Readings

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration, a feast of enough weight that it bumps the usual Sunday after Pentecost readings. Let’s dive in.

Our Gospel begins “Now about eight days after these sayings…” “These sayings”? Luke is pointing back to that high-voltage conversation: “Who do you say that I am?” “The Messiah.” “Which means going to Jerusalem to be rejected, executed, and rise on the third day.” “No way, Lord!” “Yes, way.” And: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23).

So Jesus is the Messiah (and the disciples have already been sent out by twos to heal, exorcise, and announce the Kingdom) but Jesus’ understanding of being Messiah is completely off everyone’s map. It’s fair to say that the disciples are off-balance from then on. Pulling back the camera: following Jesus was about as “sensible” an option in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. And while the resurrection and Pentecost restored some balance, almost immediately uncircumcised Gentiles were receiving the Spirit, and how do we get our heads around that? Perhaps being off-balance is part of the package.

Anyway, back to the text. “Now about eight days after these sayings…” the disciples are probably wondering if it wouldn’t be smarter to go back to fishing, tax collecting, etc. So it looks like whatever else it is, the Transfiguration is an exercise in damage control. The whole situation doesn’t make sense, but the Transfiguration shows there’s more going on than meets the eye, and the Voice from Jesus’ baptism returns: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

When we heard this story back in February I observed that the disciples—all good Jews—knew who Moses and Elijah were; Jesus was the one they were still trying to place. How does Jesus relate to what we already know? But “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” destabilizes that: listen to Jesus to understand Moses and Elijah.

We Gentiles aren’t particularly worried about Moses and Elijah, but we do assume that there’s plenty we already know. And here “know” is about both our ideas and the institutions we inhabit—or that inhabit us. I find it helpful to think in terms of the Greek pantheon. We know how wealth works (Pluto and Wall Street). We know how power works (Ares and the Pentagon). Etc. How, we wonder, does Jesus fit into all of that? And then “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” So the problem is not how Jesus fits in Pluto’s world, but how Pluto fits in Jesus’ world.

In February we were reading from Matthew; today’s text is from Luke. Luke tells us that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah “were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” ‘Departure’ is a possible translation, but obscures the point, for the Greek word is exodos, which already in the Old Testament names the Israelites’ departure from Egypt. So with that word Luke gives us an interpretation of the Jerusalem events: it’s Exodus 2.0, it’s about freedom. Pluto, Mars, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena: welcome to Jesus’ world.

A sidebar: there’s a school of Eucharistic devotion that emphasizes our sin, and how much it cost Jesus. And we don’t want to lose sight of our sin. But Luke’s “exodus” reminds us that Eucharist (the word means, recall, ‘thanksgiving’) is about how God sets us free. And in that context “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” reminds us that it’s hard to live as free people if we’re still thinking like slaves.

Then there’s Themis, the Greek goddess of justice (the figure with the scales that’s part of our iconography). In today’s psalm we prayed “O mighty King, lover of justice, / you have established equity; / you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” And particularly with justice it’s so easy to assume that we and Themis already know what justice means.

But for that conversation we need to go back to Moses. Moses’ law shares much with other ancient near eastern codes, but departs in important ways: crimes against people and property are not commensurate, the social status of the victim does not automatically set the penalty, only one eye for an eye, runaway slaves: do not return them to their owner. So already Moses is pushing against some common assumptions about justice.

And, particularly in Matthew—this year’s Gospel—this “what is justice” conversation goes into high gear. The first story Matthew tells is of Joseph, who’s introduced as a just man, but the angel has to challenge Joseph’s justice, lest Mary be “put away quietly.” The scribes and Pharisees were clearly preferable to all the other groups when it came to justice, but Jesus warns “unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We spent most of the Epiphany season listening to Jesus spell that out in Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.”

The danger of assuming we know all we need to know about justice is easily illustrated by noticing the speck in our neighbor’s eye. Our brother Patriarch Kirill in Moscow has—tragically—been loudly labeling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as just. But rather than say “how stupid” or “how evil,” perhaps we should be noticing how easy it is to assume that the Holy One adheres to our notions of justice.

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” It’s a life-long challenge/opportunity. A ‘disciple’ is a learner, and there’s no stage beyond disciple, no now-I’ve-learned-all-I-need-to-know stage. So our Book of Common Prayer begins with the Daily Office.

So I suppose this week’s take-away is personal. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” How’s my listening going? What might I want to tweak/adjust/overhaul?