Sermon Library
“Transfiguration”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
February 03, 2008
Service Theme: Transfiguration Sunday - 2008
Transfiguration Sunday February 3, 2008
Transfiguration
By Gregg Anderson
“We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel, but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends. We make walls, doors and windows to make a house, but it is in the spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is, so we should recognize the usefulness of what is not?”
This is a quote from Lao Tze. I discovered it during a retreat I attended twelve years ago in the Mojave Desert. It was lead by an old high school friend of mine and it was entitled The Necessity of Empty Spaces. It was a time of lectures and group discussions. It was also a time meditation, introspection and moments to walk in silence and emptiness. Shunyu Suzuki said, “True existence comes from emptiness and goes back again to emptiness. We have to go through the gate of emptiness for true understanding only comes out of emptiness.” In the letter to the Philippians (Philippians 2: 1 – 11) it is stated “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
In the Gospel of Matthew we hear Jesus saying “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” (Matthew 16: 24 – 26)
This poignant passage has always pierced me personally right in the center of trying to be a Christian. In some ways I think I would like to ignore this challenge of Jesus, but it is perhaps the essence of following Jesus. I think about it very often. In fact, I am reminded of this passage every week, twice a week, when I literally take up this large cross right behind me on Friday afternoon in preparation for the Jewish worship service and put it back in place every Saturday for our Christian worship service. When I lift it up high to take it off or put it back on its base, I invariably hope that it doesn’t fall or even fall over me. But then again, if it falls on me and I die trying to carry this cross, I do hope to be in good company.
The culture of modern Aspen was born during the Goethe Festival in 1949. Goethe once said, “Die and become – till thou has learned this thou art but a dull guest on this dark planet.” My friend, Steve Boehlke, who led the seminar in the Mojave Desert said, “Something must die in order for transformation to happen. We have to let go of something to really know and be. This is incontestable.”
My purpose the next two Sundays is to give some introduction to the seminar coming up here February 12 through 16 entitled In the Dark Places of Wisdom. It is a book written by Peter Kingsley. I have read a little more than half the book and I don’t understand it. And I think that is the point. We so badly want to understand everything, label everything, control everything, know everything, put everything into our own little world, that we can miss everything or miss something even more essential. I think part of the point is that there is something far more essential about life and living than filling our life with too many of the false trappings of society. Jesus has told us what is essential, but too often we still allow ourselves to be influenced by other fears and superficial desires.
I know that I believe in God, whom ever God may be, and want to follow Jesus more closely, but I have that deeper feeling that I am too often compromising the way of Christ with the ways of the world so to speak. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays for his disciples to be in the world, but not of the world. (John 17 and 18) As far as I am trying to understand Peter Kingsley he is saying that there can be realized a wisdom in the world, but not of this world.
Peter Kingsley is a graduate of the University of Lancaster, England, has a Masters of Letters from King’s College Cambridge and Ph.D. from the University of London. He is most knowledgeable about classic Western philosophy and theology, but is drawing people’s attention to the new historical discoveries being learned about the influences of the far East before, during and immediately after the time of Jesus. He reminds us that so much of our Western thinking and theology is influenced by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. Aristotle, after all, is the inventor of the word “theology.” Kingsley, however, states that there existed other approaches, Eastern influences, to understanding philosophy, theology and the sayings of Jesus. He opens his readers to other ways and levels of consciousness which is not at all some sort of “new age” thinking, but in fact quite ancient and classic in its own right. In fact, he calls up some of the suppressed teachings of the original teacher of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle by the name of Parmenides.
Parmenides had something more mystical to offer, but Plato and Socrates often redefined his writings to match their own rationalistic processes. Kingsley attempts to go back further into Parmenides teaching to discover an even more ancient and freer form of consciousness that was present with Parmenides 500 years before the time of Christ. Parmenides, for example, talked about much of the mythology of the Greek Gods such as Apollo and applied these images to an understanding of some of the paradoxes of life.
During the times of Apollo and Zeus, it was believed that the Sun comes out of the darkness. It lives in the underworld. Comes up in the day and returns in the night. The source of light is the dark. One needs to travel to the dark places of wisdom to understand the light of wisdom. There were many norms of Greek thinking which have influenced our Jewish and early Christian scriptures.
Kingsley writes, “There were early Christians who talked about the depths of the divine. Most of them were soon silenced. And there were Jewish mystics who spoke of descending to the divine; they were silenced too. It’s far simpler to keep the divine somewhere up above, at a safe distance. The trouble is that when the divine is removed from the depths we lose our depth, start viewing the depths with fear and end up struggling, running from ourselves, trying to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps into the beyond. It’s impossible to reach the light at the cost of rejecting darkness. The perception that light belongs in darkness, clarity in obscurity, wisdom in uncertainty, that darkness can’t be rejected for the sake of light because everything contains its opposite.”
“This is why Parmenides journey takes him precisely to the point where all the opposites meet: the point where Day and Night both come out from, the mythical place where earth and heaven have their source. They’re where the upper and the lower meet, at exactly the same point where earlier poets had described Atlas standing with his feet in the lower world but holding up the heavens with head and hands.”
“This is the place that gives access to the depths and also the world above. You can go up and you can go down. It’s a point on the axis of the universe: the axis that joins what’s above and what’s below. But first you have to descend to this point before you’re able to ascend, die before you can be reborn.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew.” (John 3: 3 – 7)
Peter Kingsley presents an earlier philosophy that was overly rationalized by Plato, but remained influential before and during the time of Jesus. Losing one’s life to gain one’s life and to be born again are statements of paradox that solicit a deeper level of consciousness. We need to continue to put this Jesus and the sayings of Jesus in more accurate context. Peter Kingsley talks about the responsibility of understanding our history more accurately by understanding culturally and timely prejudices.
The text regarding losing one’s life for Christ’s sake will find one’s life is immediately followed by today’s given lectionary text which defines this day as Transfiguration Sunday. “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. He was still speaking when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’ And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”
Transfiguration is to trans – figure. The figure changes its figure. Trans means across, beyond, over, or interestingly, to see through. There are many ways to explain Jesus’ transfiguration, both rational and irrational. And rationally speaking I am not sure. Was it simply the way people wanted to remember Jesus after his death and created a story which established his divinity? Was it a vision or dream that they had of Jesus? When Jesus touches them saying, “Rise and have no fear, they saw no one but Jesus.” Was it a level of consciousness that simply cannot be explained in Aristotelian logic? Was it literal, just the way it is reported?
When Jesus asks them to rise, were Peter, James and John sleeping? Were they dreaming? There are many documentations of dreams in the bible. Dreams are a great mystery and sometimes their interpretation can be very meaningful. The other night I dreamt that I was lost in a gigantic MacDonalds. There were lines everywhere and I was looking for friends and could never find them. I kept trying to get out, but I couldn’t. It went on forever. It was a crazy dream and I look back and laugh. On the other hand, I have many dreams about being lost or trapped in various maizes and not being able to get out. I suspect it is a genuine fear in my psyche. We often experience images in dreams that we have no idea where they could have originated. It is as though the thoughts and images come from another place and time and consciousness. Life is a mystery in the past, present and future.
When Kingsley documents the changes made by Plato and Socrates to some of the writings of Parmenides, he says, “This is nothing to be surprised at. It was a well-recognized principle in the circle of people close to Plato: rearrange the past to suit your purposes, put ideas of your own into the mouths of famous figures from the past, have no concern for historical details. And Plato himself had no scruples about inventing the most elaborate fictions, about recreating history, altering people’s ages, moving dates around. All that’s surprising is how normal it’s become to take him seriously when we shouldn’t – and not take him seriously when we should. But it’s not just that his dialogues aren’t historical documents, or that he would have laughed at us for wanting to think they are. There’s more to the matter than that.”
Kingsley suggests that writers, who are just becoming reporters and witnesses to history from 500 BC to the time and immediately after the time of Jesus may not have been conditioned to report just the facts, but to dramatize their stories in order to speak of a truth which has become larger than life to them. It was not malicious, it was intentional just as a poet uses words to express a feeling and not just an event or a musician utilizes sounds to create an aura of expression elevating the feelings and meanings to a place of greater remembrance. The task was not just to report, but to express.
In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Peter Kingsley, asks us to be open to possibilities, perhaps possibilities we have never thought of: possibilities presented in history, but hidden from us today. Jesus said in Matthew, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” After the transfiguration, Jesus told his disciples not to say anything. The transfiguration was not just about him, but about the transformation of the disciples. We are still trying to understand who this person Jesus is, but one thing we do know for certain, he offered a light unlike any other prophet. It is a light which still shines today. Let us continue to share new light on this person of Jesus so we too can become part of his light. It is, after all, a matter of trans-figuring. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
http://www.aspenchapel.org