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Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany – Transfiguration – February 3, 2008
After a brief hiatus, God is making a comeback on television. It’s been a few years since the cancellation of the late, lamented “Joan of Arcadia” and the not so lamented “Book of Daniel.” In Joan, some may recall, a typical suburban teenage girl in the idyllic town of Arcadia encounters God in various personifications – a boy her own age, the lunch lady, a little girl, and so on. After introducing himself, God, through these incarnations, gives Joan specific directions to do specific tasks – get a job, join the debate team, volunteer with children, and so on. Joan keeps these visions mostly to herself, sharing them only with her boyfriend who believes she is experiencing hallucinations.
With a large cult following, this show was widely praised by critics and received numerous awards; most highlighting its humanity and truthfulness. While frightened by and at times doubting her visions, the main character nonetheless tries to fulfill her instructions at the same time as she attempts to maintain a normal teenage existence, if there is such a thing. Demonstrating true creativity and humanity, naturally the show was cancelled after two seasons.
At the other end of the spectrum from “Joan” there was “Daniel,” in which a pain pill addicted Episcopal priest sees and converses with an image of Jesus as hippie, complete with hair, beard, robe and attitude. “They don’t so much converse as swap jokes,” wrote critic Tom Shales in the Washington Post, “with Jesus being a pushover for a bad gag and much too cool a guy to be judgmental…” Mr. Shales, who described “The Book of Daniel as “an unholy mess,” said, “I cannot recall a series in which a greater number of characters seem so desperately detestable – a series with a larger population of loathsome dolts.”
Proving that good taste sometimes reigns – or perhaps it was network fear of a conservative religious backlash –divine mercy prevailed and the show was cancelled after only four episodes aired in January of 2006.
Now, it’s January of 2008 and God, or at least visions that may be from God, are once again ready for prime time. In a new show called “Eli Stone,” a San Francisco lawyer is beset by sounds and visions unheard and unseen by anyone else. Adding to his confusion, these hallucinations and daydreams end up coming true later on, although in different forms from what he saw. In the first episode, a patient he sees in his mind wearing a hospital gown shows up later in his office wearing a suit. So his apparitions are really premonitions; maybe he is some kind of seer after all, as is suggested by one of his associates.
Then the show, uncomfortable with mystery, loses its nerve. Stone’s brother, who happens to be a neurologist, orders an MRI and informs Eli that he has an inoperable brain aneurysm, likely the source of the strange phenomena. Despite this seemingly rational explanation – if you can call it that - the character still attaches some sort of mysticism to what he experiences. Perhaps the associate who tells Stone that he might be a modern-day Moses may be right.
It’s doubtful. If Stone’s visions are all in his head, as it were, then they are contrary to what our faith – especially as it is expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures – has long taught: that we are engaged in a dialogue with the divine; that we are partners in a relationship with God, the wholly other who created us and exists not just within us but apart from us.
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called it “I and Thou,” in which God is the eternal Thou. According to Buber – and borne out by the witness of Scripture – God, as the eternal Thou, is not an object of experience or of thought. “I am,” God says in Genesis. Just as important – and again borne out by the Scriptural witness – God can never be fully known, only approached in love with the fullness of our being. As in any intimate relationship, we know God best through a loving mutuality, all the while recognizing and honoring each other’s uniqueness, independence and, yes, their mystery.
In Exodus, Moses goes up the mountain at the command of God, not an aneurysm. In fact, God and Moses speak continually with each other, more evidence of Buber’s principle that genuine dialogue – with each other and with the holy – lies at the heart of an authentic existence. And while we strive for an ideal I – Thou way relating, striving for mutuality and reciprocity, still we fall short at times and use each other to further our own ends; what Buber called an “I –it” relationship.
God, however close the relationship, is not like us; he is never an “it” and is always a “Thou.” So, while the principle of dialogue is easily communicated, Scripture just has God speaking to Moses and Moses answering back, even arguing at times, how is God’s “Thou - ness”- his otherness - to be most effectively communicated?
Something more than words is required; a vision is necessary. Moses went up that mountain at the command of God, into a cloud, and on the seventh day, Exodus says, after God calls again to Moses, suddenly the “appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire … in the sight of the people of Israel.” From words to a vision; the holy revealed, the holy made known.
What exactly happened up there, anyway? After pages of verbal instruction – extending from Chapter 24 to the end of Chapter 31, Exodus says, “When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.”
The relationship was established, the dialogue was advanced. There would be betrayals and disputes, Israel would stray again and again, but the covenant would endure.
We wonder what exactly happened today when Jesus, “took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Similar to Moses, but the sequence is different. Then comes the cloud and then comes the voice of the eternal Thou, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” There would be betrayals and disputes, the disciples would stray again and again, but the covenant would endure.
As they are descending the mountain, having glimpsed the glory of the new covenant, Matthew adds a word not used in the other accounts of this event. “Tell no one about the vision,” Jesus orders his three confused, frightened disciples, “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” “The vision,” he alone calls it; that’s exactly what it is.
Do we try to explain it – run MRIs on the disciples – check the cloud patterns and the solar activity on that day – or is the vital point to try and make some sense of it? To ask ourselves: What is the truth revealed in the vision? What is the reality hidden behind blazing light?
That there is a reality, our faith affirms; that this reality is revealed in sometimes inexplicable ways we affirm as well. Yet to think of a vision of God as a vision of lightis not such a stretch, is it? After all, Genesis says that at the beginning of all creation the first thing God says is, “Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”
So when Moses climbs up Sinai, he is surrounded by the same light that split apart the darkness at the dawn of time, giving shape to creation. The same light, indeed, that guided the Magi from the East to the child’s side. The same light that swept over Jesus and his disciples at the top of their own mountain, sending them down into the world ready to be lights to the world. That’s our vision, my friends; that’s our reality.
Referring to “Eli Stone,” Mr. Shales, who generally liked the program, calls it an example of “surreality,” that is, fiction that has some kind of supernatural or spiritual element; a story that contains something that just doesn’t quite make sense;kind of like “Lost,” although they are in the process of explaining more and more. Why can’t they, like one of my favorite singers, Iris Dement, says, “Let the mystery be?” They can’t but we can.
“Maybe making sense is an outdated concept,” Shales writes of shows like “Eli Stone.” Perhaps, he says, we are so dismayed with reality as it is that we hunger for the outrageous in our popular culture.
Perhaps, but considering the public and critical reactions to shows like “Joan of Arcadia” and “The Book of Daniel,” I wonder if what people are hungry for are visions which have a basis in reality. Yes, God can speak to us at unexpected times through unexpected people; how many times has a total stranger pointed you in the right direction, even saying things to you that you would likely never hear from anyone close to you? Odd, isn’t it, how we can have an “I – Thou” dialogue with someone we don’t even know?
And, are there not times when the truth of a matter comes to us so strongly, so overwhelmingly clearly that it is like nothing less than a light coming on in the darkness, making sense of it all, showing us the way? And even if we are not constantly dazzled by the divine brightness, we have the words of promiseon which to set our sights, “like a lamp shining in a dark place,” Peter tells us, “Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
If that’s outrageous, then so be it. Sometimes only the outrageous can reveal the truth.
“Do not be conformed to this world,” Paul tells the Romans, “but be transformed” – the same word used for the transfiguration – “be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
Without light discernment is difficult, if not impossible; without light no vision arises, we stumble in the darkness; without vision, says the Book of Proverbs, the people perish.
And sometimes, alas, even with a vision they do.
On February 22, 1431, during her public examination, Joan of Arc, the second patron saint of France, who was convinced that it was God’s will that she save her country, told her inquisitor: “I was thirteen when I had a voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time I heard this voice, I was very much frightened…Rarely do I hear it without its first being accompanied by a light…generally it is a great light.”
Her visions were not enough to save her, and Joan was burned at the stake on May 30 of that year. Twenty-five years later, reviewing her case, the pope declared her innocent. Jesus’ visions were not enough to save him, either; yet it did not take twenty-five years but only three days for the world to see the truth of his innocence revealed in the glory of his resurrection, a glimpse of which we get today. Thousands of years later, his light continues to guide us.
Without light, discerning the will of God is difficult, if not impossible. Without light, vision is difficult, if not impossible. But thanks to the promises and the vision of the one with whom all things are possible, we will not perish but have life eternal.