The transfiguration of Jesus is a weird story, right? Even with the miraculous nature of the
gospels, Jesus is just hanging out with three of his disciples . . . and
praying . . . and all of a sudden--he is different. The same . . . yet different. The author of Luke says his clothes became
“dazzling”—not unlike the clothes of the angel upon the Resurrection of
Christ. Jesus was a sensation, appearing
this way right along with the Jewish icons Moses and Elijah. Some scholars think the transfiguration of
Jesus belongs grouped with the resurrection appearances and that, somehow, it
got folded back into the middle of the gospels.
But there too, in the
resurrected body, Jesus’s essential values don’t change, his mission doesn’t
change. Still, in the transfiguration,
Jesus is decidedly different, unique, maybe even hard to put in a box.
That’s the first thing the disciples want to do,
right? Peter wants to build three
shrines for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
Let’s try to capture this mountaintop moment. And Jesus will have none of it. He comes right out of the mountaintop moment
to exorcise a demon from a child, get the disciples ready for the difficult
journey to Jerusalem, teach radical discipleship, and then send the disciples
out to local communities to teach and heal.
He wants to use the energy of the mountaintop moment to do the necessary
work in the valley.
Transfiguration Sunday should be about using some of those
mountaintop experiences, where we see something different and dazzling, as
energy for work in the valley. I know in
some of the churches I served, we would use Transfiguration Sunday as a way to
talk about the necessary conversation many faith communities need to have
around gender and sexuality. For many
churches in the United Church of Christ, they celebrate the transformative
moment, that mountaintop moment, when they announce to the world that they are
Open and Affirming. And then they stop
there. They get to the mountaintop. And Jesus is urging these churches to do work
in the valley. And the church is back
there somewhere trying to build shrines to the glory of their romantic
past. We even had such discussions
recently in the Southwest Association Clergy Group. How do we take what it means to be Open and
Affirming to the everyday work in the valley.
I remember how much I was challenged to do my work in the
valley on gender and sexuality issues in, of all places, Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma. Church of the Open Arms in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, began as a United Methodist Church with a United
Methodist Church pastor. When their
pastor was brought up on charges for officiating at gay and lesbian weddings,
the pastor and church had a decision to make.
Should they stay and fight in a system that required them to pay all of
the expenses for the trial? Or should
they find a place elsewhere?
Their pastor left for the United Church of Christ. And the congregation followed.
I was honored to be asked as
a speaker for their work on inclusive and expansive language. It was a mountaintop experience for me. I remember being embraced by all these people
while I was going through a gut-wrenching divorce, my wife at the time a
Conference Minister. They offered their church
and their home as sanctuary for me, sympathized with my pain, and let me know
that I, as their visitor, was loved.
I did less teaching the weekend I was there and more
learning, and, hopefully, growing. Their
pastor helped me to understand gender and sexuality as a spectrum rather than
as two distinct, binary poles. Intellectually,
I was excited by these new learnings. I
was transformed.
The real test in the valley
came the next day when we greeted members of the congregation. And a person I can only describe as looking
like Abe Vigoda, the actor who played Fish on Barney Miller, came up to me and
shook my hand. She had on high heels and
a long, blond wig. She looked me
directly in the eye, thanked me for my presentation, and waited to see if I
would maintain eye contact. I’m not sure
that I did.
I think there was a hope that I might be different. I doubt that I was. Could I look beyond the trappings to see the
image of God found in this person?
It’s hard for me.
Questions about sexuality have haunted me for what feels like my whole
life. Though I learn, I never feel like
I arrive. And my daughter and other
young adults are working with me to understand the diversity of gender so much
better. Will I get it sometime down the road?
I doubt it. But as I learn, I
believe I am opening up to divine and dazzling gifts I would have never known before.
On the island in the harbor of Bombay is a cave one enters
from a bright sky. Moving into the
darkness, you lose your sight as your eyes adjust. But you keep on walking and encounter this
huge piece of art from around the 8th Century—19 feet high and 19
feet across. It is a gigantic mask. From straight on, one sees only the central
head, a head or a mask.
When looking straight on, one cannot tell whether the mask
is male or female or both male and female.
It is the mask of God, the mask of eternity. Through this mask, we are to learn that
eternity is to be experienced as radiance.
Now in turning to the left, one other figure emerges. And slightly to the right another figure
emerges. This slight turn to the left or
right moves the onlooker out of the perspective of transcendence to the field
of opposites. One mask is clearly made
to represent the female. The turn in the
other direction is clearly made to represent the male. Moving out of the field of transcendence
takes us out of our eternal unity to differences that too often are found to be
against one another: male and female,
light and dark, good and evil, right and wrong.[1]
In a movie produced and promoted by the United Church of Christ about the life and struggles of a transgendered young man, "Call Me Malcolm," Pastor Emily relates her Biblical understanding of what it means to be transgendered. She recalls the first creation story to talk about humanity being created both male and female, in the image of God. "So," she summarizes, "if you are looking for someone who incarnates the most clear and whole vision of who God, well-based on our Scriptural tradition, that it has to be a transgendered person who has experienced both male and female. That is the most whole vision of the sacred that we are going to get."2
Indeed, while the second story of creation in Genesis 2
has God creating Adam and Eve. In
Genesis, chapter 1, Adam alone is created as “male and female.” Adam is created in the image of God, an androgyne. Found both in the Jewish and Christian
mythology is this understanding that Eden, Paradise, would only return when
gender was transcended or disappeared.
That culminates in the earliest baptismal formula of the church from
Paul’s letter to the political associations in Galatia: “In Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor
female.” In other words, the newly
baptized person returns to the primordial perfection found in the first
creation story.[3]
It is one of the reasons we use inclusive and expansive
language for the Divine. We say that God
is both this and that. We say that God
transcends both this and that. In that
understanding, we recognize the spectrum, the diversity through which God
operates in the world in our sexuality and gender.
In the passage from 2 Corinthians today, Paul, a Jew, is
speaking to other Jews who use law and order to punish rather than
enliven. Paul is really speaking to any
group of people who have so long used any law, rule, idea, or standard that has
calcified over time such that it is now used as a weapon against your
enemies. Biblical scholar, Stephen J.
Patterson, writes about this passage, sympathizing with Paul. “Reading the Bible can harden your mind. Sad but true, Paul, sad but true.”[4] In each age, as Paul did, we are trying to
figure out what new thing God is doing, how we break open our hardened minds
and hearts.
In the passage, Christ removes the veil so that everyone,
not just Christ, might know themselves as reflecting, mirroring the image of
God. We may present as male or female
but two somethings deeper there is the image of God that is created both male
and female.
Native American theology contemplates something similar
with a recognition that there are more than two genders. “Two Spirit” people became a term coined to
united the LGBTQ+ Native community.
“Many two spirit, historically, were keepers of traditions, tellers of
the stories of creation, and healers. Many
of the great visionaries, dreamers, shamans, or medicine givers were two-spirit
people.”[5]
Among the Crow, Woman Jim was not only known as a prolific
warrior in the 1870s, but Woman Jim also made large tipis and leather goods
intricately decorated with quill and beadwork.[6]
One of my very best friends in Billings, Montana, was Ann
Hanson, the person who had been the Minister for Sexuality and Justice in the
United Church of Christ in Cleveland for several years. But Billings was home for her. She had spent so much time in Cleveland that
she became a huge LeBron James fan but when she retired she came home to
Billings where I was blessed to meet and know her. And that woman loved to cuss. And laugh.
Both requirements for someone I call friend. Oh, she loved to cause trouble and push
edges.
Her kids would have her take the grandkids for a weekend
to teach them sexual health. While they
were too embarrassed or nervous to cover these topics, they knew Grandma Ann
might help them to better accept themselves, as not either/or but as gloriously
divine wherever they were on the spectrum.
They could then also accept others with the matter-of-fact way she
engaged them in discussions about sexuality.
I remember going to the seminar she taught across town
about the newly-minted module for sexuality and older adults. The room was packed. People could not stop asking questions—some
were clearly out of curiosity, some others felt like questions that were about
hanging on for dear life, hoping that God saw them too.
She loved being an educator for the award-winning United
Church of Christ Our Whole Lives curriculum.
This curriculum not only helps children, young people, their parents,
and now older adults to become aware of how God may be moving in ways that
transcend gender and sexuality, but also in ways that reflect God’s profound
love for our sexual and gender diversity.
I am sure Ann saved so many lives.
She saved lives of someone struggling at school, in their workplace, or
in their wider community. Such welcome
could bring incredible gifts to the fore that may very well save us. Ann Hanson knew how to work in the valley.
May that salvation become wider and broader so that all
people created in the image of God, male and female, know love and
justice. And be seen for who they really
are—on the mountaintop or when we come down to do our necessary work in the
valley. Amen.
[1] “Ep 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth—‘The
Message of the Myth’ in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” Moyers and
Company, May 30, 1988. http://billmoyers.com/content/ep-2-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-message-of-the-myth/.
[2] “Call Me Malcolm,” United
Church of Christ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4Pv10IFyc.
[3] Stephen J. Patterson,
“it’s Trans Sunday,” http://www.stephenpatterson.org/posts/2015/2/13/its-trans-sunday: Galatians 3:26-28.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Zachary
Pullin, “Two Spirit: The Story of a
Movement Unfolds,” Native Peoples Magazine, May-June 2014,
[6] Ibid.
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