Well now, what was that all about? We call this event in the life of Jesus his transfiguration. But what is transfiguration anyway. Here’s a quote I found when trying to find a good explanation. See if you can tell who said it:
I do hope they start right away; there’s so much to learn. I’m particularly interested in transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else.
Of course, it’s supposed to be very difficult.
Got it? It’s Hermione, in the first Harry Potter book. Transfiguration was a core class at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which taught the art of changing the form and appearance of an object or a person. It was considered very hard work and more scientific than any other form of magic.
Although the transfiguration of Jesus was about something – or rather someone – turning into something else, I think it’s safe to say that Mark, the gospel writer wasn’t referring to a magic spell. But it did get me thinking.
The Transfiguration of Jesus is a big deal in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have versions of the story. It’s also referred to in the Second Epistle of Peter. And while it’s not specifically in John’s gospel, some think that it’s what John means when he says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld this Word’s glory, the glory as of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth.” So this strange event obviously had a great deal of meaning for those early followers.
We celebrate the Transfiguration on the last day of the Epiphany season, the season we’ve focused on the revelation of Jesus to the world. Transfiguration is sometimes called the “Small Epiphany” – the “Great Epiphany” being the Baptism of Jesus at the start of the season. This is also the last day of the first half of the Christian church year. Transfiguration is the bridge between the Advent/Christmas/ Epiphany cycle (the birth and revelation of Jesus) and the Lent/Easter/Pentecost seasons (death, resurrection, and the Church).
OK, so here we are, sitting on this bridge recognizing that transfiguration should be as important to us as it was to Hermione. But maybe we’re still not sure why. I have always loved the Transfiguration as the culmination of Epiphany. It’s a magnificent ending to this season of awe and wonder, like the grand finale of the biggest and best fireworks display ever. And I never really questioned what happened up there on that mountain, how it happened, what could scientifically explain not only the appearance of two long-dead biblical heroes but the being of brilliant light that Jesus became as he talked with them. Science, I thought, can’t always explain what went on in the spiritual realm. Or can it?
The second part of the description of the class at Hogwarts claimed transfiguration was more scientific than any other form of magic. Now, fear not, Harry Potter isn’t the only place I’ve found a connection between science and religion. In fact, today is also Evolution Sunday. No, it’s not on the church calendar.
Evolution Sunday began as The Clergy Letter Project in 2004. The school board in Grantsburg, WI had passed some anti-evolution policies and biology professor Michael Zimmerman felt a call to action. Working with clergy throughout Wisconsin, they prepared a statement in support of teaching evolution. Zimmerman said, “For too long, the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict has created unnecessary division and confusion, especially concerning the teaching of evolution. I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith.”
Now to be clear, it is not only many evangelical Christians who have trouble reconciling faith and science, but fundamentalist atheists as well. As John Worrall, professor of philosophy of science stated: “There is no way in which you can be both properly scientifically minded and a true religious believer.” The Clergy Letter Project would disagree.
The project began with 200 clergy signing the statement. As of today that number is 15,658. And that’s just Christian clergy. In addition to the Christian Clergy Letter, there is a Rabbi Letter, a Unitarian Universalist Clergy Letter and a Buddhist Clergy Letter.
Then, in 2006, congregations were invited to participate in the first Evolution Sunday (later changed to Evolution Weekend to be more inclusive) The date chosen is the closest to Charles Darwin’s birthday, February 12. The stated purpose is “an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science” and an effort “to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic, and to show that religion and science are not adversaries.” “Religious people from many diverse faith traditions and locations around the world understand that evolution is quite simply sound science; and for them, it does not in any way threaten, demean, or diminish their faith in God. In fact, for many, the wonders of science often enhance and deepen their awe and gratitude towards God.”
I have to say that I love the picture I sent along with your bulletin of the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish kissing – seems appropriate for Valentine’s Day today!
I signed the letter back in 2006 and decided to sign up my church for the first Evolution Sunday. One member of the congregation, though, wondered why we were doing it since no one there needed to be convinced of the compatibility of science and religion; after all we had scientists in our congregation – as we do here. But I felt it was important to take a public stand on the issue and I’ve been observing the day ever since. Although I have to say that in the beginning it was rather a perfunctory effort.
That is until I began to learn about evolutionary Christianity, which goes beyond the realm of mere support of evolution theory and more deeply into the heart of Divine Mystery, in which the Christ of the cosmos is a central figure.
Usually, when we hear ‘evolution,’ we think about the history of the earth and the development of human life. But evolutionary Christianity says there’s even more to it and says that, just as the universe is evolving, so is Christianity and so is the Church. As Rev. Bruce Sanguin, author of If Darwin Prayed- Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics writes: “We are meant to evolve. If the Spirit is involved in the evolutionary process – as I believe is the case – then we need to start thinking about our lives in Christ through an evolutionary lens.”
There are a number of thinkers and writers on evolutionary Christianity who see the evolution of the universe as an ongoing sacred story connecting all people, all cultures, all religions, and virtually all of creation. But the grandfather of them all has to be the paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. And lest you think this is some new-fangled, new-age nonsense, Teillard (as he was known) was born in 1881 and died in 1955. He was a Jesuit priest. He was also a scientist, trained in geology, botany, zoology and paleontology. He participated in the discovery of Peking Man in 1926. In his 1929 book, The Divine Milieu, Teilhard synthesized scientific discoveries of his day with what he believed about God and how God was at work in the world.
As is often the case with new ideas, his religious superiors would not allow the book to be published. The French edition was not published until after his death. The English translation was not available until 1960.
In an unpublished piece written in 1933, “Christology and Evolution,” he re-envisioned the gospel message, shifting the emphasis of a redemption-centered theology to a creation-centered one.
So rather than seeing life on Earth as a test for worthiness to get into heaven, and Earth to be a dangerous place full of sin and temptation, Teilhard saw Earth, our home, as an unfinished divine project, brimming with opportunities toward the fullness of life, and open to continual improvement. He saw Jesus’s teaching as integral to a universe in continual evolution. He wrote, “If we are to remain faithful to the gospel, we have to adjust its spiritual code to the new shape of the universe.”
For him, evolution is the underlying force driving growth in the kingdom of God. He calls the gospel “the very religion of evolution.”
Now, this isn’t just a heady theological exercise. Not only are we invited to rationally understand ourselves more fully as part of the body of the Christ of the cosmos, but to experientially become mystics who are continually in awe and wonder of where we live. Teilhard said that we exist in the ‘divine milieu.’ For him, the most important spiritual fact of our existence is that at every moment we are swimming in a divine sea. Like fish who live in a milieu of water yet are unaware of its importance until they are taken out of it, we are at every moment inhaling and exhaling the divine life. In the divine milieu we live and move and have our being.
For Teilhard, the divine milieu is the Cosmic Christ. He resonates with the theology of St. Paul and others in passages such as: “Christ is the image of the unseen God and the firstborn of all creation, for in Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and invisible, thrones, dominations, sovereignties, Powers—all things were created through Christ and for Christ. Before anything was created, Christ existed, and all things hold together in Christ.”
We can go still further back than Teilhard. St. Hildegard of Bingen, along with other medieval mystics, expressed her experience of this Cosmic Christ. Through music, writing and painting, she formulated a cosmological vision that transcended male/female, human/divine, earth/heaven duality. Her visionary work, Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works), is a result of what she called “an extraordinary mystical vision” in which she experienced insights into the cosmic dimensions of the Prologue to John’s Gospel. One of the ten visions Hildegard illustrates in this work is of the cosmos, with a human figure at its center, inside the womb of divinity: a visual portrayal of the Cosmic Christ. Hildegard explains: “From the primordial source of Divine Love, in whom the cosmic order rests, shines her exceedingly precise ordering of things. It comes to light in ever-new ways, holding and tending everything there is.”
Ilia Delio, who bases her theology of the “ecological Christ” on the cosmic Christ mysticism of St. Francis and St. Bonaventure, concludes: “Every age must discover Christ anew. Our traditional Christology – the formal study of Jesus Christ – was formulated in the 4th and 5th centuries: Jesus Christ is true God and true man, fully divine and fully human without change, without confusion, without separation, without division, two natures in one person. The language is a mixture of New Testament, Greek metaphysics, and Plato and Aristotle, and reflects an understanding of the universe as fixed and unchanging, not dynamic and evolving.
Which brings us back to the Transfiguration. I read someplace once that physicists are the new mystics. Now I’ll be the first to admit that much of what I attempt to read about quantum physics and even quantum theology is way beyond me. But I am intrigued. For instance, in recent decades there’s been continuing debate over what really happened at the resurrection of Jesus. One side argues for the absolute truth of the biblical witness, even though the versions in the gospels vary greatly. The other side argues for the absolute truth of the impossibility of a physical resurrection; the story is myth created for the grieving followers of Jesus. The Transfiguration itself has often been described as a resurrection story, either misplaced in the timeline by the writers or a vision of the resurrection and new creation to come.
But a new way of looking at it, combining science with theology, sees the Transfiguration as more than the historical self-revelation of the divinity of Jesus on that mountain. It’s also the basis for a new form of perception, a new mode of existence, a transformed way of being in the world. On that mountain, the possibility of a new unity between matter and Spirit became reality. Even time became blurred as the lines between the dead and the living were erased. Scientists and theologians are coming together to help us make sense of the wide universe in which we live, as well as the small places in which we shelter.
Evolutionary Christianity might seem like a foreign language to us. We may feel more like Hermoine, worrying that transfiguration is supposed to be very difficult. But evolutionary Christianity offers us some new ways of thinking about and experiencing our faith, as well as promoting an ecology theology that is much more helpful and hopeful for our planet.
It also gives us hope as we navigate the evolution of our world as we adapt to the pandemic, the aftermath of the pandemic, the future of the church at large, as well as the future of our own little congregation.
We might not understand all the theories and scientific and theological language, but we can rest assured that the bottom line of the life and love offered to us in Christ never changes. But we do. Transfiguration is about transformation. And in the freedom of that love and grace, we can grow into what we will become.
Amen
Continue reading Jesus, Darwin, and Hermione on Transfiguration
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