Seeing for Real

0:00 You know, the story of Jesus' transfiguration, even by biblical standards, is a very odd tale indeed. I mean, just take this one verse. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Biblical scholars tell us that's apocalyptic language. A couple of things about apocalyptic language. Apocalyptic language is a form of language that the New Testament writers use when they are trying to describe things that cannot be described in ordinary language. It's ordinary language pushed to the breaking point and then one step beyond. But as T.S. Eliot said of some poetry, every time we use this language, it's wholly new and also a kind of failure because it is a raid on the inarticulate. The writer of the book of Revelation, for example, apocalyptic literature, wants to say that there is evil in the world, but not just ordinary evil, it's a cosmic and pervasive.

1:16 Can't say that in ordinary language, so he says this. An evil beast rises from the sea. It has seven heads and ten horns, and every horn has a crown, and on every head a blasphemous name is written. Apocalyptic. Or the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. He wants to say that the crucifixion of Jesus gives life to the world. Ironically, this death yields life. You can't say that in ordinary language. So what he says is, when Jesus was crucified, the earth shook and the rocks split and the tombs and the cemetery opened. And the saints rose and walked around Jerusalem full of life. Apocalyptic. which means that we take apocalyptic language seriously, but not mathematically. It's telling the truth, but not in a scientific kind of way.

2:19 As biblical scholar John Barton says, when the Bible says the stars will fall from the sky, the sun will no longer shine, and the moon will drip blood, The next verse is not going to be Thursday will be partly cloudy with scattered showers. It's a different kind of language. And if apocalyptic language is trying to describe that which ordinary language cannot describe, the reason for it is to enable us to see what ordinary vision cannot see. That's what apocalyptic means, by the way. It means revelation. or maybe even better, unveiling. Apocalyptic language lifts the veil and allows us to see what has been hidden. The person who understood this best in our day, I think, was the late activist Christian lawyer William Stringfellow.

3:22 He tried to live out the apocalyptic themes in the New Testament. He was asked one time to give a lecture to the students at Harvard Divinity School. So he wrote a lecture about the apocalyptic language in the New Testament about powers and principalities. Paul says, we don't just fight flesh and blood. We're fighting powers and principalities beyond human powers. What he said in the lecture was that our ordinary human institutions, our banks, our churches, our economy, our justice system, our political system, you look at it one way, it's human beings trying to do the best they can to hold the world together. But if you pull back the veil, you can see the powers and principalities beyond human powers at work. Well, the dean at Harvard Business School heard that Stringfellow was coming to give this lecture, and he called him and said, Bill, while you're on campus, would you mind coming over and lecturing the business school students as well?

4:31 Stringfellow agreed, but he didn't have time to write another lecture, so he gave the same lecture at the Divinity School and the Business School. At the Divinity School, it was not well received. The students sniffed powers and principalities. That's first century mythology. We've learned to demythologize that. We don't talk that way anymore. But at the business school, they knew exactly what he was talking about. They had seen the red tooth and claw of Wall Street, transcending human ambition and greed. Apocalyptic language helps you see what is hidden. By the way, when Stringfellow and his friends wanted to protest at the White House, the war in Vietnam, they went to Washington, and Stringfellow's friends did it in a sort of ordinary way. They had peace placards, and they walked around the fence around the White House.

5:29 But Stringfellow did his in a more dramatic and apocalyptic fashion. He went to the gate of the White House, opened his Episcopal prayer book, and performed an exorcism of Richard Nixon. Because when you lift the veil, war is not simply bad judgment or poor policy. There is a demonic power that has us in its grip. An apocalyptic language doesn't just expose the evil in the world, it also lifts the veil on the goodness in the world, the generosity of God and the grace of God, how the world, if you know how to look at it, is the theater of the glory of God. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who did so much in the way of quantum mechanics, said in his memoir that when he was a little boy, he and his family lived in a house that had a fish pond in the front yard.

6:26 And he would spend many afternoons lying on his stomach and looking down into the fish pond and watching the fish swim around. And it dawned on him one day, I can see the fish, but they can't see me. In fact, as far as the fish are concerned, there's nothing outside the fish pond. Sunshine comes from the outside into the pond, but for the fish, it's just inner luminescence in the pond. Rain comes down into the fish pond, but for the fish, it's just ripples in the water. He said, I wonder how many of us live our life that way, as if there's nothing outside the fish pond. And what we see in the transfiguration of Jesus Christ is that God is bringing into our world, adventing into our world, the grace and blessing of God. I have a daughter named Melanie. She's in her late 40s now.

7:30 but I remember a day years ago when she was, oh, about eight years old. My wife and I were in the den late one afternoon reading. Melanie was there too. She had some music on the stereo, and as children are wont to do, she was dancing playfully around the room. At one point, I put my book down and watched her dance, And there was a moment when she turned her head just so, and the light came through the sliding glass doors just right. And for an instant, she wasn't eight. She was 28. I saw the adult she would become. And then she turned her head, and she had a gap between her teeth, and she was a kid all over again. But I had seen who she would become.

8:25 had seen who she already was, an independent human being, and it changed our relationship. I knew that something about me as a parent was going to have to pull back to let that human being I had seen emerge. In an even deeper way, at the transfiguration of Jesus, the light is just right. His face shines like the sun. His clothes are dazzling white. And we see that this man born of a woman is more than that. This is my son, the beloved. You can trust him. I am well pleased with him. Follow him. Now, it's important that this happens in the middle of Matthew.

9:21 You know, we've heard those words before, this is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased, at the beginning of Matthew, when Jesus was baptized. But that's when things were new and fresh and hopeful. We're now in the middle of Matthew and things are not going well. Jesus has stimulated great disappointment. Even John, who baptized him, sends word to him, I thought you were the one. Are you the one? Or should we look for somebody else? The crowds have fallen away. They've rejected him, ignored him. The leaders have opposed him. There are death threats on his life. Right before the transfiguration, he tells his disciples, in case you didn't pay attention when I told you before, we're going to Jerusalem now and I am going to suffer and die.

10:22 He doesn't look like the beloved son of God. He looks like an ordinary fish in the fish pond. And the wheel of history is about to roll over him and crush him. And here in the middle, the veil is lifted. This is still my son. This is the one with whom I am well pleased. This is the beloved. This is my advent of grace into the world. You can trust him and believe him. Now, because of the transfiguration of Jesus, we have our vision altered, and we can see in a way that we couldn't see before the veil was lifted. And we not only see the transfiguration of Jesus, but we look around us, and the world is full of transfigurations, of a God who is adventing into life all over the place.

11:30 In Richard Nash's play, The Rainmaker, there's a delightful scene in which two characters, Starbuck and Lizzie, are talking about the world, and Starbuck is disappointed in the world. It's flat and boring and banal. He said, you know, nothing out there is as beautiful in my hands as it is in my head. Lizzie said, well, maybe you ought to take some time to look at it. He said, you mean if I did, I would love it? And she said, well, maybe. She said, sometimes at night, I'm washing the dishes, and my pops is playing poker with the boys in the living room, and I look out at him, and I see an ordinary middle-aged man, and not very interesting to look at. But I keep watching him. And all of a sudden, I see things I hadn't seen before.

12:26 Little habits that he has, ways of talking I hadn't paid any mind to before. And suddenly, I see who he is. And I love him so much, I want to cry. and I give thanks to God that I took the time to see for real. That's the gift of the transfiguration, to lift the veil and to let us have the eyes of faith to see for real. The Jews have a saying that if you really knew how to look to see for real, in front of every person we meet, we would see an angel saying, make way for the image of God. Make way for the image of God.

13:15 Years ago, when I was a teenager, there would always be a Saturday in October when I would leave our home in suburban Atlanta and walk over to an embankment overlooking Highway 29 going into downtown Atlanta. The reason I went there on that Saturday in October was because on that particular day, I knew that I would see an awful spectacle.

13:42 The Ku Klux Klan was still active in Georgia in those days, very active. And on that Saturday in October, they would go to Stone Mountain and burn a cross, and then in full regalia with their horns blaring, they would drive in their cars down Highway 29 to downtown Atlanta. they would go to Auburn Avenue, which was Main Street in African American Atlanta, pull on their hoods and defiantly march down Auburn Avenue. And every year, the citizens in that neighborhood would lock their doors and shutter their windows and stay inside, because you didn't know who was behind those hoods. It could be your boss, it could be the president of the Trust Company of Georgia. You didn't know.

14:32 But one year, the first green shoots of the civil rights movement had begun to spring from the desert. And those who had the veil lifted and who looked with eyes of faith could see what God was doing in our society, doing in the world, could see what the future was going to be. The Klan never saw it. They marched just as usual down Auburn Avenue. But that year, the residents of the neighborhood did not lock their doors or shutter their windows. They stood on the sidewalk, hundreds of them. And as the Klan marched by, they laughed and laughed and laughed. The laughter unmasked the powers and the principalities, and the Klan has never marched down Auburn Avenue again. now Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and we start our long journey toward the cross and then toward Easter and when we arrive at Easter there will be the risen Christ the glory of God shining around him saying do not be afraid all of those powers and principalities even death, that cause us to fear. They're being unmasked as the pathetic cowards and weaklings that they are in the power of God.

16:08 Several years ago, about this time of year, two of our associate pastors at the downtown Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, where my family and I worship, were out on the sidewalk holding worship with some of the homeless folks who won't come into the church. They don't trust institutions, and they won't come in, so our pastors go out on the sidewalk to have worship with them on the street. after the service one of our associate pastors said to them look I know I know you guys don't like to come in the church but on Wednesday there is going to be a really cool service you remember last spring we were marching around the streets waving palm branches on Palm Sunday well we've taken those palm branches and we've burned them into ashes and we've mixed that with oil. And at this service, it's going to be in the little chapel, not the big building, just the little chapel. But our pastor is going to take those ashes mixed with oil and put a cross on somebody's forehead as a sign of God's love and care. And then give them the ashes and the oil, and they're going to put a cross on their neighbor's forehead, and we're going to pass it around.

17:23 I don't know, I think you might like it, I hope you'll come. Well, I don't know how she did it, but the way she said it, not only did they come, they spread the word around downtown Atlanta, and 60 homeless people came to the service pushing their carts and carrying their bedrolls.

17:45 Coincidentally, right across the street from the church is the Georgia State Capitol and the state legislature was in session. One of the legislators stood up that morning and said, I understand there's going to be an Ash Wednesday service at noon at the church across the street. If any of you would like to go with me, I'm planning to go. Forty legislators went. And there they were, 60 homeless, 40 state legislators crammed into our little chapel. and they said that when the legislators put crosses on the foreheads of the homeless and the homeless put crosses on the foreheads of the legislators the veil was lifted and you could see who they were and who God was children of God