“Let us make three dwellings” (Lk. 9:33).
Our theme is perspective, focused through two events from early modern history. The first involves the astronomer Galileo, who in the year 1610 probably became the first person to aim a telescope at the planet Jupiter and to see the four sizeable moons orbiting around it, moons which given our distance from Jupiter are practically invisible to the naked eye. The universe, apparently, was even grander and more complex than human beings had known before. The second event came about a hundred years earlier and needed no telescope, as the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa, traipsing through the jungles of Panama, crossed over a mountain range and suddenly saw the Pacific Ocean, the great South Sea, spread out before him. How extraordinary! Balboa can have hardly known the full significance of what he was looking at: in fact, a whole new world was opening up.
What these two men saw brought the universe into focus in a new way. These two new perspectives expanded our world: literally so, in its size and scope. People came to see things differently as a result. They came to have a new outlook.
Let’s lay these changes in perspective alongside the experience of the disciples in our Gospel today. This too represents a new outlook, an extraordinary vision that changes the way the disciples see the world. This happens because they see Jesus for who he is. They see his glory, testified to by both the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah). A new world of possibility is opened up, the possibility of transformation. The horizon gets bigger with a new perspective. There’s more out there for the human race than they bargained for. The disciples see things differently as a result.
Yet there’s a cautionary tale in these stories of new perspective. Human inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness become ruthless when detached from right and wrong; our curiosity and our drive for dominion keep getting ahead of our moral sense. Remember, Balboa was looking for gold, and expanding the human horizon was really about finding ways to acquire more gold while laying waste the native population. Much of the history of the last century (with its two world wars) has been the story of the use of the products of human curiosity to find more extravagant ways to kill people. And of course, today is a significant anniversary, the sixty-first anniversary of Hiroshima. We’re very clever, and we have achieved much, but sin (the human condition) keeps getting in the way. Our outlook gets dimmer and dimmer.
The cautionary tale in our Gospel is a little bit different from these others. Here, the disciples have seen the glory of Jesus, with new possibilities revealed. They are looking at the world with new eyes. Yet even here, there is a tendency to reduce what is life-changing and transforming to something ho-hum and rather sub-average. “Let us make three dwellings”, the disciples say; in other words, let’s settle down and make what is out of this world strictly predictable and manageable. In any case, they lost their Gospel perspective, and Christians since then are always in danger of doing the same.
But for Jesus, there is no settling down, for his path leads to the transformation of death and resurrection. His outlook leads him to Jerusalem. This vision of Transfiguration is meant to bring things into focus for us and help us to see things differently. This discovery is meant to change the disciples, and us, on a profound level. Human beings were made for something more than business as usual, though we are mightily tempted as human beings to settle for the obvious. We’re not supposed to see things with tired, everyday eyes, but with a fresh outlook that includes everlasting life.
The
question for us is how we see the world. What is our perspective? Are we
scrambling around like Balboa, with a purely human horizon, or are we seeing
Jesus for who he is? Are we being transformed by the vision or are we settling
for something else? This fall you will have lots of opportunities to have a
different outlook. Make sure you come and see.
John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
Home | About Christ Church | Schedule of Services | Newcomers | Sermons | Clergy & Staff | Vestry | Contact Us