Luke 9: 29 - 36
When I was a kid we took cowboys very seriously. Of course we didn’t mean those guys out there actually working with cattle; that wasn’t very romantic at all. We meant Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy -- heroes all, who never missed when they shot their six-gun s and who also never actually killed anybody with their guns. Usually the bad guy would have his gun shot out of his hand, without actually seriously injuring the hand. And the cowboys we loved all had side-kicks, the most famous of which was Tonto, the faithful Indian friend of the Lone Ranger. Tonto always wore brown buckskin clothing that covered his arms and legs, in contrast to the Indian villains who never wore shirts.
We learned about cowboys from the movies and comic books. No TV in those days. But we also heard radio shows, where we would hear voices and sound effects and use our imaginations.
And us kids all had cowboy outfits -- the hat, the bandana, the filigreed shirt, and of course the six-gun which used a roll of caps to make the proper sound. Today if you were a kid like that you would be doing cultural appropriation, exhibiting toxic masculinity, and holding an unacceptable opinion about the right to bear arms. But I do have a point.
In Luke’s gospel, at the time of Jesus’ baptism he himself hears a voice saying “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”. No one else hears this. But on the mountain of transfiguration, the voice from the heavens says, “this is my beloved son, listen to him”. The three apostles, gazing at the transfigured Jesus clothed in dazzling white garments and appearing in glory, heard the voice of the Father. But they heard the voice as they witnessed the real Jesus who appeared changed, almost like a being from another planet, or maybe from heaven itself.
And moments later, things were all back to normal. Jesus was his old self, wearing his regular clothes, walking around in dusty sandals -- from a distance you couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. He certainly wasn’t wearing a white tunic with a red cloak nor did he have light rays shooting out from his heart. There’s a long-running show you can watch on your cell phone and other places called “The Chosen” which I think gives a much more realistic picture of Jesus.
The early Christians formed communities and developed ritual practices and took up the sacraments that Jesus had left, and thought a lot about the life of Jesus, his passion, death and resurrection. The results of the first hundred years of this effort make up our New Testament. All those writings, including the gospels, came out of active Crhistian communities and reflect how those communities thought about their faith, theri relationship with God and with each other. And one overriding idea was that Jesus had become a man so that we would have a relationship with God something like his own. He did tell us, after all, that he was going to prepare a place for us because in his Father’s house were many mansions. He said that his mother and brothers and sisters were those who hear the word of God and keep it. But being sons and daughters of the Father doesn’t just mean a new relationship. It means a fundamental change in you and I, a change that comes about in Baptism. And that’s what the apostles saw on the mountain of the transfiguration -- the real Jesus, yes, but the real you and I as sons and daughters of the same Father. And the apostles who witnessed this told others, and three of the gospels try to describe it. The Gospel of John alludes to it, when it says that “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father”.
When my friends and I played cowboys and indians we were really trying to be something we weren’t; but when we pretended we changed a little, because we could imagine ourselves being brave and upstanding, defending the weak, challenging the bad guys. And perhaps that’s why we get a glimpse of the transfiguration -- we don’t have to pretend, we are like that, we look like that to our Father in heaven, and we are capable of so much more than we even know. So pray that God will reveal to you what he wants from you, and pray that you will know that you are the beloved, in whom he is well pleased.
