Christian Year: Transfiguration Sunday
There is a great scene in the original 1979 Superman movie in which a helicopter carrying newspaper reported Lois Lane crashes on a landing pad atop a New York City skyscraper. As that helicopter and its occupants are teetering on the brink of falling off the building and crashing to the city streets below, Clark Kent – Superman in his everyday disguise – realizes that he must spring into action. He just needs to find a phone booth in which he can rip off his business suit and emerge as Superman wearing tights and a cape.
So, Clark Kent takes off running down the block looking for the nearest public pay phone. When he finds that phone he stands in front of it in a moment of dumbfounded awe because what he has found is indeed pay phone … but without the booth. It is just a phone mounted on the wall. It was this great moment for Clark Kent/Superman; I don’t remember if he at that point ran down a deserted alley or if he ran through a revolving door to change, but he realized that this place where he had always changed from regular newspaper reporter to superhero was no longer available.
That scene was a great cultural moment as well because in the early 1970s phone companies were beginning to phase out traditional phone booths in favor of the wall mounted units. This is in part because the phone booth was originally designed to accommodate and contain the telephone technology when it was first developed. Phone lines used to be so bad – so much of the input, the voice or noises that went into the receiver were lost – that pay phone users would HAVE TO SHOUT REALLY LOUD TO BE HEARD BY THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END OF THE LINE. I remember in the 1980s when one of the commercial telephone companies made a big deal about being able to hear a pin drop over the telephone lines. It was sign that telephone technology was changing. What that meant is that whereas once you HAD TO SHOUT REALLY LOUD to be heard and so needed a privacy booth so as not to disturb those around you while talking on the phone, those privacy booths became less and less necessary. The shift away from phone booths also made it easier to use the phone especially for people in wheelchairs, and the phone booths were also expensive to maintain. Add in the rise of the cell phone, and phone booths (and even the wall-mounted units that replaced them) are all but non-existent today. So, what would Superman do?
Encountering Christ on this Transfiguration Sunday when we remember Jesus going up the mountain with three of his disciples and there sitting in the presence of God and the prophets who had gone before him is a lot like looking for a phone booth in this cell phone world. This occurrence, this transfiguration, Jesus being encompassed in and transformed by the power of God comes almost exactly at the half way point of Gospel of Mark. In the midst of a cloud and a dazzling white light and the appearance of two of the most prominent figures from Jewish history, God speaks to those gathered there on the mountain saying, “This is my Son, listen to him!” It is the second time in the Gospel of Mark that we have heard this pronouncement. The first is when Jesus was baptized at the very beginning of his ministry. We hear this pronouncement come from human lips for the first time in the gospel as Jesus breathes his last breath and dies upon the cross at the end of the Gospel of Mark.
This is a crucial moment in the gospel because it gives the disciples a glimpse of glory – of Jesus glory. That’s important because after the transfiguration Jesus begins to make predictions about his death and his suffering and his resurrection. So this is supposed to be a moment of reassurance. It is supposed to tell the disciples where Jesus came from and where Jesus is going, and Jesus will try to tell his followers that despite the glory, the Messiah, God’s chosen servant, isn’t the Messiah without suffering and sacrifice. With Jesus you don’t get the glory without the suffering. This is an important reminder for us as well as this week we enter the season of Lent, the 40 days of preparation leading up to Easter. This is our reminder as we enter the season when we hear so much about Jesus’ rejection, struggle, torture, and death that this is an important – even necessary season – but it is not the final season. Glory awaits on the other side.
But the disciples have become so focused on this glimpse of glory that they struggle to understand how Jesus could suffer and die. We see this grasping at Jesus’ glory and this desire to preserve Jesus’ glory take root on the mountain where Jesus is seen sitting with Moses and Elijah. When the disciples see what is happening their first reaction is to say, “Let’s put up a tent for you all to stay in.” Or “Let’s build a phone booth for a cell phone world.”
Jewish tradition held that Moses’ burial place was unknown. The prophet Elijah did not die but was taken up to heaven on a chariot. So, both were understood to be living with God. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I am living with God, I don’t know that I need a dwelling place on earth. So, the very notion of erecting three tents is absurd. It demonstrates the disciples’ desire for permanence. So, why is this the first thing that those three disciples think of doing in the glorious moment? … because that’s what they had always done before. That’s what they had been taught to do.
In our Exodus reading Moses goes up Mount Sinai and into the presence of God. There Moses receives the Ten Commandments among other teachings from God to be shared with the people. When Moses came down off of that mountain, he went into what is known as the Tent of Meeting. Perhaps the disciples say, “That’s what Moses did so long ago; if it worked then, it must work now.” If a phone booth worked in 1960 it must work now.
What the disciples miss is that in Jesus Christ God is transforming the world; God is transfiguring the way things are done. Jesus’ silence which meets the suggestion to build tents, and God’s booming voice tell the disciples that was the old way, but something new is happening in Jesus. Don’t go back to the old way look forward to the future that God has prepared for you! God is transfiguring the old into something new and saying that process will not be easy. It will require sacrifice and maybe even suffering.
One of the lessons we can learn from the transfiguration is that God is transforming what is into something more holy, more divine, more fruitful. God did that with Jesus there on the mountain. As we prepare to enter the season of Lent we have the opportunity to take up new practices and new disciplines that can draw us closer to God. We also have the opportunity for our congregation to experience transfiguration. On Wednesday we wrapped our five-week initiative on Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. In this post you find the fruit of that initiative.
I invite and encourage you to take this sheet home. I know that it is long and detailed. There are places where some of the ideas seem to conflict or be in opposition. For the most part what you see here are the ideas, the brainstorms, the dreams of this congregation as we move forward into the future that God has in store for us. The length of this list is simply testament to your passion for God’s work in this congregation. I want to encourage you over the next week to read over this entire list and pray over it and listen for what God is saying to you. In what ministry is God calling you to engage? What aspect of the church is God inviting you to transfigure – to make more holy, more divine, more fruitful?
This list will be included in our March newsletter. The Sunday after that newsletter is mailed out we will have the opportunity in worship to make a commitment to participate in or lead one or two new, transfigured ministries. So, I hope that you will take this seriously.
We do a lot of things well here at Pomme de Terre UMC, but Jesus was doing a lot of things well when God transfigured him. God has great things in store for us personally and as a church. Even Superman realized that being part of something great meant leaving his old way of doing things behind and embracing something new. Imagine if Superman insisted on changing in a phone booth: that helicopter would have crashed down into the streets and Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luther would probably be ruler of the world. Imagine if phone companies insisted on installing more phone booths instead of tearing them out: they’d be in even worse economic situation than they already are. The transfiguration tells us that God has glory in store for us. We see that in Jesus Christ. We have a glimpse of that glory in this list right here. God is calling us to a transfiguration. God is calling us to stop looking for a phone booth because we live in a cell phone world. Amen.
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