As I was studying the seeming amazing "transfiguration" vision of Jesus on the top of the mountain with his disciples, glowing with white clothes and a deified face, I noticed something that I had never noticed before. I should have because it is quite obvious, but I am willing to bet that you had not either. Before Jesus is revealed to be the glowing, Holy, Son of God on the mountain, Jesus is wearing regular clothes. It is only logical that if his clothes are transformed into glowing white clothes, then his clothes must have been something entirely ordinary to begin with. This seems such a mundane and insignificant point that I hesitated to mention it and talk about it in an entire blog post, but the truth is that it is not mundane and insignificant at all.
Just use google images to find pictures of Jesus and you will see that in most of them Jesus is glowing everywhere he goes, wearing his gloriously white garb.
What idiots people must have been back then to get rid of the obviously glowing and loving Son of God by putting him on the cross! What morons people must have been back then to not realize that this luminous person was someone special! What buffoons people were back then; if they knew that someone divinely extraordinary was standing before them.
Of course, they were not buffoons, morons, or idiots. They may not have had the internet on which they could search Jesus images, but they did have eyes, and what they saw when they looked at Jesus was just another dusty rabbi walking down the road. Sure, he could work miracles, but other prophets also seemed to work miracles. The miracles were amazing, yes, but that did not necessarily make the guy divine. What they saw when they looked at Jesus was exactly what Jesus showed them, an ordinary rabbi in dusty clothing. Remember, only three of the disciples got to see the white, wonderful clothing. In our need to remember the divine nature of Christ, we often forget his ordinary nature.
That is not so bad is it? Jesus, God with us, alleluia, glory to the lamb, and all of that! But, if that is the only Christ we know, then we will never see him. I repeat, if that is the only Christ we know, then we will never see him.
The hospital room was full of people. I skirted through some of the people to get to the bed of the 65 year old woman. The room was full of conversation and laughter, with a few people tending to the woman in turns. As I soaked in the wonderful scene of a healed and recovering woman surrounded by family and friends, I could not help but notice what a contrast the woman was to the scene around her. She was sad; profoundly sad as if the dreary rain had drenched and soaked into her skin.
“She’s not very happy right now,” one of her daughters mentioned to me.
I asked her what was wrong. She stared at her feet and said, “God has abandoned me. God let me get so sick. God has abandoned me. I am so lonely.”
I am in no way belittling her experience, but I do have a question for you: do you think it is a problem when the only Jesus we know is the shiny, glowing, divine Jesus? If that is the only Christ we know, then we will never see the one that heals through doctor’s wisdom…we will never see our Christ who touches us through devoted friends or family…we will never see our Lord who chooses to sit beside us on our bed through all of our struggles.
When we look around ourselves, we cannot expect to find the bright and white Jesus of the transfiguration; however we can expect to see Jesus. We will see him when a doctor’s touch provides healing. We will see him when we cry out in agony, and a friend is there to show God’s love. We will see him when we look at the cross and instead of seeing pain and suffering and torture, we see hope and new possibilities. Only when God reveals Godself in the ordinariness of life, will see start to see a glimmer of the glory that truly lies underneath. Like the disciples, we will discover that God can make the ordinary become extraordinary. That is the way that God’s grace works.
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