Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

So, friends the story we just heard is of Jesus’ Transfiguration, his journey to the mountaintop, that thin place between here and God. And on that mountaintop, we hear of Jesus’ revelation as God’s beloved, his authentic self, his transfiguration. It’s a dramatic passage that occurs in the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew and we always hear it on the Sunday prior to Lent.

All three of the Gospel mountaintop experience stories are very similar in their core details. In each of them, Jesus takes some friends up a mountain to pray and when he gets there, he has this intense spiritual experience of transfiguration. And as a result of that experience, Jesus’ friends witness the dazzling and glorious authentic Jesus and respond with fear and confusion. And that’s not all that Jesus’ friends experience up there, because in addition to witnessing the glorious and authentic Jesus, all of his friends hear God declare God’s love for Jesus. And then all versions of this story go immediately into a story of Jesus healing.

So, I’ll be honest and say that for most of my years doing this work, this story has challenged me! It comes up every year and so I’ve had to grapple with it many times. And so far each year I’ve been able to find a meaningful way into this story we know as ‘the transfiguration’. But this year, I was really struggling with it. And I think I was struggling because I usually think of this text as a story about Jesus undergoing this huge change into something radically different.

But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this story isn’t so much about that. Instead, I’m coming to think that perhaps, at its most simplistic premise, this is a story about authenticity, about becoming our most fully authentic self. And having our fully authenticity selves be witnessed and affirmed as beloved by God.

So, the definition of the word ‘transfigure’ is this: a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state. I love that definition because it’s so much less about change than it is about becoming. And it’s not just about becoming but about becoming more beautiful, more authentic, more spiritual.

And that definition reminds me of the story of one of my most dear friends and their experience of transfiguration, becoming more beautiful, more spiritual, and more fully authentically themself. Now, this friend has been a member of our found family for decades. When Jasper and I needed to go to couples counseling when our kids were quite young and couldn’t figure out how to get away from the demands of life and two toddlers, it was this friend that showed up week after week to be with our kids. They are someone who is woven not only into the fabric of our family but also into our hearts.

Twenty-some years ago, this friend came to Jasper and I and told us that they were dying inside because the gender that was given to them at birth didn’t match the gender in their heart and their body and their soul. They told us that who they were known as in the world was not who they themselves knew to be. They were not living as their fully authentic self. And this disconnect was negatively impacting every area of their life and negatively impacting all of their relationships and most heartbreaking of all, basically killing them.

Since that moment of sharing so many years ago, our friend has been on a journey of transfiguration into his fully authentic self, a self where all of who he is in the world is beautifully aligned with who he is in his heart and soul. And Jasper and I have been blessed to witness it all. We danced at his wedding. We were there at the hospital on both of the days that his sons were born. And most recently witnessed his teenage son demonstrating how he is now able to tower over his dad. Over the last few decades, it has been our honor to witness this beloved friend’s process of transfiguration, his journey into the fully authentic and beloved being that God dreamed him to be.

I think there are a whole lot of parallels between our friend’s story and this story of Jesus on the mountaintop. To start with, in all of the Gospel transfiguration stories, Jesus only took three of his friends to his safe place up on that mountain to share the truth of who he really was. And in all of the stories, those friends struggled to handle that truth. In some of the stories there is fear and in some like the one today, there is confusion and the unknowing of how to react.

Our friend at first only chose certain people to share their truth and Jasper and I were two of those people. Twenty-some years ago, I didn’t know anyone else who experienced having the gender assigned to them at birth not match the gender inside of them. And when my friend showed me their truth, I reacted kind of like Jesus’ friends with fear and confusion and not knowing what to do next. I was afraid of how this beloved person would be treated in the world. I was afraid of our relationship changing. I was afraid of tons of things that I couldn’t even give word or voice to. And I felt woefully inadequate in knowing how to best support them.

I contrast my reaction with our kids reactions when we told them. Now remember this person has always been quite a big part of our kids’ lives. For quite a while, they were the only caregiver that our kids knew besides Jasper and me. So I was a bit nervous about finding the best way to tell our kids that this person who they had known as female was now going to be known as male with a new name.

Our young kids’ reaction was a simple question. And it went like this… ‘So they will be happier?’ Yes we told them, they will be happier because who they will be on the outside will match who they are on the inside. ‘Oh, that’s good!’ was their enthusiastic and affirming response.

To ‘transfigure’ is to become fully and authentically ourselves, to become who God dreams us to be. Jesus does this on the mountaintop when he shares what and who he truly is with the people that are closest to him. And after that, he and all of his friends hear God speak and declare God’s love for that fully authentic Jesus. They hear God’s affirmation of the fully authentic Jesus and hear the declaration of God’s love for him. Kind of like when our kids heard of our friend’s transfiguration and simply declared it to be ‘good’.

So then the question becomes, how do we respond to those in our lives who are doing the hard work of embracing their fully authentic selves, the self that God created and calls good? Are we responding out of a place of fear and confusion or are we responding out of a place of trust that what God creates, God loves and God calls good? Are we assuring that all who are doing the hard work of embracing their authentic selves are being affirmed for their beautiful and blessed authenticity in our families, in our churches, in our communities, in our work places, and in our laws? I believe that this sacred text calls us to respond as God does on that mountaintop, with words of affirmation and words of love.

The three different accounts of the transfiguration in the gospels have one final thing in common: Jesus does not stay on the mountaintop. Instead, he goes into the world carrying that experience of being seen and witnessed as his fully authentic self and having God bless and affirm that fully authentic self. And the very next thing that happens after all of that, is that Jesus heals someone.

In all of the Gospel stories, what follows the transfiguration is that the vulnerable are transformed and healed and go forward into life restored. It is a powerful conclusion to a story about the journey to become fully authentic. It shows us that not only does God affirm the belovedness of the fully authentic self but also that healing and transformation and goodness flows out of that transfiguration, that act of embracing one’s authentic self. God creates and it is good.

This journey to ‘transfigure’, to become fully and authentically who and what God dreams us to be, is not just Jesus’ journey or my friend’s journey. It is also an invitation to embrace our own journey to become our fully authentic self. It is an invitation to realize that we are never finished products but are instead beloved beings in process knowing that what or who we will be is not what or who we are now.

This story is an invitation to realize that God has a dream for all of Creation, for all of us, to become our more beautiful and spiritual self, one of full authenticity where we are so much more than we could have ever imagine. When we both follow that invitation and affirm others in their following of that invitation…healing and transformation and goodness flow into the world!

So, as we go forth this week, may we all be open to our own mountaintop experiences of transfiguration, of the invitation into who or what God dreams for us as our fully authentic self. And may we stand for and with those who are also responding to that invitation to authenticity, to transformation, to transfiguration, to living fully into what God creates and God calls good and blessed and loved. That is my prayer….Amen