The Main Problem of the Transfiguration
My bishop
recently shared the story of a young man whom he taught some years ago. He was
Orthodox from Estonia. He grew up in the Soviet era and had come to hate all
things Russian, including the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, he saw an Orthodox
procession in the streets of his city one year, a procession that included the
Russian bishop (whom he also hated and believed to be a KGB agent). However, he
saw the bishop surrounded by light. It was an experience that led him into the
Orthodox faith. You might hate the man, and the Church as well. But the
undeniable glory of God revealed what his hatred could not see.
My
bishop’s point in sharing the story was not to exonerate the Russian Church
from any wrong-doing, or cooperation with wrong-doing. Nor was it to exonerate
the bishop involved and declare him holy. It was a story about the glory of God
and its place and work despite our faults and failures. The 12 apostles cast
out demons, healed the sick and cleansed lepers. We are nowhere told that Judas
did none of those things. Doubtless, he did (which makes his betrayal all the
greater).
There was
a heresy in the early Church that denied the efficacy of the sacraments if they
were performed by sinners. The debate was largely about those who, under the
pressure of persecution, had in any way denied their faith or yielded to the
requirements of the pagan state. It is an easy line of thought to maintain. If
we are commanded to be holy, surely there are consequences for failure to
observe the commandment. There are indeed consequences within the canons of the
Church, but those consequences do not include an inefficacy of the sacraments.
The
scandal of the Incarnation, God-becoming-man, is the seeming contradiction of
the utterly transcendent God and the particularity and limits of human
existence. It is a scandal whose errors
run in two directions.
First,
there is an assumption that God is so displeased with sin that He can have
nothing to do with it, or that sin somehow nullifies the work of God. Second,
there is an equally odious belief that human beings, in their observance of the
commandments, are ever righteous enough to actually be compatible with true
holiness. The first is an error about God, the second an error about human
beings.
I’m
always troubled to hear “there is no grace outside the Church.” I can’t fathom
what such a statement means. Since the entire universe is sustained by the
grace of God, I can only assume a sort of heresy of secularism by such a
statement – the notion that anything can exist apart from God’s grace. For His
own mysterious reasons, God even sustains the fallen angels by His grace. If it
were not so, they would cease to exist. Only God has existence in and of
Himself.
I can say
“there is no grace outside the Church” only if I also say that everything in
all of creation is inside the Church. In fact, I believe this to be true. The
Church came into existence when God said, “Let there be light.” The sacraments
do not make us to be what we are not, but reveal us to be what we truly are.
Baptism and Chrismation are indeed required of those coming to Holy Communion,
for they are fundamental realities in the medicine of immortality and the path
of life God has given us. But the person who is Baptized does not somehow
become other than what they are. They become more fully human, more truly what
they were created to be. “The Holy Spirit completes that which is lacking,” it
is said in our prayers.
There are
boundaries which we describe as “the Church,” but this meaning is being used to
specify that which is identified with the fullness of life in Christ. “Church”,
in this usage, is “that which is reconciled.” St. Paul says that the end of all
things is that they be “gathered together in one in Christ Jesus.” This is the
Church, in the end.
Too
frequently we speak of the Church in denominational terms, in which we speak of
people who are reconciled in the fullness of Orthodoxy as though their
“membership” constituted the whole of the Church. But St. Paul extends the
Church to “all things.” Thus, the grass and the trees (and certainly the flour
and the wine) are being gathered together into Christ. The Eucharist is not a
gathering meant to exclude everything else. It is a gathering that represents
everything else. “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee.” What is there
within all of creation that is not God’s own? Indeed, the members of the Church
who gather, are themselves but the “first fruits” of the whole Adam.
And so we
have the reality of glowing bishops who might be hated in Estonia (just as many
other bishops might be hated elsewhere). The transfiguration (for such was the
scene in that procession) of God’s creation is simply shocking to us. It is a
manifestation of the love of God that ignores all scandal, except that which
does not love. It is a transfiguration that gives light and that burns.
Many take
a cold comfort in the fact that the transfiguring light of God burns some.
However, it most often burns the eyes of those who judge the fitness of those
transfigured. They become blind in this very manner.
The
Transfiguration of Christ would generally be deemed to be free of scandal. He
appeared on the Holy Mount with Moses and Elijah – how could the disciples not
rejoice. But the text describes a scandal.
As He
prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and
glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who
appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at
Jerusalem. (Luke 9:29-31)
Christ,
in turn, spoke to the disciples about His decease which He was about to
accomplish at Jerusalem, and Peter rebuked Him! The great scandal is always the
scandal of the Cross. There is no path to true union with God that does not go
through the Cross. This is true finally of all those who are transfigured as
well as for all who hope to ever see a transfiguration.
It is of
note that the Greek beneath this translation does not say that Christ was
speaking with Moses and Elijah about His “decease.” The text calls it His
“exodus.” It is not a casual word choice. His journey into death is the Great
Exodus, the path through the Red Sea that drowns the mystical Pharaoh. It is
the Lord’s Passover.
That
Passover is the path to transfiguration. Moses himself, after the Passover,
leads the people to a different holy mountain. There he received the Law
written by the very finger of God. When he came down from the mountain his face
was transfigured and the people were afraid to look at him – and asked him to
please wear a veil.
In Christ
the veil is removed, except for those who wear a veil covering their heart
(2 Cor. 3). But God is so merciful, He sometimes removes the veil so that angry
young men on the streets of Estonia (which is everywhere) may see His glory and
live.
By Fr. Stephen Freeman
Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2016/08/06/the-scandal-of-the-transfiguration/
