Luke 9:28-43 Or better yet, read all of Luke 9
I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s just an escape, or a coping mechanism, or distraction, but when the world is falling apart, as it is often wont to do, I just want to dig deeper into the scriptures, as if I might find some concrete answers there about the Russian Invasion in Ukraine or the recent upsurge in government sponsored aggression towards our transgendered children and their families. I don’t know. I just go deep into language. I go deep into story. In the hopes that we can be changed there. Maybe story is where the “trans” actually happens.
“Trans” is just a prefix. Remember learning about prefixes from third grade? It’s a part of a word that when attached to the beginning of another word, it changes the meaning of that word. One might even say that it transforms the meaning of the word. Transport. Transfix. Transcontinental railway. “Trans” is just a five letter prefix, but when it forms a bond with another word, everything changes, the word gets bigger, broader, it transitions, transmogrifies, and transcends its original meaning. Something new happens. Something different. And that’s what we focus on on Transfiguration Sunday. “Trans” means across, beyond, and through. Trans is what happens when we cross boundaries, when we go farther than we thought we could, when we come to a deeper, newer understanding. On Transfiguration Sunday, and hopefully, every Sunday, we are invited to go across dividing lines, beyond the limits of reason or logic, and through our own stories of struggle and suffering towards healing and wholeness.
Trans. Across. Beyond. Through.
The Transfiguration: when Jesus’s figure, his image, how he appears, crosses boundaries, goes beyond our expectations, and connects to us through our mutual humanity.
We’re trying to encourage independence in our two boys. Levi’s eight, Jonah’s twelve, and we need them to transition from being solely dependent upon their parents to relying on themselves to meet their needs. But when we’re all home, Jonah will shout down to the kitchen from his bedroom, “Mom, I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!” And I’ll shout back up to him, “come down and make it yourself!” And he’ll say, “No! I can't! You do it!” And I’ll say, “Nope. You’re completely capable.” And then he’ll give an exasperated “ugh!” and then keep playing Fortnite until he’s so hangry he can’t think straight and I end up giving up and making him the sandwich because it’s a battle of wills and I just can’t handle the freak outs of a 12 year old boy who hasn’t eaten in the last, oh, twenty minutes. But you know what’s coming, right? Dan and I go out to dinner one night, leave the boys at home to fend for themselves for just a little bit, and when we come home, we ask Jonah, “Hey, did you get something to eat?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I just went down and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
In chapter nine of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has sent his disciples out to basically be him. Jesus gives them power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases and to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God. He sends them out with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the dusty sandals on their feet and he says, “Go on, do what I do. Go be me, out into the world. You can make the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, too.” And they do! They go to the cities and towns and heal the sick and proclaim the good news. It worked! They could be little jesuses, spreading the love and the healing power of the gospel everywhere they went. And yet, the sort of hilarious thing is, they still don’t seem to trust that yet, because when they come back and they tell Jesus about all that they’ve done, and the crowds follow them and they all get hungry, they say to Jesus, “Hey, it’s dinnertime. Can you dismiss the crowds so that they can get something to eat?” And just like when Jesus told them to go out and do the things he does, to go out and heal and cast out demons and proclaim the good news, Jesus tells them, “Yeah. Well. You do it. You feed them. You know how, you’re perfectly capable of making these sandwiches yourself.” Jesus wants them to claim a new identity based upon their relationship with him, and with that new identity comes power to heal the sick and reduce suffering and spread love, and maybe not go hungry when their parents go out to dinner. And even though they’ve spent all this time wandering the countryside and experiencing that they do have this power for themselves, they still doubt, they still rely on Jesus to do it for them. And we know the rest of the story, right? They take what little they have, they bring it to Jesus, he starts the assembly line rolling, and voila, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone, or, well, you know what I mean.
But I think this is a really important context for us to have when we enter in to our story for today. Jesus has told them they can do it. They’ve had experiences doing it. And yet, they still don’t trust it. Maybe they’re just being lazy, distracted twelve year olds who would rather level up on their favorite video game, or maybe they have some sort of deeper self doubt, or maybe they just think that the power they received from Jesus was a one-off, but for some reason, they just can’t transition, transform, transfigure themselves into the people that Jesus already sees them into being. They’ve experienced what it’s like to move across the borders of the profane and unclean and suffering. They know, first hand, how to go beyond what they think they are capable of. And they know that it’s through this power of God that comes to them through Jesus that any of this is possible, and yet, here they are, still un-transed. Untransformed. Un-transcended. Un-transfigured. “Jesus! I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!”
Bruh. Seriously?
So. Ok. Back to square one. Maybe if they come to a better understanding of who Jesus is, then they’ll have a better understanding of who they are. So he takes them aside, and in perfect socratic method, he asks them a question in the hopes that they will come upon the right answer themselves. He asks, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And they answer, “Oh, you know, just like these other guys who came before.” And, in the hopes of building upon that, Jesus says, “Ok. Then. Who do you say that I am?” And somehow Peter stumbles on the answer: “You’re the Christ. The Messiah of God. The one who crosses the division between the spiritual and the physical, the one who goes beyond the works of any of the prophets before you, the one through whom we will all receive salvation.”
Jesus is Trans. Across. Beyond. And through.
Jesus goes across, beyond, and through.
Jesus is across, beyond, and through.
Now Jesus doesn’t want them to rush past that “through” part. So he reminds them that the through he’s gotta go through is through suffering and betrayal and heartbreak. And if they want to be his followers, then they, too, have to cross the boundaries of who they are by denying themselves, they have to go beyond where they think they can go by taking up their own cross, and they have to go through the suffering, just like he will. They’ve got to lose themselves to find themselves. They’ve got to go across, beyond, and through. They’ve got to do what Jesus does.
Ok. So maybe they’ve got it now, right? About a week later, Jesus goes up a mountain to pray and takes his three best buds with him. And while he’s praying, he’s transfigured, right in front of them. His face changes. His clothes get oxy-cleaned. Moses and Elijah join him for a pep talk about what he’s going to have to go through when he gets to Jerusalem. Peter, not knowing what in the world to do, relies on his past yeshiva education: We need to build some booths, we need to make some houses, we need to keep you all here. Just like this. Right. Here. And then a cloud covers them all, they hear the voice of God saying, “This is my son. Listen to him!” And Jesus ends up alone and they go back down the mountain and they don’t say a thing.
But the transfiguration story doesn’t end here. Not yet. First we have to get a story about a desperate father and his suffering son, and how the disciples can’t seem to do anything about it. And it’s with this story that all of what has come before gets transformed and transfigured and transmogrified for us.
There are some parallels between what happens at the top of that mountain, and then what happens at the bottom.
Jesus is changed. They talk about his departure - his crossing of boundaries - when he gets to Jerusalem. The disciples are astounded. The disciples trip up. God, the Father, says, “This is my Son. Listen to him.”
They come back down the mountain. A father calls out from the crowd. Echoing God’s words about Jesus he says, “This is my son! Look at him!” Like Jesus will be, very soon, this boy is suffering - he's in his own Jerusalem. The disciples, once again, trip up, not quite understanding the transformative power that lies in their hands. Jesus joins the boy, right where he is - he looks at him, even while he's convulsing in the dirt. Jesus goes across, beyond, and through. And so, like Jesus, the boy is changed right in front of them. And all are astounded.
What happens to Jesus on a grand scale, happens to this boy right in front of them.
The disciples have acted now how they’ve acted before. Even though they’ve lived it in themselves, even though they’ve seen it with their eyes and heard it with their ears, they still can’t complete the transaction. Even though they’ve come across the countryside, they’ve gone beyond where they ever thought they’d be capable of going, they still can’t quite get through.
Jesus gives them great power. Jesus says, “Now, do what I do. Be who I am.” And then he says, “Then go through what I go through.”
And they can’t quite get there.
Like a mom who is frustrated that her totally capable son refuses to make his own gosh darn peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Jesus loses it a little. He’s taught them how to come across. He’s shown them how to go beyond. He's modeled for them what it looks like to go through. And they still aren’t transfigured themselves. They still aren’t completely transformed. They still need some handholding in this whole becoming-like-Christ venture. They can’t quite live in to the transformation that has happened in themselves, even though they’ve seen it and felt it and heard it and breathed it through Jesus’s transfiguration right in front of them. They want to take this transfigured vision and hog tie it back into their old fixed traditions. Let’s give him a house where he can stay, a place where he can be with some borders and some fixed lines and some clear definitions. They want to keep it, but they don't quite want to be changed by it. They don’t yet realize that it is Jesus who has transposed himself upon their very selves. They don’t yet understand that they, too, are called to go across, and beyond, and through, just like Jesus. But this father experiences it. This boy gets an awareness of it. Because just like Jesus, this boy is taken across and beyond and through and he finds healing there. This healing story is paired right up against this transfiguration story to tell us that it’s not just Jesus who gets transfigured, it’s all of us. It’s our society and institutions and religious dogmas and buildings and relationships. We all get to be trans. Just like Jesus. We have been and are being transformed into the Body of Christ. We are Christ’s hands and Christ’s feet and are called to do what Christ’s hands do and go where Christ’s feet go. And his hands do across and beyond and through. And his feet go across and beyond and through.
Jesus steps across borders to be with us.
Jesus steps beyond boundaries to be with us.
Jesus steps through and fully into our humanity to be with us.
What borders are we called to step across?
What boundaries are we called to step beyond?
What experiences of Jesus are we called to go through?
And when we step across and beyond and go through, how then, might we be changed? How then, might we be transfigured?
Trans is just a prefix, but it drastically changes the meaning of our lives.
Jesus goes across, and beyond, and through himself to come to us.
Jesus takes us across and beyond and through any tiny, limiting, isolating, un-trans box we make for ourselves - especially if that box is war, or oppression, or discrimination.
Oh, may it be so.
Thanks be to God.
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