March 6, 2011 | 8:00 a.m.

Our Transfigured Vision

Matthew J. Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 99
Exodus 24:12–18
Matthew 17:1–9

A cloud appeared in glory as an accolade.
They fell on the ground.
A voice arrived; the voice of God,
The face of God, covered in a cloud.

Lost in the cloud, a voice: Have no fear! We draw near!
Lost in the cloud, a sign: Son of Man! Turn your ear!
Lost in the cloud, a voice: Lamb of God! We draw near!
Lost in the cloud, a sign: Son of Man! Son of God!”

Sufjan Stevens
“Transfiguration”

In 1881, a baby boy was born to parents Don and Maria in Malaga, Spain. It is said that this baby’s first words were “piz, piz,” a shortened form of lapiz, the Spanish word for pencil. From there, the child demonstrated immense painting potential as he sat and worked with his father, who was an artist who primarily dealt in still life and human form. His father was amazed at his son’s accuracy and precision in drawing these shapes—truly his technical skill was incredible. It was so incredible, in fact, that at age thirteen Pablo Picasso was admitted into the Barcelona School of Fine Arts. His early work was technically sound, but his experiences in the world led him to new visions and bold new ventures. Picasso, along with Georges Braque, founded the art movement known as cubism, a revolutionary way of disassembling a subject and instead viewing it from multiple viewpoints in an abstract form. This movement soon exploded in popularity as World War I began, no doubt in connection to World War I’s disorienting nature. It was war again that inspired Picasso in perhaps his most famous painting, Guernica, a depiction of the German and Italian bombing of Spanish nationalists during the Spanish civil war. This disjointing and disquieting picture was drawn from Picasso’s experiences and firsthand vision of the war, a vision that could only be captured in a broken and abstract form. And yet, for all of Picasso’s fans, there were some who just didn’t understand his work. About fifteen years ago, a boy on a field trip to the Art Institute was looking through the gift shop when he came across a number of works by Picasso. As he flipped through bizarre image after bizarre image, he turned to his friend and loudly stated, “I don’t know why everyone thinks this guy was such a great artist. He can’t even draw people right; their faces are all out of order and it looks like a kindergartner drew it!” I’m embarrassed to admit that ten-year-old boy was me. A little more perspective goes a long way, I suppose. I’ve since been able to understand Picasso’s vision, even if I once saw it as mysterious and downright confusing.

Thinking about what it means to have a new form of vision will help us in unpacking a scene from Matthew today that many have described as bizarre, mysterious, and even downright confusing. This experience and vision that the disciples have of Jesus being transfigured—that his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white—is not a common one in the Gospels. This is the only time before Jesus’ resurrection that anyone sees his body in a way that we would call supernatural. Jesus himself swears the three disciples to silence concerning what they saw. And yet these three disciples who go with Jesus up on this mountain—Peter, James, and John—all go on to be some of the most important and vital leaders in the early church. So what exactly are we to make of this mysterious vision that they saw upon the mountain?

Perhaps we should start with the meaning of transfiguration. The dictionary defines it as “a marked change in form or appearance.” The Greek word, metemorphothay, is closely connected to metamorphosis, which most of us relate to the changing of a caterpillar to a butterfly. On this mountaintop experience, these three disciples saw a vastly new and different Jesus than they had seen before, a Jesus who was communicating with important and vital figures from Israel’s past.

“Vastly new.” “A marked change in form or appearance.” When I read these words, I can’t help but be drawn into thoughts about our world today. Our world seems to be in the midst of its own transfiguration. Several countries throughout the Middle East are in the midst of changing political forms, from being ruled by autocrats to something that is not yet defined. Our country is in the midst of changing social forms, as computers have, in the span of fifty years, gone from crude machines to machines capable of winning Jeopardy, and social networking continues to refine what it means to be connected in the twenty-first century. Many members of the Presbyterian church, including six pastors from this congregation, attended the NEXT conference this past week, a conference aimed at thinking about how we can be true to the Gospel, true to our Reformed heritage, and yet profoundly engaged in our rapidly changing world.

And yet for all the temptation to read our world’s changes back into this idea that Jesus was transfigured and transformed, I don’t think that is at the center of this story. Believe me, I started writing a sermon based on that very idea before coming to believe that this scene is bigger than that mysterious moment of transfiguration. Instead, the bulk of the story seems to be about the reactions taking place after this moment of transfiguration, and the question is, how do we as people of faith respond to a powerful religious experience?

The first reaction to the transfiguration that we see comes from Peter, who somewhat bizarrely volunteers to set up three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah. Although our first reaction may be that Peter was just a big camping enthusiast, the Greek word actually recalls the tabernacle, the large tent that housed God’s presence while the Israelites were nomadic. Peter’s reaction to this new vision of Jesus is to try to hold on to it, to set up a place for it to live so that he might be sustained by its presence a little longer. I imagine many of us have had similar experiences of holiness—a moment of grace or an embrace from God—that we wish would have remained with us forever. And yet our sense of God’s holy presence is sometimes not as powerful as it is at other times. In this respect, Peter becomes a very sympathetic and relatable character because he is trying to cling to this vision that he is seeing.

For Peter, James, and John, this had to have been an extremely powerful vision because of how many important figures and parallels to important religious events there are present in this scene. Our first lesson today came from Exodus, when Moses ascended the mountain to experience a theophany, the fancy term for a revealing of God. This theophany would change the face of Judaism, as the Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses, who later comes down from the mountain with his face shining like the sun from being in God’s presence. The parallels in the language and scene are too much to ignore, so we have to imagine Jesus’ transfiguration was reminiscent of that of Moses. So too we see Elijah, another figure who famously experienced a mountaintop theophany. Contained within this brief scene from Matthew’s account is a whole host of important revelations from God that have been instrumental in shaping Judaism as Peter, James, and John had known it be. No wonder Peter wanted to make a tabernacle and keep it from changing. He knew he was on holy ground and that God’s presence was near. For Peter, the meaning and significance was that Jesus was a comparable figure in Israelite history. Just a week earlier, he had proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah. Now Peter’s proclamation had been verified, and he was eager to hold this powerful religious experience with him on top of this mountain. He was holding on to a transfiguration event that was only temporary.

But in this transfiguration event it is God who ultimately gives the meaning for what it is that we and the disciples are seeing. Matthew tells us that God’s voice immediately rings over Peter’s vain attempt to capture this temporary vision of the divine: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him”! The words that God speaks are the same that God spoke at Jesus’ baptism at the beginning of his ministry, but they convey a new sense of urgency at the end. Unlike God’s words at Jesus’ baptism, this time God speaks with the imperative—“Listen to him!”—because he knows that the disciples need to be shaken out of this moment. They have experienced a vision that is unlike anything they have ever seen. Now they need to respond to the meaning of that vision and experience, rather than get caught up in the experience itself. It is interesting that one of the first things Jesus does after this scene is to order the disciples who had seen the transfiguration to not speak of it until after he has been raised from the dead. We are left with a vision that we don’t entirely know how to comprehend; we are only given a command by God to listen to Jesus, a command to not stay in this mountaintop experience but to let it guide us as we head back down the mountain. Our theophanies cannot last forever; we need to let their revelations and calls set new visions for our lives and for our world. Rather than reacting like Peter, we perhaps need to react like Picasso.

Picasso experienced a world in the midst of war and turmoil, a world unlike the world of straight lines and clear images that had been taught to him by his father. Rather than keeping his art static and trying to hold on to the past, he instead decided to bring a bold new vision to this world. His vision and work were forever changed by his experiences, experiences that were startling, mysterious, and unclear, experiences that transfigured his vision forever.

In three days, the season of Lent will begin with Ash Wednesday. It is a season of preparation, of penitence, and of prayer. But it is interestingly always preceded by this Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday, containing that injunction from God, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him.” Our focus during this period of Lent changes as we travel with Christ through his final earthly days. This urgency in the importance of Jesus’ words is felt in the closing chapters of the Gospels, as they challenge us to envision a different type of Messiah. There were many conceptions of what the Messiah would look like in first-century Judaism, but very few, if any, saw the Messiah as a figure who needed to suffer, die, and be raised to bring about the kingdom of heaven. Even after earlier in Matthew proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah, Peter immediately demonstrates that he does not understand what this title of Messiah really means. Jesus tells the disciples that he will need to suffer and die, and Peter responds by saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you”! But Jesus strongly reminds him that he is seeing the Messiah through human eyes when he instead needs to be seeing them through God’s eyes. Peter cannot follow his instinct to capture that vision that he saw at the top of the mountain. Instead, he needs to let that vision and experience transform him, just as Pablo Picasso’s vision was transformed by his experiences. Once we have experienced Jesus on the mountaintop, we can never look at this world in the same way. Once we have experienced Jesus’ saving grace through humility and pain, we can never approach the pain of this world in the same way. Once we have experienced Jesus’ all-encompassing love, we can understand what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves and to love God with our whole heart.

God challenges each of us in this season of Lent to let our vision be shaped by our experiences with Christ, for we know that seeing the world in a different way will make each of us act in a different way. We are challenged to be less like Peter and more like Picasso, not confining our powerful experiences to one time and place, but allowing them to give us a vision that guides us in all areas of our life. But most importantly, we are continually called to listen—to listen for God and to listen for Christ as we all seek to transfigure our vision into that of the bold sight that God calls us to. Amen.