Texts: Exodus 24: 12-18; Matthew 17: 1-9
About twenty years ago there was a cover on a Time magazine entitled “The New Face of America.” Some of you may remember it. The cover had the face of a woman, actually, it had 50 different faces of the same woman. What was unusual about the face was the fact that in every photograph, there was some element of mixture. Some of the mix was between German and Irish; other mixes crossed traditional racial lines. The faces reflected the faces of our large urban centers, such as Newark, Trenton, Red Bank; others, of suburban areas, such as Holmdel and Middletown. Moreover, as you looked at this remarkable montage, you realized that in the midst of the images, that it was often hard to tell where one so-called “race” began and the other ended. It was a tribute to the new America, the America we have here and now. Skin color, eye shapes, mouths, and noses all varied.
Sometimes when I talk about race or ethnicity with young people, those of the generations of my grandchildren, I get the feeling that they don't understand what the big deal is. Raised in a society much more open than the one you and I grew up in, sometimes they don't understand the fuss. This is not to say that there isn't racism, or racial profiling.
In this morning's Gospel reading, following the vision that Jesus and his disciples experienced, the ground rules changed. Jesus now will set his face towards Jerusalem, towards the final journey when everything would be transfigured. In much the same way, the new leadership that emerged here in the United States during the 1960s transfigured the images of race at that time, changing it from the way we understood the concept of race then to a new way of looking at what America could be as a society.
Prior to the 1960s, discussion about race was in terms of sharp racial categories. When people used the terms “black,” “white,” “Asian,” those terms had a clear meaning. Following the civil rights era of the 1960s, although we may still use some of the terms to describe what we mean, their meanings have changed. In 2000, the Census introduced a new demographic category called “mixed race.” Respondents could use any of a number of racial or ethnic mixtures to define their own mix.
The 2010 Census revealed that although the overall population increased by 9.7 percent, the number of mixed race persons increased by more than 50 percent. The total numbers may not seem like much – a little more than 9 million in a total population of more than 308 million – but the impact is significant. And in 2020, the numbers were even more dramatic.
But what is even more significant for us in the United States is the blending of religious backgrounds. Back in the 1950s, when I was growing up, it was still rare for Catholics to marry Protestants unless one spouse converted to the faith of the other. In his seminal discussion, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, Will Herberg could only envision America in terms of these three “faiths,” as he called them, commenting that Americans had one common religion, as he called it, and that was faith in what he termed “the American Way of Life.” That was 1960, the year that America crossed a major boundary and elected its first Catholic President.
Those boundaries have shifted even more, but much of our thinking has not. Yes, we understand that people marry across religious lines, the most common being Christian-Jew, leading to secular celebrations, if you can call them that, of holidays like Christmas. Commercialism, of course, has enjoyed this development, pushing Christmas into a giant buying frenzy. I even know non-Western families not rooted in our Judeo-Christian heritage who “celebrate” – for lack of a better word – Christmas.
The old racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries were like national borders; one did not cross into other countries. All that has changed as well. Young people are free from the constraints that bound us and our parents. Several years ago I met with a young couple seeking a Christian-Buddhist wedding. She was Chinese; he, some polyglot white. They wanted a religious ceremony that respected both traditions and that would speak to their families who were unsure of how to deal with the differences they saw. Their children are part of the American transfiguration of race, ethnicity, and religion. In our discussions, they talked about how their children would be raised with the values common to both religious traditions.
This special American transfiguration, although not without some problems, is good for us as a society. It will enable us to move beyond the way it used to be. Jesus himself had to move beyond what he began, as a disciple of John, preaching John's message of repentance, into a new understanding of himself and his mission.
The Gospels only give us hints of the fact that this transfiguration, the transformation of Jesus of Nazareth into the Messiah, was not an easy path. The Gospel writers, each trying to show the inevitability of this process, glossed over its difficulty. Part of that difficulty lay in the response of Jesus' own disciples. Look at this morning's Gospel text, for instance. Peter's response to their vision is: Build a temple. But, as Jesus knew, building a temple would encapsulate the experience, set walls around it, rather than making it a transforming event for future growth and development.
Remembering and celebrating history, rather than being liberating, can also freeze events in time, making our present realities rigid rather than fluid. We see this in the commemorations of significant events, especially when they have the potential of political impact. It is too easy to use designated times such as black history or Hispanic heritage month or even Women's Sunday as a way to pay the required obeisance and then wipe our hands of the issues raised for the rest of the year.
It is precisely because the issues of race, color, ethnicity, gender, even ecumenical dialog play such an important part in defining who we are a society that they should not be relegated to a particular month or Sunday. The new reign of God that Jesus initiated through his ministry is not a reign that says, Okay, this Sunday is for x and that one for y. The new reign of God fully integrates all persons into one realm, one kingdom. The realm of God, or the kingdom of heaven, as Matthew phrases it, is a transforming and transfiguring experience, one that requires our full commitment, our full loyalty.
The story of what is called the Transfiguration appears in all three Synoptic Gospels and reflects many of the theophany stories in Exodus and Ezekiel. These encounters with God are different than the ones we see in Genesis where humans encounter God in a different way. In each of the Gospel stories, Jesus himself is transformed. In our encounters with God we are presented the opportunity to be transformed as well.
Just as Jesus' transfiguration experience set the course of his future ministry by making it open to the future, the experiences of our past have transformed our society and needs to be seen as setting courses for the future, not as temples to the past. This is more than a get on with it attitude. It means we must envision our future as a society in new ways with new paradigms. Although we may not be sure of the direction of that future, we know that as we live in God's realm here and now, that we are called to be open to the future and all of its possibilities.
Let us pray: Ever new and exciting God, help us to be open to our future, both as a society and as a community of faith seeking to do your will in this, your world. Amen