a Doubter’s Dictionary”, in which he goes through the alphabet choosing words to offer a page or a paragraph of reflections on. One of the entries is “Lent”. Part of what Buechner writes about Lent is this: “After being baptized by John in the River Jordan, Jesus went off alone in the wilderness where he spend forty days (Lent is forty days) asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus.” Buechner doesn’t say this, but I will note that in every case in the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, the answer to the question of what it meant to be Jesus was that “we can do without the glory”. That is what Jesus said about what it meant to him to be him. Whatever else it might mean, we can do without the glory. Buechner goes on: “During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask themselves in one way or another what it means to be themselves.” I take that to have a double meaning. Christians are supposed to ask themselves what it means to be a Christian. We are also supposed to ask ourselves what it means to be our own unique selves. Like the story of the transfiguration, Lent throws us back on ourselves, asks us to examine ourselves, take a kind of spiritual inventory. Lent does not invite us to accept some truth, perform some religious duty, but to be introspective, to be prayerful (to use a word we have been using quite a bit recently at Sojourners) about who we are, who we mean to be, and who we are meant to be.
And, yes, I do see a tie in in all this with Black History Month. The original impulse behind Black History Month was probably a relatively specific one: to try to begin to make up for the fact that American history for so long was a story told by white folks about white folks. White people were the subjects of the story. White people were the heroes of the story. Black folks, to all intents and purposes, were invisible. Black History Month, beginning as Black History Week, set out slowly but surely to correct that, to begin to tell the story of African American people in this country, to acknowledge the contribution of African American people to the overall life of the United States in spite of having been enslaved and discriminated against, to recognize that there have been genuine African American heroes in the American story, and perhaps to change our notion along the way of what constitutes a hero.
All of that is well and good. All of that was necessary and continues to be necessary. All of that is not the primary reason why it is important to me that Black History Month be a part of the life of my faith community and part of my spiritual life. Black History Month is important to me as a white person because it is not just that black folks have a story to tell too and that we want to set aside some time to hear that. It’s that our common history needs to be retold. It’s my history too that needs to be rewritten, to be told in a different more authentic way for my benefit as well as for the benefit of African American people. But neither is that the reason why it is important to me that Black History Month be a part of the life of my faith community and part of my spiritual life.
In a way that is similar to the idea that the story of the transfiguration is in a very real sense not a story about Jesus but is a story that turns itself back on me and asks me to look at myself in the mirror, Black History Month is in a very real sense not about Phyllis Wheatley, Bessie Smith, Ralphe Bunche, and so forth. It of course is about all those people and millions of others. It is also about me. As a white person, Black History Month is important because it turns the question back on me, asks me to ask myself who I am in relation to my American past and in relation to the history that is still being written, or rather that is still being made. It asks me recognize my need of a better, truer, fairer way to tell the story of our past. But it also asks me to ask myself how I am making a different future.
This is not easy stuff if we take it seriously and do it well. It is part of the spiritual inventory I referred to earlier in connection with Lent, and in connection with the transfiguration. It is Christian work, and I believe in order to do it well we all need the support and encouragement of one another. Not just in relation to Black History Month of course, but in relation to that too, may we seek and find ways to support one another on our Lenten journeys. Amen.
Jim Bundy
February 3, 2008