We live in an era when plastic surgery has become so common place that folks who haven’t had at least “a little work done” may feel a bit out of step. Consequently I suspect most people would equate the idea of someone being transfigured with that of a person having been worked on by a really skilled plastic surgeon. However, the event we hear about in today’s Gospel, when three of Jesus’ disciples saw him glowing white while talking with two of the most important people in the sacred story of the Hebrew people, clearly describes a different sort of transfiguration. While the Biblical account certainly describes a dramatic change in Jesus’ appearance, it was only a fleeting change, not a permanent one. There is no indication that from the point that they came down from the mountain Jesus looked any different than he ever had. No, I believe that rather than Jesus taking on a whole new look, it was how his followers saw him, their perception of him, that underwent a permanent change. I suspect from that point forward these men heard Jesus differently, understood more clearly than ever before, what he was trying to teach them. While I personally have never had an experience quite as dramatic as what is described in today’s reading, there have definitely been moments in my life when my perception of another person changed dramatically, when you could say that person was transfigured in my eyes. Perhaps the same is true for you.
My most vivid experience of transfiguration occurred while I was teaching at Lincoln Junior High in Cottage Grove. Now while I’ve often joked that the ten years I spent in Cottage Grove represent the purgatory of my teaching career, the truth is I had many wonderful students during my time there. The issue wasn’t the place but rather the age group. Merciful heaven, it was a world of perpetual puberty! I felt like I was fighting a daily battle to keep an intellectual rowboat afloat on a sea of raging hormones. I recall one student in particular who sat right in front of me one year. I don’t remember his name, but I can picture him, and I am hard-pressed to tell you how much he irritated me. For purposes of this story, I’ll call him Paul. Paul wasn’t a bad kid, really, he was just so annoying. However, one day I realized right in the midst of him asking me a question that he reminded me of another much younger little boy, who could also be spectacularly annoying. However, as the son of a close friend, this young man, I’ll call him Andrew, was someone I knew well and cared about deeply. From the moment I made the connection, or God made it for me, between Paul my student, and Andrew my friend, I experienced Paul completely differently. I found I could cajole him into getting his assignments done, not interrupting me, not distracting his classmates, without feeling any of the frustration he had once aroused in me. I experienced him as energetic, rather than disruptive. I enjoyed his presence in my classroom, and I know he knew that. One could say that in my eyes he was transfigured, and because of that my relationship with him was forever transformed. Mind you this was not something I planned on happening, or tried to make happen. Rather I simply experienced it, it happened TO me, by the grace of God, and because I suppose, I was open to having it happen.
So this is one way to understand transfiguration and transformation: one person perceives another differently, and as a result their relationship is transformed. This can happen as a result of an instantaneous realization or over a period of time. However, transformation can apply to more than merely relationships; people themselves can be transformed. Consider the disciples. Peter, James, and John, along with Peter’s brother Andrew, are identified in the Gospels as the first four disciples Jesus called to follow him. These men were fishermen, people who could not possibly have observed all the purity laws and rituals required by Jewish law. In other words, these men were not religious leaders when Jesus encountered them, but rather people in whom Jesus saw great potential. So he called them to follow him. During the three years they traveled with Jesus these men were transformed from ordinary fishermen into the leaders of the early Christian movement. It didn’t happen all at once. They grew in their understanding of who Jesus was and what his ministry was about in fits and starts as they watched and listened to him. We know that Jesus asked them repeatedly who they thought he was. Only a few days before the Transfiguration Peter, the caricature of the student who is forever blurting out answers without the slightest consideration as to whether the answer might actually be correct, gave the answer Jesus had been waiting for: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Overjoyed at Peter’s insight, Jesus responded by calling Peter the rock upon which He would build his church. But Peter wasn’t that rock yet. In their remaining time together Peter infuriated Jesus, denied he knew Jesus, and then ran away and hid when the Romans crucified Jesus. Eventually however, he, and ten of the other eleven, were transformed into people able to go out and person by person convince others to become followers of Jesus, to become Christians. Over time the movement they started grew to the point that it changed the world. When we look back on what they did from our vantage point over two thousand years later they seem almost superhuman, and we, by comparison, rather small and ineffective.
Part of the reason it’s so hard for us to imagine ourselves making the sort of difference the disciples did, I suspect, is that we know too much. The disciples were subjects of the Roman Empire who likely knew nothing of the people similarly under Roman control who lived in modern day France or Germany. Their world consisted of the places they could travel to on foot, on a donkey, or maybe in a small boat. They dealt with the people they encountered on a daily basis and in so doing, lived out the charge Jesus gave them. They weren’t overwhelmed by worldwide concerns because they had no idea how big the world was or how many people lived in it. We do know all that and more. Thanks to the 24 hour news cycle we are painfully aware of every crisis, every area of need, every impending disaster worldwide. It’s exhausting, and it is potentially debilitating. So what are we to do? We can’t un-know what we know. We have to find a way to function in spite of the weight that knowledge seems to place on our figurative shoulders.
Perhaps we could begin by following the caption on a poster that hung in my classroom for many years: Think Globally, Act Locally. Consider our Saturday morning breakfast program. The people who work on what is likely the outreach ministry for which St. Mary’s is best known, feed close to 300 people twice a month. Are they solving world hunger? No. But every second and fourth Saturday they open the doors of this building to hundreds of people, most of whom are homeless, so they can partake of a really good meal. And perhaps just as important as the food is the fact these guests have the opportunity to eat in a warm, dry environment, where they are treated with respect and compassion in a world where more often than not, they feel utterly invisible. Our Earth Keepers are not singlehandedly reversing global warming, but they’re still making a difference. I don’t know how many years ago one of their columns suggested we turn off the water while we’re brushing our teeth. What could be simpler? I’ve been doing so for years at no inconvenience, and I can only guess how many gallons of water I’ve saved. I now stockpile plastics in my garage in order to turn them in when we have one of our plastic ingathering events organized by that group. Members of St. Mary’s have worked for years helping people from the other parts of the world build new lives here in Eugene as part of the local Refugee Resettlement Program. The number of people they’ve helped isn’t large, but for the individuals involved the help has been life-changing.
The disciples didn't start out as religious leaders, they were ordinary people who began a movement that centuries after they walked this earth spread all the way around the world and, for both good and ill, changed the course of human history. We are ordinary people too, who like the disciples, have great potential. Perhaps the most important transfiguration that ever takes place in our lives is when we recognize our own power. Once we accept that we actually are capable of making a difference then we simply need to find a ministry about which we’re passionate, and figure out how we can best get involved. The examples I mentioned earlier are just that, examples. There will always be more ministry to do than ministers to do it. You know better than anyone else where your personal strengths meet the world’s needs. The issue is deciding you’re willing to use your strengths to make a difference. Lent starts this Wednesday. Reflecting on where and how we can make a difference might be a good focus for this introspective time of year. As we reflect, we need to remember that none of us is expected to singlehandedly change the world; no single human being possible can. As Mother Teresa herself said, “We can do no great things; we can do small things with great love.” That’s what we’re called to do; each in our own way, small things with great love. If enough of us do that, there truly is no limit to the difference we can make. Amen.
