The Real Jesus - The Real Me!

Epiphany has rather sadly slipped out of our everyday vocabulary but the BIG IDEA for this season is REVELATION or DISCLOSURE. 
So, during this season we should be asking ourselves “What do I need to take notice of here that reveals something special about who Jesus was and is and what he’s about?” 

This becomes the filter through which we listen for the word of God as we read our sacred scriptures and even other texts – devotions and the like.  And so we come to this amazing story.

 As Jesus was praying, the look on his face altered, and his clothes became radiant white........... and a cloud came over them, and a voice  spoke out of the cloud: “This is my own Son, the chosen one; listen to him.”                                           Luke 9:29 & 35

If you reckon the story of the transfiguration is a bit way out, then you are definitely on the right track.

If your mind gags when you try to understand it, then I think Luke would be delighted.  You should mentally gag, you should puzzle over the picture that Luke frames for you.  You should feel out of your depth, because you are out of your depth!

Luke, in telling the transfiguration story, is attempting to convey the confounding mystery of Christ Jesus.  A mystery which in the final analysis is: “inaccessible to human mind and tongue.” (To quote one of my favourite New Testament commentators, Eduard Schweizer.)

It is a story of revelation.  That is why some churches use this Gospel reading at the end of the Season after Epiphany – a fitting climax to the Season.  But I will explain a bit later why it is also a fitting starting gate for the period of Lent leading up to Easter. 

What Luke wants us to take notice of in this story is this:  “We have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

And that has to be Good News.

But this shining “otherness” which they saw in Jesus of Nazareth, was not a one-off event.

Peter, James and John experienced a brief break-through; they saw the Holy Light in Jesus’ face, but it had been there all the time.  The glory is mostly hidden, but on the mountain they were given a blinding glimpse.

We have been hearing stories from Luke over the past couple of months and this God-light had always been there from the very first.

·         Of course it was there in the star of Bethlehem.

·         It was there when then the boy Jesus went with his parents to the Temple and he ended up asking hard questions of the rabbis.

·         It was present when he was baptised in the Jordan.

·         It was there when he went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

·         The God-light was focused in him when Jesus began his public in the villages and synagogues of Galilee province.

And I could go on.  As we have developed our understanding of God with us over the two millennia since Jesus was here we have come to believe that this God-Light has been shining since before the foundation of the universe, and it will still be shining when this cosmos is no more.

But why does Luke want us to take notice of this?

Firstly, and perhaps most clearly, Luke is pointing to what is to be the greatest controversy in human history – that somehow God has dwelt fully in humanity in this man we know as Jesus of Nazareth, whom we proclaim Lord and Saviour.

Over the centuries theologians and heretics have tried to explain how this can be but ultimately it is a mystery.  Science gets you nowhere, logic and reason don’t cut it, and even theology gets caught up in either circular arguments or dead ends. 

What we are left with is MYSTERY.  This wonderful word is what we use in our faith context for those things that we can’t understand or explain – BUT WE KNOW THEY ARE TRUE!

This is not the stuff of fantasy as Richard Dawkins would have it – we are simply saying there are some things that exist outside of the physical and scientific realm we call the real world – and they are still TRUE!

Luke is telling us in this amazing story – here is a glimpse of the Real Jesus.  I don’t think he really understood what he was saying, and here 2000 years later we are still trying to unpack the consequences of it.

But there is another really important thing that Luke wants us to understand out of this story and he has used other stories for the same purpose. In this story we find the essence of why it ended up that Jesus was publicly executed by both the Roman and Religious leaders.

Firstly – the Romans.  You will know that in the imperial theology of the day Caesar wore many titles that are familiar to us – Son of God, Lord, Saviour of the World and the one who brings peace on earth.

Then the early Christians and the Gospel writers gave these titles to Jesus they were engaging in a particularly subversive thing – they were saying that for them Caesar was no longer Son of God, Lord and Saviour of the World.  A new light had dawned in Jesus and he was the only one worthy of these titles.

In this and many other ways the things that Jesus said and did and the things that his followers said about him really got under the skin of the Romans, such that they happily colluded with the Jewish religious leaders to see him executed.

But in this story these things are just hinted at in the voice from heaven saying “This is my own Son.”

I think Luke is really keen for us to understand something very important about Jesus that really got up the noses of the religious leaders of his day.

Jesus was not a priest or a scribe or a Pharisee – in fact he often railed against them and the ways they used religion to abuse and distort what God intended.

Luke wants us to be sure to understand that Jesus speaks to us out of the prophetic tradition – Moses and Elijah were regarded as the two great prophets of Israel, and they were followed by many others who established quite a tradition.

Out of this prophetic tradition Jesus reminds us of the same things that the prophets did – that what God really wants from us is not religious rituals and obedience to a code of laws but:

·         A passion for JUSTICE;

·         A commitment to COMPASSION; and

·         The humility to walk with GOD allowing God to decide.

You see this when Jesus rails against the abuse and oppression of the poor in the name of religion.

You see this when Jesus reaches out in compassion to the lepers and the marginalised in society.

You see this when Jesus says there are some things that ONLY GOD KNOWS.

Living by these three filters – Justice, Compassion and Humility – was what caused Jesus to get into trouble with the religious authorities.

But it was in living by these three filters that we see the Real Jesus – and I dare to suggest that if we learn to live by them people will more and more see the Real You and the Real Me. 

The interesting thing about this, in my view is that as we choose to make these principles more and more a part of our lives, what Luke said about Jesus could also be said of us:

… the look on (our) face (is) altered. 

This is the pathway to the radical kind of discipleship that set the first century on fire and which has flared up again and again in the two thousand years since.