February 23, 2006

Impressions

Epiphany last B Mk 9.2-9

DNA and anthropology have joined forces now to throw out the notion of “race” — for human beings, at least — as altogether arbitrary. Our puzzlement about all our other biological pigeonholes is probably not all that far behind.

The more we know about ourselves, the more we discover not only how drastically we’ve allowed impressions and appearances to deceive us, how indeed foolish has been our behavior and all those other ways of defining ourselves — our laws, our politics, our religion, our educational systems, maybe, as well, even the way we treat chimpanzees. All important to order our lives, but to order them is not to define them. Now that we know these things, the new problem is what will we do about them. Indeed, will we do anything?

Appearances were also deceptive for the three who went walking in the mountains with their leader. Even when they saw him in a totally different light, they still didn’t get the point. But then, the Voice — think James Earl Jones — “This is my beloved son, my Chosen. Listen to him.” Paul got it. “We are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” was the way he put it.

Such a perspective seems altogether missing in the way we continue to fall for appearances, to lay so much stock by them. Whether we are gay or straight matters for our own personal identity and understanding of ourselves, for who we are. But the more fundamental fact is that whatever, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” [Gal 3.28]. This is where our true identity lies, and as we grow into our vocation, into our humanity — which is God’s image for us — do we begin to reveal the Light behind all creation.

Appearances are deceptive. There are no ordinary people. We are all on the way to being glorified — if we will have it. Transfiguration reveals in Jesus the Light of God as it does potentially in ourselves and our neighbors in a totally new and different way. Whoever we are, we are called to be transparent to this Light, the Light which flooded through in Christ and thus “to seek and serve him in all persons” [BCP, p 305].

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