Today we have two strange stories about glowing faces. Moses and Jesus both shine so brightly they are said to be transfigured. This is one of those moments in the church year, like Trinity Sunday, when it is tempting for the rector to assign preaching to the Associate Rector. But Simone has been working on her family’s move up from Alamogordo, so she got off the hook. At least for this year.
We read about the Transfiguration every year on the last Sunday before Lent. If I’m honest, I’m not altogether sure about the name of the feast. Because it implies a simple change in appearance. And what’s clear is that this isn’t only a change. Jesus doesn’t suddenly have a new nose, or higher cheekbones. Moses doesn’t suddenly have a more defined chin. No. This also isn’t about disguise. This isn’t about our leaders becoming unrecognizable. Jesus and Moses don’t change into different leaders with different faces and different values. Rather these are stories about human beings who suddenly are more visibly, more recognizably who they are. Jesus and Moses encounter God and their inner light shines through. Their followers really see them.
“There you are Peter.”
There’s a scene in the movie Hook comes to mind. It’s One of those moments that lives rent-free in my subconscious. Peter Pan returns to Neverland. I’d warn you about spoilers; but this movie is from 1991, so I will just tell you. In Hook, Peter leaves Neverland to marry Wendy’s granddaughter. And in all the busyness of his career, Peter Pan, the boy who was never supposed to grow up, has forgotten his childhood. Then Captain Hook comes and kidnaps Peter’s kids, so Peter has to return, and the lost boys help him remember who he is, remember how to crow, remember how to fly, remember how to fight pirates. In the movie Peter Pan is played by Robin Williams, and I realized this week that when the movie was filmed, Robin Williams was a couple years younger than I am now. Which is tough realization for me because of the scene in question.
In the scene, the lost boys are distraught that this grown up is said to be Peter Pan. They don’t believe it, until the littlest of the one comes up to Pan and starts pushing around on Peter’s aging leathery face. He lifts off Peter’s glasses, traces his eyebrows, pulls on his ears, and then finally lifts up on his cheeks, like a toddler version of a facelift. Seeing the old skin stretched back, the littlest lost boy smiles and says, “oh, there you are Peter.” Then the other lost boys rush over and also pull back on his face, “there you are.” There you are.
Today, I want to posit that the Transfiguration is not about God making our leaders unrecognizable. It’s not just about Moses or Jesus or Elijah. The Transfiguration reveals the world as God always sees us. It is saying, “oh, there you are.” Because to God all of us, always, light up the dark. To God every face dazzles. The moments of Transfiguration are moments when God’s reality breaks through into ours.
Miracles are a Revelation of things as they SHOULD be.
Another Williams of a certain vintage, Rowan Williams, the theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury has said miracles are moments not of magic but of revelation. Miracles don’t just show us the world as it could be. Jesus’ miracles reveal the world as it should be. People are healed. The dead are raised. Relationships are made whole. The outcast are restored to community. Miracles are more revelation than magic.
We could use some revelation.
Desmond Tutu once said that the work of Christians is to “Transfigure” the world. He wrote of a particular winter during the fight against apartheid. The Prime Minister had come to meet with him and other leaders at a closed Anglican seminary, closed because they had wanted to integrate. These were tough days. No progress was being made. Bishop Tutu took a break from the negotiations in the seminary garden.
Tutu writes:
As I sat quietly in the garden I realized the power of transfiguration–of God’s transformation–in our world. The principle of transfiguration is at work when something so unlikely as the brown grass that covers our veld in winter becomes bright green again. Or when the tree with gnarled leafless branches bursts forth with the sap flowing so that the birds sit chirping in the leafy branches…The principle of transfiguration says nothing, no one and no situation, is “untransfigurable,” that the whole of creation, nature, waits expectantly for its transfiguration, when it will be released from its bondage and share in the glorious liberty of the children of God, when it will not be just dry inert matter but will be translucent with divine glory. -Desmond Tutu
No situation is untransfigurable. No moment be so dystopian that God’s reign can’t break through. Not apartheid. Not what we’re facing now.
Notice, the hope that Desmond Tutu held, the hope of transfiguration isn’t about trees becoming mountains, or grass becoming trees. Transfiguration is a return, not a change. Desmond Tutu dreamed of his country living into its deepest calling, becoming a place where all God’s children are treated with dignity, and respect, and all God’s children have their human rights recognized. Transfiguration isn’t a transformation away from reality, but toward reality. The miracle comes as we realize: deeper life is possible. Truer life is possible. More spirit-infused life is available. As Ireneus of Lyon tells us, “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” God’s glory can also be found when we help our world transfigure into the world for which God longs.
Reason and Trans Folks on Transfiguration Sunday
Part of why I am glad to be an Episcopalian is because we trust reason. We believe God gave us minds that we might use them. Now, when we talk about reason this way, we also mean that within us is the capacity to recognize something about God’s presence in the world. Episcopalians tend to trust scientists. We tend to see biology and cosmology not as in competition with faith, but as specific ways to marvel at the complexity and depth of God’s creation.
For me, in recent years, this has included listening to doctors, and psychologists, and members of the trans community talk about what it means to be trans. I’ve read medical studies which show how allowing for gender transition, whether social transition, medical transition, or both together how these treatments allow a person who is trans to live with less depression. The science shows pretty clearly that gender transition has overwhelmingly positive outcomes for folks who are trans.
But it’s not really the science that convinced me that gender is more complex than the body into which we are born. You see, I’ve been privileged to know a number of humans before and after their transition. I’ve known folks who transitioned from male to female and vice versa. I’ve also known folks who came out as nonbinary and stopped identifying as one gender or the other.
Walking with my friends and family and parishioners and fellow clergy who have transitioned has felt like the littlest lost boy in that scene from Hook. It can be as simple as seeing some makeup to a new haircut, ways of walking and talking and dressing might have shifted. But at some point in their transition, for me, it’s always felt like: “oh, there you are.”
You were here the whole time, but now I can see you. I can recognize you for you. I may mess up your name or pronouns sometimes. I may not always get this exactly right, but what a miracle it is to see you for you. To say “There you are.” Comfortable in who you are. What a blessing.
Transfiguration and Discerment
Let me say, this feast day is not just for trans folks. Transfiguration can be the result of all sorts of discernment. I’ve seen folks come alive as they became grandparents. I’ve stood with friends as they were ordained, or entered monastic life. I’ve seen this deepening into self in a mid-career clergy-person who quit the church, went to med school, and became a doctor. A woman I know just radiated when at 70 years old, after a 200-hour training, she taught her first yoga class. When the Spirit catches us and drives us deeper into who we are called to be, you can see it, you can almost smell the sparks of recognition.
The transfiguration, I think, is meant to feel like that. We often want to control and to tie down God’s work. We’re like Peter, trying to build houses for Moses Jesus and Elijah. We want to get the answer exactly right. We want to box up the miracles and to save them in a rainy day fund.
But that’s not how miracles work. God is far too fluid to be boxed. God is far too active, out there, working to reveal the world as it is meant to be. Leading us more deeply into who we are meant to be.
Sometimes seeing transfiguration takes patience and persistence. Like waiting for daffodils to push up in the Spring soil. But I pray that, more than once in your life, you feel the pull of the Spirit, enough to drop whatever veil you normally hide behind. I pray you see your face in the mirror as God always sees you, dazzling.
Mike Angell 