Aug 06 | Resistance Lectionary Part 6: The Burning Truth

Citation: 2 Corinthians 4:6-10

August 6th is the traditional date for the Feast of the Transfiguration, the day when we remember the story of Jesus taking his closest friends up a mountain and the mystical experience that followed. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all include this strange story of Jesus’ clothes becoming dazzling white, of the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and the voice of God proclaiming Jesus as a beloved son.

For early Christians, persecuted by the state and arguing about their relationship to the Jewish faith from which they came, this story was an important way to establish their identity as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.

For Christians in the 21st century west, things have changed. We are a relatively privileged faith. There are Christian communities around the world that still suffer significant, even state-sanctioned, persecution. There are many countries where political ideologies and religious extremism subject Christians to discrimination, imprisonment, physical violence, and death.

And lest we feel tempted to point the finger “over there,” there are Christian communities like Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the site of the Charleston church massacre, which do not enjoy the same privileges that other churches can claim.

These Christians will have a very different read of this passage from Second Corinthians. Western Christians must not co-opt that narrative when a Wal-Mart employee says “Happy holidays.”

In light of this difference, where might a privileged Western Christian hear the voice of God? What could Transfiguration look like for the rest of us?

There might be a window in verse 10: “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our bodies.”

There’s another one in the Transfiguration stories themselves. Each one makes explicit reference to Jesus’ work in Jerusalem – the betrayal, suffering, and death.

We must never forget that God is calling us out of easy answers and comfort, out of Galilee into Jerusalem. If we do not find ourselves there already, struggling against the powerful, we need to take up our crosses and go there to stand beside Jesus anew.

This is a terrifying thing, and yet Paul calls it a “treasure.”

And it is.

To hold within our bodies the death of Jesus is to hold within ourselves a bright and burning flame of truth: that the Creator of the universe came among us not to be crowned an Emperor of the world, but to take on all of our pain and suffering and brokenness. Jesus was not a white American. Jesus was not even a Roman citizen. He was a poor brown man living in occupied territory who was murdered by the state.

It’s a scandalous truth, and a holy truth. For if God willingly took on that scandal for us, it means that God is on the side of the oppressed, always, and that is where God can be found, if we would only look.

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