Today is sort of a housekeeping Sunday in terms of our readings. What I mean by that is we are tying up loose ends so that we can get to the next place in the narrative. And so what we see, especially with the Gospel, is the emphasis of one main point and that main point has to do with who Jesus is. The reason for this housekeeping is this; Lent starts on Wednesday and as a result we need to have a good idea of the nature of Jesus before we get to that. The Church Year and by default the Lectionary (that is the readings we are assigned for a given Sunday) work under the guise of a sort of Holy Amnesia, with us rediscovering the Gospel on a yearly basis. The Church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent. So the way that things are supposed to work is that we first learn of the coming of the Messiah back in early December, then we learn of the birth of the Messiah at Christmas. This is followed by the idea that the Messiah came for the whole earth which we learn during Epiphany and so now in early February right before Lent starts we need to be told just who exactly this person is who will be crucified at the end of Lent on Good Friday. As a result we get the story of the Transfiguration. Those who put together the Lectionary did not call me, but I have always guessed that they chose this particular reading for the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany because it very compactly shows Jesus in all of his glory - the whole fully man and fully God business.
In many ways the Transfiguration is a strange story. Jesus takes James, Peter and John up to a high mountain. And when they get up this high mountain, Jesus "was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." Then, if that was not enough, he is joined by Moses and Elijah, which apart from being pretty neat it is also wrought with symbolism. Moses is the giver of the Law; Elijah is the prophet who was bodily carried off to heaven before he tasted death. And so by appearing with these two we see symbolically that Jesus is both the fulfillment and embodiment of the Law and of the Prophets. And just in case that was not enough for us to figure out the identity of Jesus, God the Father gets involved in a very overt way by announcing, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" And so unless we are felling particularly thick today we should have a pretty good idea of who Jesus is; not only in his relationship to God the Father but in terms of the narrative of the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition from where the idea of Messiah comes. And so now the question comes, what are we to do? How does the full identity of Jesus change our lives?
I started off by talking about the divine amnesia that we are supposed to have because of the lectionary readings of the Church Calendar and in many ways I think it would be nice if this were literally true. If we could have a sense of excitement and wonder as if we were hearing this news of Jesus for the first time; but most likely we have heard it so much that it has become somewhat mundane. And as a result of this familiarity we can act like those that Paul talks about today in 2nd Corinthians when he says, "the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." In our case it is probably a case of having heard it all before that blinds us, but I think at various times and places we are all blinded to Christ as revealed in the Transfiguration by the various and sundry gods of this world. And to understand what I mean by this let's start by defining our terms - most specifically what do we mean by god of this world?
This may be confusing (or it may not) but I think what Paul is getting at in this phrase are not some ancient mythological god like Apollo or Athena but rather he means it in the sense of something accorded supreme importance, and that something which is accorded supreme importance is not God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. A god of this world would be something that we put ahead of the one true God, and it could really be anything. Putting something ahead of God is a very real danger to all of us and may be even more of problem because of the times in which we live. Our present times are very noisy times; times in which there are so many things that compete for our attention. And compete may be too docile of a word because many things scream and yell for our attention. Most of us here are from the United States, and so here is just a quick example. You may have noticed that most gas stations back home now believe that we cannot successfully pump our gas without some sort of music playing. In fact, a number of our gas stations back in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin have upped the ante and have now added TV screens to the gas pump so that we don't have to ever be bothered with a moment of silence for some personal reflection.
I was reading a study the other day by the psychologist Larry Rosen who has done research on the way our electronic era has refocused our brains. In one study he found that when people put their phones down their brains actually produce bursts of cortisol, which is the hormone associated with the fight or flight instinct and is released in times of stress. Which means putting our phones down causes anxiety. We are worried that we might miss something. And while I realize this is just one example, there are so many things that fight for our attention and when we ignore them they trigger things in us a feeling that we are missing something important. How can the one true God compete with things that cause us anxiety and stress when we try to let go of them?
I have sometimes thought that if there were real gods competing for our attention it might actually make things easier. And by real gods, I don't mean real in the sense that they actually exist, but rather I mean things like golden calves and fertility gods. I would guess that if you found yourself on Sunday morning sacrificing a goat at the altar of Baal instead of going to Church you would probably have a pretty good idea that you were not Christian anymore. But that is not how the gods of this world seem to work. In my life as a parish priest, I have found that the greatest competition to Sunday church attendance is not devotion to another religion but is rather youth sports and nice summer days. Parishioners will happily tell me that they didn't make it because its baseball season, or it was just too nice of a day to be spent indoors at a church service. Neither of these are horrible and evil things to do, but they are things that get placed above the worship of the one true God.
In 1985 NYU Professor Neil Postman wrote his famous book entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argued that our world resembled the world laid out by Huxley in Brave New World where people take a soothing drug known as soma. Postman argued that television served this function, essentially keeping us fat, dumb and happy. We replaced the pursuit of great things with a sort of sedentary comfortableness. Now I don't want to get into full cranky old man mode and say that it is even worse today and we are all numbed to reality by various distractions and amusements, but I will say that we need to be careful. We need to always guard against things that distracts us from God.
Today is a day when we are supposed to be in awe and wonder of the beauty and majesty of God. And it may be hard to do because of both familiarity and because of other things which distract us from that reality, but this is ultimately the best and most wonderful thing that we can do. God has never told us not to enjoy the beauty and the wonder of the creation that he has given to us, but has simply told us to love him first. And this is not because God is a megalomaniac in constant need of affirmation, but it is because God knows that he is the only being in the universe capable of being the first love. All the rest of creation will ultimately disappoint because it is not God. Or as Isaiah puts it, "The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever." And so as we prepare to enter the season of Lent we need to remember who Jesus is and that he is to be worshiped and adored above all others so that we may be his both now and forevermore.