A sermon by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on the last Sunday after the Epiphany
It seems to me that one of the pieces of vital information that the modern city-dweller must have is the location and phone number of the nearest Chinese restaurant, preferably one that delivers. I’m not talking about a good Chinese restaurant, necessarily. I’m talking about a place where you can order General Tso’s Chicken, and Sweet & Sour Pork, and all those other traditional dishes that no self-respecting Chinese person would ever even think of eating when in China. Chinese-American food, I guess we call it.
There was just such a restaurant about eight blocks from my house in Kansas City. I don’t remember the name. It was just one of those places where you called in your order and picked it up on the way home. Not the kind of place you could make part of a healthy eating plan, but a necessary place nonetheless.
One of my favorite things about that little restaurant was their secret annual tradition. Once a year, on a particular day which changed each year, if you said “Happy New Year” to the staff, you’d get a free order of Egg Rolls. The day in question was not January first, of course, but the more elusive Chinese Lunar New Year, which moves around irregularly between late January and mid February. I discovered this tradition on accident one year, when Google coincidentally reminded me that it was Chinese New Year while I was looking for something else. On all subsequent year I carefully marked the date, for this annual special was not advertised at the little Chinese Restaurant; you had to be an insider.
I mention this for two reasons. One, because today is the first day of the year of the Tiger. I’m particularly excited this year because Tiger is my year. Most of us born in 1975—like my wife—are Rabbits, but the lucky few born before the new moon in February are Tigers. I get a great deal of pleasure out of the fact that Tigers and Rabbits are supposed to make poor couples, a fact that it hardly seems you’d need an astrologer to tell you.
The second reason I mention that little Chinese place in Kansas City is because I got to be an insider there. I got to know something about a culture completely alien to me, and to recognize that, and to be recognized in return. Just think of me as Peter at the foot of the mountain where Jesus is being Transfigured before his eyes.
OK, that’s a long stretch, I’ll admit it, but bear with me for a moment. For Peter, Jesus is the nearly incomprehensible mediator of a completely alien divinity. Peter follows Jesus, and he can touch Jesus, and in some small sense he knows who Jesus is. Yet the divine Kingdom of God that Jesus enables around him is not something Peter has any experience of. He can’t name it, most days, let alone understand it. For me, that little Chinese Restaurant was the nearly incomprehensible mediator of a culture completely alien to me. I had no real experience of Eastern thought, let alone food. True, comparing salvation to General Tso’s Chicken is probably second degree blasphemy, though if you’re hungry enough the distinctions can start to blur.
All right, I’m done trying make Chinese New Year and The Transfiguration work together. Hopefully next year the Lunar cycle will line up with some better readings.
All three of the lectionary readings for this Sunday feature glowing faces. Moses speaks to God and returns with tablets inscribed with the law and a shining face. Paul writes to the Corinthians and compares Moses’ glowing face with Jesus’ Transfigured one. In the Gospel, Luke tells the story of Jesus climbing the mountain to pray and being transformed before the eyes of a couple sleepy Disciples.
Here are the two prominent lines in my mind as I hear these texts:
“As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.”
“…while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white… a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.”
These two stories, one from Exodus and one from the Gospel, are really very similar. Moses and Jesus both ascend. They both come face to face with God and are changed, or perhaps not changed but merely revealed. Upon returning to the world, those who see them can perceive this change—this unveiling—and respond with fear.
I have long been fascinated with the Biblical concept of fear. The King James version generally has it, “the fear of the Lord,” or “those who fear the Lord.” More modern translations usually seek out a word that more closely resembles what the ancients meant by ‘fear’. It is more than just ‘afraid’, though that’s in there. It’s also respect, and awe, and overwhelming reverence.
In the transfiguration stories, it’s Aaron and the Hebrews who experience this. They are afraid to come near Moses in his divinely charged state. They aren’t afraid of Moses, exactly, but they are wary of approaching too closely to such a display of God’s power. In the Gospels Peter is not afraid but terrified—a word with less useful subtexts. This is typical for Peter though, to overdo things until he’s completely missed the point.
The reason I’m so taken with the Biblical concept of fearing God is because I want to be afraid of God. I want that ancient fear in my understanding of God—that realization that I am not in control of this relationship, and that God might do anything, at anytime, with or without my permission. That is terrifying, if you think about it, but fear of God is deeper than merely being afraid.
Since it is the Chinese New Year, think about the Chinese symbol for crisis. I’m sure you’ve heard before than in the language of Chinese symbols, the greater symbol translated as ‘crisis’ is made up of two lesser symbols: one for ‘danger’ and one for ‘opportunity’. In Chinese, a crisis is not wholly negative as it tends to be in English. Then again, it’s not exactly safe, either.
And since this year is the year of the Tiger, I share with you part of a poem. In this poem, a tiger represents Jesus, and in the particular verse I’m going to read you, we are at that wedding in Caana of Galilee.
Now, therefore, Tiger.
The time of celebration is at hand.
Prepare the wedding feast.
The bridegroom crouches
motionless
outside the door
and licks his fangs.
I’m not much of a poetry critic myself, but I’ve always liked the idea of Jesus as a Tiger: beautiful and powerful and deceptively lazy in his movements, but always capable of being dangerous. A predator who hunts not other animals but our own failings and weaknesses. A spiritual predator of sin, if you will.
It is appropriate, I suppose, that Transfiguration Sunday comes just before the season of Lent. It is as if we’re being shown a bit of the stick for which Easter’s redemption is the carrot, and now we have six weeks to come to terms with than. I maintain that while there is much opportunity in the crisis, and much awe and reverence in the fear, that there is still danger—there is still fear. To come face to face with God is no small thing, and not something that can be survived if you wish to stay as you have always been. That’s what Aaron and the Israelites were really afraid of, I think. That’s what had Peter so terrified: to witness transfiguration is to be transfigured yourself. To come face to face with God is to die to what you had been and then to be reborn into something else. In the season of Lent which is about to start, my prayer is that we all might come to find the opportunity within the danger—that we all might come to fear God anew. AMEN.
