Mom was all about the genealogy—and since most of her people came from Scotland, she wanted to get up there as soon as possible. I however, being a history nerd, wanted to at least visit the British Museum. I wanted to see the Elgin marbles, the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo burial treasures, and mummies. So since this was technically “my trip,” she relented and I blazed through the British Museum in a precious afternoon while she, frankly, waited impatiently for us to go to Scotland by train that evening. And I got to see all of those amazing things-- and then some.
But then, there was a traveling exhibit there of modern art from the Museum of Modern Art. Mom wanted nothing to do with it, but I paid the extra fee and went in. I wandered around for a while, looking at works by Salvador Dali, Picasso, Rene Magritte, Frida Kahlo, and on and on. I paused at a painting by Joan Miro, a surrealist artist from Catalan in Spain. I don’t know if you are familiar with his works, but they often consist of a bunch of tiny objects scattered around the space of the painting or print.
Now, when I was a kid, I had a weak eye, and even had to go to therapy for it, so I have a tendency to this day of cocking my head to one side to move my stronger eye closer to something I really want to see. I was standing there trying my darnedest to understand anything about this piece of art when I heard a unique voice over my shoulder ask me “Do you like this work?” And I thought, somebody is pulling my damn’ leg, because that sounds like Vincent Price, the actor in horror classics such as The House of Wax and The Pit and the Pendulum. I decided I was either lightheaded from lack of food or the ham and butter sandwiches-- or the victim of some prankster.
Imagine my shock when I turned to face the voice, and it WAS Vincent Price. No kidding. I tried to keep my jaw from dropping and said something like, ‘Well, yes sir, Mr. Price, I am not sure if I like it, because I do NOT understand it.” He then smiled kindly and said, “Would you like to know more about it?” and I stammered yes before he changed his mind. He then told me he had studied English and art history at Yale after growing up in St. Louis, and was an art collector. He then generously spent the next 30 minutes or so taking me thorough the high points of the exhibit, explaining great works of art to me in that incredible voice. So there I was having a surreal moment in a surrealist art exhibit with the man who a year later would perform a rap for Michael Jackson on his Thriller album. It was incredible.
That’s the way it is about vision. You can look at things without really seeing them—and in fact that is the most common reaction we have to the wave of visual stimulation that floods into our brains throughout a single day. Most of it flows by unnoticed. It’s the only way we could survive, from an evolutionary perspective.
But that also means we risk missing entire worlds as we skim over the surface of our daily lives. We have to consciously stop and look below the surface to really see and understand anything important. And that’s especially hard in these days, isn’t it? We are increasingly distracted, increasingly hurried, increasingly overstimulated. We have convinced ourselves that we stand above nature rather than seeing that we are not only PART of nature, but dependent upon the natural world for our very survival. We fail to see the escalating patterns of natural disasters, especially droughts and wildfires and climbing temperatures and the very real part we play in making those things worse.
We see so much violence and cruelty even in our chosen forms of entertainment in movies and video games that we cease to see these things as real and present horrors that we are actually called to work against.
At the same time, there are forces at loose among us that are actively trying to prevent our seeing and knowing things—especially racism, sexism, and hatred of anyone different from us that permeates every single aspect of our common lives together. We see leaders attempt to dehumanize the oppressed, the poor, the unhoused so that we don’t really see them as human being, much less souls beloved by God to whom we, as Christians are called to have not just love, but an obligation to stand alongside them. Sometimes there is so much suffering that it all blurs together—like the now daily litany of mass-shooting events in the United States.
And perhaps it all boils down to this one particular failure to see: the failure to see the image and imprint of God in everyone and every thing around us. And especially right now, the attempt to blind ourselves and our children from seeing others as equally valuable, and specifically the attempt to prevent our young people from developing the skill and faculty of empathy in their dealings with those around them. This is perhaps the greatest danger we now face in this cultural moment. If you don’t SEE other people’s challenges, much less their beauty, and if you refuse to learn about other people’s struggles, as well as their triumphs, you don’t really SEE them as fellow human beings. It’s just that simple.
This attempt to blind us to the reality of the suffering around us has very real consequences for us as a nation—it is intended to divide us and keep us at each other’s throats. But it also has a very severe spiritual component, especially for those of us who call ourselves Christian. Jesus ALWAYS took the side of expanding our understanding. He was a teacher who repeatedly encouraged deeper insight into our call to live together in community as part of our very nature and as part of our worship of God. Jesus, especially as God’s son, accepted incarnation into human flesh so that he could open our eyes to truly see what living a life that honored God was like. And a large part of helping us see what that life looked like was helping us see each other as filled with the divine spark, each and every one of us.
Jesus did not draw his three friends up on that mountaintop so he could perform magic tricks. Instead he revealed to them who he really was. They knew him as a very human friend and teacher, who ate, slept, walked, travelled and lived with them. But up on that mountaintop, just for a moment, Jesus pulls aside the vesture of him humanity and shows them that at the same time he is also God. Now, we call this incident “the transfiguration,” and we focus on how Jesus’s appearance has changed. And there are so many sensory details: the blinding light, the appearance of the greatest law-giver in Moses and the greatest prophet in Elijah, each of whom also had their own holy experience with God on a mountaintop and were changed by it.
But who was really transfigured here? Let me suggest that the real impact of this story, especially as we prepare to enter the season of Lent, is that Jesus challenged his followers then and right now, to see themselves and each other in a deeper way. WE are the ones who are called to be transfigured and transformed by really SEEING who we are, and understanding the beauty and the duty of the implications of that reality. The actual people who were intended to be most transformed by this event were those who saw it—Peter and John and James, and by listening to the story, you and me. Six days after Peter first dares to say it out loud, Jesus affirms that he is, indeed, the son of God, both human and divine. But he also reminds us that we all have that divinity within us. Jesus becomes human to show us how to live as children of God. Jesus comes to us to show us how to truly SEE the divine fire within each and every one of us, and within all of creation. Once we see that holiness within us and around us, we can begin to respond with reverence and empowerment to confront the sins, sorrows, and evils of this world, and root them out as contrary to God’s loving call to us to walk in God’s ways, which is the true object of the Christian life.
The ability to see, and understand what is being shown, is vital to our lives as both humans and as disciples. Because Jesus came to the world not simply so that each of us can save our souls from hell. That’s a transaction, and Jesus was never transactional. He was not for sale. Grace and forgiveness and mercy are given to us in every moment of our lives. Stop and really SEE that. And then, with the newly awakened eyes of our hearts and souls, let us go out and act upon sharing that vision with the world, and acting accordingly.
AMEN.
And perhaps it all boils down to this one particular failure to see: the failure to see the image and imprint of God in everyone and every thing around us. And especially right now, the attempt to blind ourselves and our children from seeing others as equally valuable, and specifically the attempt to prevent our young people from developing the skill and faculty of empathy in their dealings with those around them. This is perhaps the greatest danger we now face in this cultural moment. If you don’t SEE other people’s challenges, much less their beauty, and if you refuse to learn about other people’s struggles, as well as their triumphs, you don’t really SEE them as fellow human beings. It’s just that simple.
This attempt to blind us to the reality of the suffering around us has very real consequences for us as a nation—it is intended to divide us and keep us at each other’s throats. But it also has a very severe spiritual component, especially for those of us who call ourselves Christian. Jesus ALWAYS took the side of expanding our understanding. He was a teacher who repeatedly encouraged deeper insight into our call to live together in community as part of our very nature and as part of our worship of God. Jesus, especially as God’s son, accepted incarnation into human flesh so that he could open our eyes to truly see what living a life that honored God was like. And a large part of helping us see what that life looked like was helping us see each other as filled with the divine spark, each and every one of us.
Jesus did not draw his three friends up on that mountaintop so he could perform magic tricks. Instead he revealed to them who he really was. They knew him as a very human friend and teacher, who ate, slept, walked, travelled and lived with them. But up on that mountaintop, just for a moment, Jesus pulls aside the vesture of him humanity and shows them that at the same time he is also God. Now, we call this incident “the transfiguration,” and we focus on how Jesus’s appearance has changed. And there are so many sensory details: the blinding light, the appearance of the greatest law-giver in Moses and the greatest prophet in Elijah, each of whom also had their own holy experience with God on a mountaintop and were changed by it.
But who was really transfigured here? Let me suggest that the real impact of this story, especially as we prepare to enter the season of Lent, is that Jesus challenged his followers then and right now, to see themselves and each other in a deeper way. WE are the ones who are called to be transfigured and transformed by really SEEING who we are, and understanding the beauty and the duty of the implications of that reality. The actual people who were intended to be most transformed by this event were those who saw it—Peter and John and James, and by listening to the story, you and me. Six days after Peter first dares to say it out loud, Jesus affirms that he is, indeed, the son of God, both human and divine. But he also reminds us that we all have that divinity within us. Jesus becomes human to show us how to live as children of God. Jesus comes to us to show us how to truly SEE the divine fire within each and every one of us, and within all of creation. Once we see that holiness within us and around us, we can begin to respond with reverence and empowerment to confront the sins, sorrows, and evils of this world, and root them out as contrary to God’s loving call to us to walk in God’s ways, which is the true object of the Christian life.
The ability to see, and understand what is being shown, is vital to our lives as both humans and as disciples. Because Jesus came to the world not simply so that each of us can save our souls from hell. That’s a transaction, and Jesus was never transactional. He was not for sale. Grace and forgiveness and mercy are given to us in every moment of our lives. Stop and really SEE that. And then, with the newly awakened eyes of our hearts and souls, let us go out and act upon sharing that vision with the world, and acting accordingly.
AMEN.
Preached at the 505 and the 10:30 services of Holy Eucharist on the weekend of February 18-19, 2023, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
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