Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Transformers (2/15/15)

The Transformers
John Shuck

Southminster Presbyterian Church
Beaverton, Oregon

February 15, 2015

                                 Bhagavad Gita XI
Sri Krishna, Master of all yogis, revealed to Arjuna his transcendent, divine Form, speaking from innumerable mouths, seeing with a myriad eyes, of many marvelous aspects, adorned with countless divine ornaments, brandishing all kinds of heavenly weapons, wearing celestial garlands and the raiment of paradise, anointed with perfumes of heavenly fragrance, full of revelations, resplendent, boundless, of ubiquitous regard.

Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky:  such is the glory of the Shape of Infinite God.

Then the son of Pandu beheld the entire universe, in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods.    

                                                                 Mark 9:2-8 (Scholars’ Version)
Six days later, Jesus takes Peter and James and John along and leads them off by   themselves to a lofty mountain. He was transformed in front of them, and his clothes became an intensely brilliant white, whiter than any laundry on earth could make them. Elijah appeared to them, with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.  Peter responds by saying to Jesus, “Rabbi, it’s a good thing we’re here.  In fact, why not set up three tents, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah!”  (You see, he didn’t know how else to respond, since they were           terrified).”

And a cloud moved in and cast a shadow over them, and voice came out of the cloud: “This my favored son, listen to him!” Suddenly, as they looked around, they saw no one, but were alone with Jesus.

For those who keep track of liturgical matters, today is Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday on the church calendar.   It is a pivot Sunday.  It is in between the Christmas and Epiphany cycle and the Lent and Easter cycle.    Last Sunday was the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.  Next Sunday is the First Sunday of Lent.

This parable of the transfiguration is found in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.  It is likely a creation of the Gospel of Mark that was copied by both Matthew and Luke.   This story serves as a pivot within the narrative of the three gospels.   Before this story Jesus wanders around doing healing and so forth.  After this story, the focus is Jerusalem and his impending death.    After this Transfiguration he tells his disciples what is really going on:

“The son of Adam is being turned over to his enemies, and they will end up killing him. And three days after he is killed he will rise!”  (Mark 9:31)

It is Mark’s gospel that the martyrdom tradition (the death of Jesus at the hands of his enemies and his vindication by God through the resurrection) is put in a narrative form.    Before Jesus takes off for Jerusalem and his passion, passion as mission and passion as suffering, he reveals to his closest disciples, his inner circle, who he really is.    He is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets symbolized by Moses and Elijah.  He is as the voice from the cloud announces, the “favored son.”  So pay attention.   “Listen to him,” says the cloud.

That is pay attention to his martyrdom.  That is what will happen to him and to those who follow him.   Want to see God?  Want to see God in all of God’s glory?  Want to have a mystical, spiritual experience with the Divine?  There it is.  God is on the cross suffering from the violence of humanity.    It is a stark vision.  It is a dark vision.    It is a vision that comes from those who know violence and the human propensity for evil.   

That would certainly be Mark’s community.  Scholarly consensus places the Gospel of Mark around the year 70 when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans.  Horrific violence.   That experience is the frame that the author of Mark used to create the parable of Jesus.    Life is violent and short.  You keep your integrity or achieve salvation by holding fast to what you value even if you suffer.   But God will vindicate steadfastness.

There were other visions.   Jesus never wrote anything.  We don’t have any first hand objective knowledge about him.  We have portraits created decades later.   These portraits reflect the artist who created them as much as the figure of Jesus.  The Gospel of Thomas portrays Jesus as a teacher of wisdom.  The goal for Thomas’ Jesus is to find yourself.  It was a vision of Jesus written in a different time and in a different place.     Neither vision is right or wrong.  They come from the various experiences of life.

Back to the Transfiguration story.  Mark tells this story to show that the disciples, Peter, James, and John, saw Jesus in his glory.   Jesus was and is the real thing.  Thus he is worth following, even his path leads to suffering.   

I would just say personally that I find this vision of Jesus to be compelling, challenging, and comforting.  Life does require us at times to take the harder path, the rocky path.   When I am tempted to look away from the suffering of my brothers and sisters, this vision of Jesus reminds me, “No, this is the face of God.”   This is the ultimate concern.  When I feel I don’t have the strength, courage, or whatever other virtue is needed to respond to my own dis-ease and my own failures, I find in this vision of Jesus the trust to carry on at least for another day.  

I know this is going to sound funny coming from a minister, but I don’t know anything about God.  I don’t even know what the word means.   But I do have a heart for Jesus.   If the theology is right that it is in the mystery of Jesus that we glimpse God, then I am OK with that.    Ask me about God and I fumble around.  My eyes glaze over.  Ask me about Jesus and there is a lot to say from a many angles.   

Mark’s vision of Jesus is one I hold close.  I am terrified by it at times.   “Can you drink the cup?” says Jesus in Mark.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.   Help my unbelief.  Give me the heart to trust in other words.     

In this parable of the transfiguration of Jesus, Mark shows us that Jesus is the real thing.  His mission, his passion to care for the least of these even if this caring is met with great resistance is the way to the heart of God.   When we see the homeless or the victims of violence or the perpetrators of violence or our own complicity in violence, we have a vision before us to remind us who we are and where we need to stand.  That is the Jesus that calls me out.   “Will you follow me?”   That is the voice from the cloud about Jesus:  “Listen to him.”

This story of the Transfiguration of Jesus has an echo in the Bhagavad Gita.   Bhagavad Gita literally means “song of God.”   The story is about Arjuna, son of Pandu, who is about to go into battle.   He is having doubts.   Krishna comes to him.  Krishna is kind of like Jesus.   These stories arise in different philosophical systems, but there are enticing parallels between Jesus and Krishna.   Krishna is an avatar, a personification, a revelation, an incarnation of God.    Again, God, what is that?   

The Bhagavad Gita is classic spiritual literature.  It isn’t very long.  It is about the length of the New Testament.   It provides a fascinating insight into a particular vision of life.    In this conversation, Krishna is explaining to Arjuna what life is about and the nature of who we are and how to go about living it.  In the course of this conversation, Arjuna wants to know more about Krishna.   He doesn’t want to be impolite, but how can he trust that Krishna is the real thing.  He asks to see him as he really is.  So Krishna reveals himself to Arjuna: 

Sri Krishna, Master of all yogis, revealed to Arjuna his transcendent, divine Form, speaking from innumerable mouths, seeing with a myriad eyes, of many marvelous aspects, adorned with countless divine ornaments, brandishing all kinds of heavenly weapons, wearing celestial garlands and the raiment of paradise, anointed with perfumes of heavenly fragrance, full of revelations, resplendent, boundless, of ubiquitous regard.

Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky:  such is the glory of the Shape of Infinite God.

Then the son of Pandu beheld the entire universe, in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods.

In both stories, Jesus and Krishna, reveal their true natures.  They do so to show the human beings who witness this, Peter, James, and John, and Arjuna, respectively, that these teachers are the real thing and that their teachings can be trusted and should be followed.  That is one takeaway.

But as I read these stories side by side I think of something else.  The stories of the gods in all mythological literature are stories not just about gods but they are also stories about us.  Our ancestors told stories about gods as a way to tell stories about themselves.    For example, Jesus dying on the cross and rising on the third day is not something that just happened to him, but it is a spiritual path.  We die to an old way of being and we rise to a new way of being.  Life is filled with deaths and resurrections.   The spiritual path is to courageously enter them.  We participate in them.    

How might we look at the Transfiguration story in that way?  These transfiguration stories tell us that both Jesus and Krishna are more than how they appear.   What the disciples saw in Jesus and what Arjuna saw in Krishna was not all there was to see.  They got a glimpse into “the more” than what they appeared to be. 

The key prefix is trans.   Border crossing.   Boundary shattering.  Category “fuzzying.”  In this ancient literature the boundary between the human and the divine was made fuzzy.   Some call that a thin place.    That veil between the human and the divine worlds is thin, translucent.   

Thomas Merton writes about an experience he had on a street corner.   He was watching people and as he was watching all of the people go by, busy, all doing different things and going different places he had a feeling, a revelation, an experience, a something that was beautiful.  He saw all of these people as connected in a seamless whole.   A feeling of bliss came over him.  He felt a great deal of compassion and connection to this human family.   He found a thin place on a street corner.   There is more to it, there is more to this life, more to you and to me than what we see on the surface.   Yes we are biological beings doing what we have evolved to do but also we are also…

the entire universe, in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods.

Yes we are bodies.  But we are stardust, too.   Transfiguration.

There are other ways of being trans.    One of the great trans scriptures is Galatians 3:28: 

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Paul had an awareness of humankind transformed, transcending, transfigured beyond categories of ethnicity, social status and gender.   He had a dream of making a trans community.    He was frustrated when the old categories reasserted themselves. “You foolish Galatians!” he said.  Going back to your old ways.     Paul understood the gospel as transcending all categories, all power structures, all ways of being that dehumanized.   This trans community would embrace a new unity, as he put it, “all one in Christ Jesus.”   He saw Christ Jesus as the unifying figure, not simply a founder of another religion.  

A couple of years ago, I interviewed Alex McNeill.  He is now the executive director of MoreLight Presbyterians.   At the time of the interview he was in the midst of transitions.  He was on two journeys.  One journey was toward ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  The other journey was from female to male.   

He was gracious and patient and allowed me to ask some naïve questions about his experience of being transgender.   At the time of the interview he was closer to the beginning of the process of transitioning from female to male.    I asked him,

“Do you feel male?”  

He was very gracious.  He said, “That is an interesting question.”   He said something along the lines of, “I don’t know if you can feel a particular gender, but I feel that I am myself.”   He described being female for him as wearing a set of ill-fitting clothes that were kind of scratchy.   As he transitioned to male, he found himself. 

Transgender individuals such as Alex have much to teach us about what it means to be human.  Categories of gender are socially constructed and often unjust in the way they play out in society.    The supposed roles for men and women are taught and learned early and those with the courage to break those boundaries provide all of us with a great gift.    Rather than being constrained by arbitrary categories of this or that, we are discovering in part through trans people that we are quite diverse.  

As I spoke with Alex I realized that there was more to him, but not only him, to all of us than what we see.   I started to think about Jesus a little differently as well.  He not only transcended the human and divine divide, he transcended other categories, too.   The categories of rich and poor, of Jew and Gentile, perhaps male and female to some degree as well. 

And what of our community?  What might it mean to be a trans community?   The world is remarkably diverse.   But we musn’t be divided.   Nor must we be uniform.   The challenge for humanity is to discover our unity through our diversity.  It is the people on the margins who are our teachers.  Those in between.  They reveal to us, as did Krishna and Jesus, that we are more than what we appear to be.  I think the great challenge is to listen to those in the margins, to listen to those who stretch those boundaries and challenge the categories rather than judge or dismiss them as being weird or irrelevant.  

I will close with two open questions: 

What categories need to be transfigured, transcended, and transformed?   
Who in our larger community are our teachers?  

I will invite you to finish the sermon.    


Amen. 

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