Matthew
17:1-9
“Joyful,
joyful, we adore thee.” It’s a great hymn set to great music, Beethoven’s “Ode
to Joy.” He composed it for the last movement of his last symphony, the Ninth.
It’s a magnificent work, and Beethoven was the first major composer to use such
a chorus in a symphony. He wrote the piece for a large orchestra, and it
demanded 90 singers to balance the strength of that orchestra. It is widely
considered to be one of Beethoven’s masterpieces. And he was almost completely
deaf when he composed it. At the much anticipated premiere in Vienna in 1824,
Beethoven could not conduct but he insisted on setting the tempos, even though
he was deaf. So to honor his wishes the conductor allowed him to stand next to
him and do that, but he instructed the musicians to ignore him. So as the
conductor led the orchestra and chorus, Beethoven dramatically set the tempo to
the music playing in his own mind. Eye-witness accounts describe him
gesticulating wildly as the symphony reached its powerful climax, bounding up
and down like a madman, one person wrote. But he didn’t hear the concluding
chords: he didn’t hear anything. So when the piece ended, he kept on beating
time in front of a stunned crowd until one of the soloists went over to him,
stopped him, and gently turned him around to face the audience. And as they
cheered they threw hats and handkerchiefs up into the air so that Beethoven
could see the applause he couldn’t hear.
It
was a moment of great glory and terrible heartbreak at the same time — and thus
so human. It never ceases to astonish me how radiant people can be when they
are most vulnerable, whether it’s a mother comforting her sick, frightened
child in a hospital room at night or civil rights marchers crossing the Edmund
Pettus bridge in Selma even though they see the men with clubs waiting to beat
them on the other side. The light shines brightest in the dark. And I don’t
think there is any way to understand the experience described in our Gospel
today without remembering that. We give that event a fancy name, “the
Transfiguration,” which might imply that we somehow have it all figured out. We
don’t: it is wondrous, mysterious, and perplexing. One thing we can say for
certain, though, is that in the Gospel narrative, it’s a glorious event that
begins and ends in suffering. Right before this passage, Jesus has told his
disciples that he will be crucified. Peter insists that can’t happen, and
Jesus, in the strongest rebuke he ever gives anyone, says to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. Jesus is going to
suffer and going to be killed, and there is no escaping it. Having made that
clear, Matthew then recounts this remarkable story of Jesus transfigured, a
story which then ends with these words: Tell
no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the
dead. There is no way to understand what happens on that mountain apart
from the crucifixion. The light shines brightest in the dark, or as one modern
songwriter puts it, “the shadow proves the sunshine.”
But
like Peter, we might well prefer our glory straight up, undiluted by any pain
or suffering. And clearly Jesus knew that most people would prefer that, which
is why he orders his disciples to tell no one about this event until after he
has been crucified and raised. If we just had this story without the
crucifixion, we might be tempted to think that God’s glory is only reflected in
sunny days and smiling faces. Don’t get me wrong: sunny days are great, and the
world could use more smiling faces. But if as people of faith we think that is
the primary or only way that God’s light shines, we’re going to miss something
crucial — literally, we will miss the crux, the cross, of the matter. This is
the problem with happy-clappy versions of Christianity, like the so-called
“Prosperity Gospel,” which is always about winning and being successful and
blessed. Such a faith cannot see God in weakness or failure.
Bur
according to the New Testament, that’s exactly where God’s light shines the
brightest. In John’s Gospel, the greatest moment of glory is the moment Jesus
is lifted up on the cross. This is a message the Apostle Paul preaches
relentlessly: We have this treasure in
clay jars, he tells the Corinthians, so
that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does
not come from us (2 Cor. 4:7). My
grace is sufficient for you, the Lord reveals to Paul, for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). And so it is that on the road to the
cross, in the shadow of suffering, when he is most vulnerable, Jesus shines
like the sun.
I
don’t know how God’s glory will be manifested in the world to come, but the
story of the Transfiguration shows how it is manifested in this world. Two
weeks ago in the Gospel we heard Jesus tell his followers, Let your light shine. The world needs the light of Christ to shine
through us. But that light will not shine through our moral perfection. It will
not shine through our self-righteous piety. It will not shine through our
material success. It will shine through us only insofar as we give ourselves to
love as flawed people in an imperfect world. And that really is awesome,
because that’s what people yearn for: it’s in the darkness of everyday life
that people most need to see the light. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t need
to hear fairy tales about plaster saints who never struggled, who prayed
effortlessly, and whose feet never seemed to touch the ground. I need real
people through whom Christ really shines. I need people like my first spiritual
mentor in college. He was a monk, and a very human one. He was a recovering
alcoholic who could be difficult and tricky. He wasn’t a great preacher, he
struggled at times with his vocation, and he made lots of mistakes. But he
loved God and he loved me and he conveyed the light of Christ to me at a dark time when I really
needed it. Each one of us can shed that kind of light. Forget about perfection.
Forget about keeping up pious appearances. Forget about avoiding struggle. Just
show up: pray as best you can, believe as best you can, trust as best you can,
love as best you can. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.
The
musician Leonard Cohen was no Beethoven, but his song “Anthem” is moving and it
speaks the truth:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
And
that’s how the light shines through.
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