February 14, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I counsel couples in making plans for their wedding, we look at the symbols and traditions that the couple would like to have to make sure that they understand the significance and history to some of the wedding rituals. My favorite is the one where everyone believes that it is “bad luck” for a bride and groom to see one another on the day of the wedding.
Long ago, in the time when marriages were arranged, it was the practice to keep the bride and groom separated until they were actually brought to the wedding. The reason for this was that many of the fathers were not sure that their daughters would be deemed lovely, and thus veiled them and kept them from being seen until basically, it was “too late.”
I can still remember my mother telling the story about how disappointed she was when she first laid eyes on my father. She came to his village on a sedan chair. She wanted to finish school and was not ready to be married off. When she saw my father, she was horrified to see his face was scarred from chicken pox craters. With a veil on her face, it was too late to end their arranged marriage.
Now today’s story is not about an ugly bride or a pock-faced groom, but about a God who is hidden from us.
Is It Clear?
Most of my sermons have as their purpose the clearing up of the fog of confusion. They promise to get to the essence of a passage, to make the complicated simple, to explain what this really means, to remove the veil to see the truth. As our Israel tour guide in 2008 always said, “Is it clear?”
As a preacher, I see that my job is to help you see God more clearly, to understand more nearly, the truth of God. So we have this story of the transfiguration of Jesus who miraculously becomes transfigured before his disciples on the mountaintop. Do you think I have a clear explanation of this? Not really.
In Matthew, Jesus seems to only speak in parables, “Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable” (13:34).
A sower went out to sow and began slinging handfuls of seed everywhere. Of course, seed sown with that sort of recklessness is sure to perish—on rocks, among the thorns, and trampled along the path. What sort of farmer sows seed on a highway? Some of the seed, a small fraction, actually germinated. Jesus concludes, “If you’ve got ears, use them” (Mt. 13:9). What is the meaning of this?
Then Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a rich man who employed a poor man. The rich man threatened to fire him for swindling his boss out of large sums of money. But the poor man called up his boss’ creditors to write off their debts so they will be indebted to him when he gets fired. The boss hears about the crime, calls the little crook in and says, “You are a genius! Good work!” Isn’t that confusing?
A farmer has this tree that hasn’t borne fruit in three years. “Cut it down?” says the farmer. The servant said, “Master, let me dig around it and pile high the manure and let’s see what happens.” The disciples asked Jesus, “How come you teach in these riddles?”
Jesus responded, “I speak in parables, so that looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand” (Luke 8:4-10).
Why would Jesus talk in such a way as to cultivate confusion?
Sometimes when we are trying to understand something we attempt to explain through analogy. Jesus seems to do this in his parables. He says, “The kingdom of God is like.” That’s analogy. We work from what we know to understand what we don’t know. If we want to know what “B” means and we already know what “A” means; then “B” means something analogous to what “A” means. Now you know “B.”
But Jesus appears to use analogy as a means of assuring us that whatever the reign of God means; it’s not what we thought.
As a preacher, I think that it’s my job to explain, to reduce the distance between you and God. My hope is for you to understand God. But in our modern world, the trouble is that in our attempt to understand or explain, we try to control. We say that we want to “get a grip” on some subject. Or when we have finally figured out something out, we say, “I got it.”
There are many books out there with titles like, “The Heart of…” The Essence of…” The Basic of…” or “The Key of…” They want you to believe that if you read this book, you will figure out God. You will have a clear analysis of who God is. You will be able to manage God.
But what if our attempt to understand God can never be gripped, grabbed, or figured out. What if we’re in worship this morning, not so much to “get” God but rather here daring to expose ourselves to the possibility that during this service of worship, God might “get” us?
In recognition that today is Chinese New Year, a teacher of Zen told his know-it-all students one day that they could never know Zen until they are willing to not know. They must be honest about their ignorance before they could have any wisdom.
I Don’t Know
The Bible says that, “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.” What is this biblical fear? Could it be the fear that when it comes to knowing about God it is wisdom to know that we are not in control? We just don’t know.
When the disciples were with Jesus on that mountain and saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah and experienced the dazzling light and cloud and thunder, they must have said, “What was that all about?” They didn’t know what was going on? They were ignorant and confused. Sometimes that confusion creates room in us to discover something. The admission of the mystery is the beginning of growth.
So far in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has been patiently teaching his disciples, explaining to them the nature of the reign of God. Sometimes he used parables. But rarely do these parables seem to help them understand anything more clearly. In fact, sometimes the parables seem to confuse them all the more.
And now Jesus takes his disciples up to a mountain, as if to take them up to a higher level of understanding. And there, Jesus does not teach or explain anything. In fact, he amazes them. He is transfigured before them. His garments glisten. There is a light from heaven and a voice too. Moses and Elijah come back from the dead. It is utterly unclear what was happening.
Now, at this point of the sermon, you are sitting there expecting me to earn my salary by explaining this weird Bible story to you. Tell us, preacher, what does this story really mean? How can we use it in our daily lives? How are we to make sense of this story?
But what if I can’t explain it to you? What if—and I think this is the point I’m trying to make—what if I don’t attempt to explain it to you because I don’t know? When I was younger and more ambitious, I would rise to the challenge to explain this story to you. But now that I am more mature as they say, frankly, I don’t know how to make sense of this story.
What if this strange story of Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop is itself a kind of parable of Jesus? What if this episode is not meant to explain Jesus but rather to point to Jesus? What if this is more like a picture that we are to look at and be encountered by rather than some problem that we are to solve?
Last week, I was at the Getty Villa in Malibu to see some great works of art. While the guided tour guides tried to explain what possibly might this or that object was all about, they really don’t know. Nobody looks at some sculpture and then exclaims, “I got it! I got it!” Rather, if it’s truly great work of art, sometimes you walk away muttering, “Wow. It really got me.”
Part of the mystery of the Transfiguration is that it was not necessarily for the disciples, nor was it for us. It was meant primarily for Jesus. Faced with the road to Jerusalem, and his own death, Jesus was drawing strength from those who might understand: From Moses—the only other human to see God face to face—and from Elijah—the great prophet who might truly understand the concept of Messiah.
The story was a peek at Jesus’ final destination, a reminder of his ultimate life with God. When the Voice of God reminded Jesus and the disciples that, “This is my Son, the Chosen, the Beloved,” we get the chance to eavesdrop on what God is telling his Son. We don’t hear everything that Jesus, Moses and Elijah were saying to each other. We don’t know what else God may have reminded Jesus of his ultimate purpose in life is. There’s a veil that prevents us from knowing God completely.
In recognition that tomorrow is Presidents Day, Thomas Jefferson was thoroughly a modern man. Jefferson was a deist—he believed something like God had created a universe that was a wondrous machine and then retired, leaving us in charge. Jefferson, the deist decided to create his own Bible. He cut out what he referred to as the “primitive” Hebrew Scriptures. Turning to the New Testament, he snipped out everything that did not square with a modern, rational man’s devotion to reason and natural law. This meant that the miracles had to go. Healing stories went out. The Transfiguration was cut out. You are unsurprised that Jefferson’s Bible was a slender volume, composed mostly of the moral teachings of the man of Nazareth. Christianity was reduced to morality, a faith without revelation or theology. It was a practical faith, a faith without a God who was in any way present or active. We were in charge now. The world was thereby demystified and God was silenced. According to Jefferson, we could run the world as we pleased.
Veiled Truth
The Transfiguration is a kind of parable of us here at worship. We gather here in our church, just wanting to be with Jesus. Maybe we think of Jesus primarily as a wonderful teacher, or an inspiring moral example—what would Jesus do, a good guide along life’s way, or all the other rather mundane ways of thinking about Jesus. We come to church to get our explanations, or our rules, or our principles for life.
And that’s okay, as far as it goes. But sometimes Jesus takes it to another level. Sometimes he leads us beyond our answers, and rules, and certainties. It is as if he takes our hand and leads us up into another realm. He shines before us, mysterious and wonderful, beyond our ability to explain and understand. And maybe that’s when worship, when church, when being a disciple of Jesus is as good as it gets. And we exclaim, as those first disciples exclaimed on the mountaintop, “Lord! It’s good to be here!”
The disciples said, on the mountain, “Lord, let’s make three booths, one for you, one for Elijah, and one for Moses.” Luke said that Peter was “Talking out of his head.” In other words, he didn’t really know what he was saying. He was talking nonsense.
Well, maybe that’s worship as good as it gets, when we are no longer “in our heads,” when we are out of our minds. We worship beyond analytical thinking and rational thought. We are dazzle by the light. We are in another realm with God, with a mystery greater than we know how to explain let alone describe.
In recognition of Valentine’s Day, Disney’s 1991 Academy Award-winning movie Beauty and the Beast tells us that love makes transfiguration possible. Belle is the most beautiful woman in town but longs for something more stimulating and exciting than her village can provide. Gaston, the village hunk who is also the village jerk wants Belle to be his wife.
Meanwhile, a short distance away is an old castle where the Beast lives. Years earlier, the Beast, a spoiled prince was punished by an enchantress for being unkind toward an ugly elderly woman. If the Beast does not find love by his twenty-first birthday, he will remain a beast forever.
When Belle’s father gets lost in the woods and ends up a prisoner in the Beast’s castle, Belle goes searching for him. When she finds him, she begs the Beast to allow her to trade places with her father. Realizing that Belle could break the spell, the Beast agrees.
As a prisoner in the castle, Belle soon gets to know the many inhabitants. More importantly, slowly she gets to know the Beast. Just as the Beast is about to profess his love for Belle, Gaston who has heard about the Beast from Belle’s father, arrives and fights the Beast. In the struggle, Gaston falls from the cliff but the Beast is mortally wounded in the process.
As he lies close to death, Belle weeps over him and professes her love for him. He then changes back into a handsome prince and is revived. The entire castle and its inhabitants are liberated from the spell.
Love makes this transfiguration possible and love is at the heart of the Transfiguration in the gospels. It is out of love that Jesus comes into the world, unveils his glory, including the cross. Just as Belle was able to see behind the Beast’s frightening ugliness to love the hidden beauty that transformed the Beast’s heart to be kind and wiser, the veiled truth in Jesus Christ is a mystery simply for us to accept even when we will never fully understand God’s love, grace, and mercy for you and me.
By the way, if my mother didn’t say anything about the pockmarks on my father’s face, I would never have noticed them. It was hidden from my sight because of his love for our family.
Let us pray.
Ever-living, ever-loving God, grant us grace to worship you as you are rather than as we would have you to be. Give us the courage to see you as you would appear to us, rather than as we would like you to look. Guide us into the depths of your mystery. Help us to scale the heights of your glory. In all things, help us to love you as our God, our Guide, and our Savior. Amen.