Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
03.06.11; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 17:1-9
Why is it that it is so very hard for us to embrace what is good? Or, to put it another way, why are we so frightened of the good?
We have no problem at all getting excited about things that are completely messed up. Think, if you will, to our tendency to hunger for juicy gossip. Do we want to hear the news about the couple that is happily married, that is doing great, that has kids who are doing fine?
Or do we want to dish about the stuff that is dripping with dysfunction and intrigue? Would we rather hear about the conflicts and the betrayals and the “Oh my God that is SO like her” and the “Of course that’s EXACTLY what he always does?” Human beings like the dirt and the darkness, the trainwrecks and the spectacular failures.
We do. It’s clear. And if ever anything made it more clear, the recent stratospheric rise of Charlie Sheen’s star is incontrovertible proof that we loves us some mess. Charlie Sheen, in the event that you live on a mountaintop and have a life untainted by the madness of popular culture, has been acting since before many of y’all were born. He got his first major roles in the 1980s. He took up a rifle in the glorious hoo-hah NRA fantasy “Red Dawn.” He had a significant bit part in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He starred alongside Willem DaFoe in the Vietnam flick “Platoon,” the movie I watched on my very first date with my very first serious high school girlfriend.
I don’t remember his role on Platoon so much, for some reason. I think something must have been distracting me.
And then, well, it was straight to the B-list. In 2003, he started starring in Two and a Half Men, a decent but run-of-the-mill CBS sitcom. Making lots of money, but still, not really famous. Still, basically B-list.
Until addiction and partying and total collapse, that is. And instead of going into rehab, Sheen chose the Red Pill. He just let himself completely flagrantly descend into complete splattery personal disaster. To revel in his meltdown. To bliss out on neglecting his kids and pouring as many intoxicants into his body as possible. To use his newfound fame to curry the favor of young women from a particular corner of the entertainment industry. To spew out his crazy all over the internet and on as many shows as his publicist can get him on.
And we’re eating it up with a spoon. This last Thursday, Sheen set a new record on the ADHD micro-blogging site Twitter. In just over 25 hours, over one million people subscribed to his increasingly bizarre and delusional ranting. One. Million. In a day. Because we love collapse. We love failure. The more spectacular, the better. We’re cool with glorious failure.
But what makes us uncomfortable and uncertain is actual winning.
Take, for instance, the peculiar scene that occurs in today’s scripture from the Gospel of Matthew. This passage finds us following along with Jesus, Peter, James and John as they go off on a retreat together. They remove themselves to a place described only as a “high mountain,” where things suddenly get a little bit intense.
This story within the scriptures is called “The Transfiguration,” because that’s precisely what happens to Jesus. He suddenly appears completely different. We hear, in Matthew 17:2, and in the mirror passages in Mark 9:3 and Luke 9:29, that Jesus is suddenly too bright to look at. This “brightness,” both of clothing and of his face, is a consistent marker throughout the Bible of holiness. Where the divine is present, be it God or an angelic figure, it is consistently described as being suffused in light.
This is followed by the arrival of two individuals, who are described as Moses and Elijah. The disciples see Jesus speaking with both of them. Why Moses? Why Elijah? Those two figures are absolutely central to Judaism. Moses was the one who led the people to the promised land, the liberator from slavery, the receiver of the Commandments and the Law. Elijah, was the most potent of the prophets, who stories told had never died, but would return to proclaim the coming of the Messiah. One is linked with the covenant, the other with the final fulfillment of covenant.
Peter starts suggesting that they might build something, in this case, “booths,” or “sukkot,” which are ritual shelters used during Jewish festivals. But before he can set to building, there is more brightness, this time from a radiant cloud, and the words “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” are spoken for the second time in Matthew’s Gospel.
The first time is during Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, in Matthew 3:17. There, it seems more personal, more about the connection between Jesus and God, and less about others hearing. Here in Matthew 17, it’s something directed to the disciples, and reinforced with the admonition: “Listen to him!” The appearance of a cloud is not random, either, not just an indication of fog at higher altitudes. It’s an event which is mirrored in Exodus 24, when Moses went up the mountain to receive the Law. The bright consuming cloud is a sign and mark of the presence of the Creator.
If you are Peter and James and John, this is without question all really good stuff. All of these things couldn’t possibly be any better. First, they get a clear and unmistakable sign that Jesus is holy. Then, they see a vision of Jesus with the two most significant historical figures for first century Jews. Finally, they hear a voice from a cloud, affirming Jesus as being something...well...extraordinarily good.
That moment of transfiguration acts serves a real purpose in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s the stamp and official seal of approval on who Jesus is. The marks of Holiness, fulfillment of Torah and the Covenant, and the voice and presence of God, these are all powerful affirmations of Christ’s identity and his Kingdom proclamations.
It couldn’t get any better than that. That’s winning. So are they excited? Are they all pumped up? Hardly. They’re terrified. Their knees buckle, and they fall flat on their faces. That’s because there’s something in getting things right that we find terrifying.
Because as deeply as Jesus embraced his transformation, the point and purpose of following Jesus of Nazareth is to be similarly transformed. And that scares the bejabbers out of us. It just seems so impossible. We’re afraid to even set foot down that path.
It’s far easier to get nice and comfortable with our personal demons, the array of failings that claim to define us. It’s easier to let ourselves be judgmental and condescending towards those we deem to be our social or spiritual inferiors. It’s easier to be bitter towards our enemies. It’s easier to whisper and complain and subvert, until every word that comes out of our mouth is poison. It’s easier to take pride in our frighteningly high alcohol tolerance, or our ability to ingest mass quantities of illicit substances, until the wonderfully made body in which we live begins to fail, and our mind goes to gibbering ruin.
But though we may find the crazy that comes with self-destruction fascinating, self-immolation is not the same thing as being transformed.
From faith, we know that that the truth of our transformation...the movement towards the self that we are not but desire to be...rests in our connection to our Creator. The person that you desire to be but are not, the just, kind, centered, constantly loving and grace-radiant person that you struggle to become...that person is known to your Maker as surely as you are. They are as real as you are. Getting there is not easy, any more than climbing is easy. But effort...some effort...is needed. Just ‘cause it flows easy doesn’t make it right.
There is nothing easier than falling. Climbing that mountain, and finding the self that God has in store for you, well, that’s hard. You have to trust that it is there. And you have to dedicate yourself, day by day by day, in a hundred tiny actions, to moving towards it.
But that’s what it means to be winning. Let that be our goal. AMEN.
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