2024.02.11 Transfigured of Transfixed? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The very idea, or image, of myself permanently wheelchair-bound at first transfixed me. Stunned, I could not get the image out of my mind. This mental preoccupation drained me of energy, as any good anxious obsession would. Prayer became circular and boring until one day a story from Scripture popped into my mind. A very contrary story. Christians came to call this the Transfiguration. We celebrate it on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, as a preview of resurrection AND as its verification. 

Some days you feel upside-downed.

First of all, let me be clear, this story was witnessed by a few of Jesus’s closest disciples who saw it happen to Jesus, not me. What those disciples saw was a completely different Jesus, not the man with whom they traveled on the dusty roads. This Jesus was in prayer on the top of a high mountain—not an unusual practice, also one during which his three closest disciples would inevitably fall asleep. This time, however, they stayed awake long enough to see Jesus’s face and clothing suddenly shine with dazzling bright light. Then they saw Moses and Elijah, prophetic liberator and prophet of Israel. The blinding revelation did not last long before it was obscured by a cloud cover.  From the cloud they heard a voice saying, “This is my beloved. Listen to this One.”

Peter, utterly stunned as always, advised them to quickly build three booths, one for each faith hero, as if such brilliance could be confined or contained. The experience did not last long, and Peter was left unsure about what they were supposed to do with this revelatory vision.  The earthly Jesus rose from prayer and directed them back down the mountain to continue their mission of healing and preaching the gospel of Love. It was like a dream or a vision. It left them with more questions than ever. And it still does.

-We need more proof, clarification.

-Who is this Jesus?

-And which of the others mentioned should we listen to? 

-Was this a miracle or the beginning of a new religion? 

-And which of God’s apparent “beloveds” was THE chosen?

Unable to contain themselves, they asked Jesus as they stumbled after him down the mountain. Why Elijah? Because Elijah was here first. And Moses? Well, Moses restored the “Promised Land.”  

Today in Israel on the site identified as The Mount of Transfiguration there is a church called The Church of the Transfiguration. It is lovely to visit.

Well, well, well. There is more than one chosen.  

I saw no bright lights but I will tell you that I became— paradoxically— more motivated to strengthen my leg muscles for walking. 

You could say that my shift in perspective TRANSFIGURED my mood as my TRANSFIXED attachment to the wheelchair image vanished. 

2022.02.19 Transfigured? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I am attracted to words, and today to  words that begin with with the prefix trans. Trans means across.  Transfigure means to move across, as the sun moves across the sky, crossing over the earth and thereby causing the earth’s light to shine. As its light passes it changes, transforms, enhances, illuminates, enlightens the whole landscape. This process is a transfiguration. I ponder trans word, transmogrify, which adds an almost magical dimension to my trans word games ie. a cucumber becomes a pickle. 

All those who witness trans movements feel changed in the moment.

There is a moment we Christians call THE Transfiguration, a time when Jesus chose the big three disciples (Peter, James, John) to accompany him up to the mountain called Tabor as he prayed. (NOTE: Israel is hilly, full of mounts, hillocks, rises, but not huge mountains like The Rockies or Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks in NY)

Imagine that you are one of those chosen disciples. You’re pretty exhausted as you trudge and climb, but you follow, imagining that something may actually come of this futile climb. You have not been forced to come on this journey, but you come—because Jesus invited you. I’d follow out of curiosity and my pride at being a confidante of Jesus whose light I would soon see for real and feel inside myself, for myself. The other two said they also saw Moses and Elijah in that light, but you didn’t, and Jesus seemed to be clueless about it. He just hustled you all down the mountain and continued with the ministry of listening love for all in need. 

Would you follow the light you saw? I would dash home and write all about it as if it might vanish or be forgotten. Would you wonder what it meant? I would. I would never forget it whether I understood it or not, yet I would remember that it all had something to do with prayer. Others in time wrote it all up, and still others would build a lovely Christian Church at the top of Tabor for future pray-ers, because prayer is what connects us all to one another and to God. See?

Mountainous transfiguring grandeur alone is enough to sweep you up, out of your fears, out of your doldrums, for just a minute or ten? You can experience it spiritually without climbing, and even without a mountain. 

Some mornings I gaze at the usual daily scenery outside my bedroom window: lines of tall trees, clipped golfing greens in the background and a few cars grounded in the parking lot. And then I see movement. Birds of course as usual. But this day there are many birds, not swarming but gathering. I count eight. They perch all at once, close and separate, on different branches atop the highest trees. They sit completely still—immobilized. I sit still—posed, paralyzed. I do not reach for binoculars. I just stare. Suddenly, without sound or any detectable warning signal, the birds all take flight at once—in unison, off and gone, vanishing into the sky for the day. I have just witnessed the morning meeting of the birds.  

Why, in that moment, did I not grab for the binoculars? Why did I delay my own purposive daily routine? Why didn’t I even glance at my schedule, check for appointments, make phone calls, bustle about as I usually do?

I saw something slightly different from what I expected. I felt internally transfigured, transfixed. I had no thoughts at all, which tells me that my mind was blanked, halted, yanked away from its thrumming drumbeat of a task: managing my life’s agenda in time and space. And I was conscious. Don’t tell me trance, dissociative shock, fixation or day-dreaming absent-mindedness. Don’t even tell me it was definitely God. 

No. I have no idea what happened to me. None. I just know it was a trans moment, inexplicably mystical and quotidian at once. 

2019.03.10 Getting "Woke"

Today is Gillian Brakeman Colbath’s  23rd birthday. I remember how miraculous it felt to be present the day my oldest daughter brought forth her oldest daughter. Potentiation. Creation. Woke!

Dear Gillian, I remember when you were 7 you sang a solo on stage all alone—a song learned at camp: “Down by the River to Pray.” I remember you taking the lead in the play “Annie Junior”—little orphan Annie singing “Maybe” in your brand new red dress with the white sash as she dreamed. And hearing your mature adult voice sing as you played your guitar to the Joplin song: “Me and Bobby McGee.” I got “woke”. Most beautiful precious Gillian, I know one day you will sing your own perfect love song to yourself.  You are beloved. I love you. Grammy. (Photo of Gillian, Grammy and Auntie Jill, also with a wondrous singing voice)

According to biblical story, Jesus and his disciples got “woke” on the Transfiguration Mount; the brightest big-bangiest light they’d ever seen shone on them, and Jesus lit up like a firecracker. Have you ever seen someone light up with insight, song, love, whatever? It’s biblical, honestly. 

My “woke” story isn’t as grandly biblical. I was forty, feeling like a mid-life “first-grader” in my first course: The Scriptures of the Old Testament ,at Yale Divinity School in 1978. I didn’t know much about the OT, because, until the advent of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, readings from the OT happened only at daily Morning and Evening prayer, not at the Sunday Eucharist.

The Old Testament! My adolescent impressions, formed from reading the whole bible in seventh grade (when else?), were that the OT was hot and sexy and murderous. Hence, I could hardly wait to find out more. In seminary it was required, and soon we’d be hearing it every Sunday in church, along with a reading from one of the many epistles, most of them Paul’s, and a gospel reading from the New Testament’s big 4: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—specialists in the life of Jesus the Christ.

I sat on the edge of my chair, in a huge lecture hall, my notebook opened out on the pull-up desk, and my pen poised to write down every word I heard. I never wanted to be any place as much as I wanted to be here right now, ready to study God in OT.

The professor entered and mounted the podium. The room hushed.

“In the beginning, God potentiated . . . “ he began in sonorous tones. 

I wrote that down. I knew this once-upon-a-time story: God creating to the point of divine ecstasy, every living thing—even mosquitoes.

For big required courses like this one there were weekly lectures and also smaller classes called sections for which we wrote papers, and where we got to ask our questions and discuss. The sections were led by teaching assistants (TAs), usually graduate students earning their keep. That’s when I met Jim Echols. I bet he was younger than me. He was tall and lean with an afro so significant it looked as if it could topple his head. We could call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument, chief among them biblical inerrancy, which most of us, including me, had confused with biblical literalism. I still wonder.

Just last week I read in the Christian Century Magazine that Jim had died at age 67 of complications after a fall at home. You don’t get a big obit in this magazine unless you have some religious clout. I felt sad. Jim Echols helped me get “woke.” I remember him well.

According to his obituary, Jim did accomplish big stuff. He was an ordained Lutheran pastor, a Rev. Dr. no less, and the first African American scholar to serve as the Dean and President of  an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) seminary in Philadelphia, and a retired ELCA pastor, having served many parishes along the way of his career in theological education. Jim grew up in Philadelphia. At Yale he was studying psychology, religion, theology, and the church and culture, earning his PhD among a string of other degrees. 

Formation seemed to have been a passion for Jim. He did much work to support and promote high-quality continuing theological education. He would have been a fan of the Education for Ministry (EfM) program in which I have been involved at many levels for 35 years. Another connection I discovered was that Jim, like me, encouraged interfaith relations, helping to create a Center for Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran seminary.

So my fondly-remembered TA in OT was a rock star. A professor emeritus of church and society and urban ministry at Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago where Jim was president from 1997-2011, called him “a giant in the world of theological education . . .who stirred many people of African descent to aspire to be faithful in their service in the church and the world.” I bet I intuited that way back when I was a green seminarian falling in love with OT and getting “woke.” 

Dear Jim, I am so proud to have known you for such a short time at the beginning of my own theological education. You helped me love the OT and find the grace of God in the oddest of places. I remember when I wrote my final exam for the OT course, I got carried away and wrote in my little blue exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. Thank you. You helped potentiate me. Call it “woke.”

2018.02.11 Down The Mountain With Thanks

As I was preparing my sermon to preach today I knew the gospel was the Transfiguration story—story not historical event. Honestly, I yawned. Not that it’s not a WOW of a glory story with powerful spiritual implications about divine resurrective (not a real word, but true) intentions, but I got no zing as I read the biblical account in Mark.

When I am to preach I always read all the assigned readings well ahead, hoping that something will spark my imagination. I know that traditionally we Christians are supposed to preach from the gospel, but if my zing comes from another reading, even a hymn or a collect, I follow it, crediting—or blaming, or shunning personal responsibility—the work of the Holy Spirit.

For this sermon I had two zings. First, I noticed that Jesus ordered his gawking disciples down the mountain, leaving them not a moment to bask in the glow of glory they had seen seen on Jesus. Was this like an all-body halo effect? No wonder Peter wanted to start a building campaign so they could remain forever close to the magic WOW should it reappear. But no go. Jesus ordered them to keep it to themselves as they left the scene and went back down the mountain and into the messiness of earthly life.

The high and the letdown are familiar experiences for us all. I believe God is in both glory and mess, and both are in God.

Let’s face it, the whole Bible is quite a mess. The ancient redactors collected all the oral and written materials intending to create one tidy, consistent, fixed, single volume of authoritative material. What they had amassed was a mess of different voices and perspectives and genres. How would they clean it up?  They didn’t! They left it all in there. The astonishment is that they canonized diversity, difference. And they canonized the tension that accompanies such remarkable diversity. Then they called it ALL Holy.

So? We have to discern meanings, and we have to engage in dialogue with those who hold different understandings than we do. No ONE is all right or all wrong. Boy, does that get messy.

Second zinger: I noticed that the assigned Psalm 50 ended for us today at verse 6. What happened to the other 24 verses? It’s cheap grace to blame some lectionary committee. Better to find out what is left out and wonder why.

The psalms are rich in diversity: bursting with old and new, lament and praise, curse and blessing. Every emotion and circumstance imaginable is in the psalms. They are not doctrine but prayers, rent from the depths of human souls seeking God, stretching for God. And sometimes God responds directly.

Guess what? The whole speech of Godde to the people is what was omitted from Psalm 50 today. We should leave out God’s voice already? Why?

Well, maybe because the God who speaks is Godde the judge. When we are frank we admit that the image of judge is not congenial to many of us. (Of course there are many wise and compassionate judges, but . . .) The idea of a divine judge makes some of us quiver.

The divine judge outlines what is detestable: lies, adulteries, thievery, hatred, speaking against God, citing Godde’s flaws, etcetera. And today I’d add: sexual harassment of any kind, exploitation of any kind, corrupt dealings, Church and corporate cover-ups, and more. You forget how to be holy, God says, speaking as the one just judge, the creator and owner of all living things. Every continent is mine and all that fills it.

What then is the judgment of this God? What does Godde desire? What does this psalmist, so deep in her or his prayers, discern in the divine judgment?

It is this: The only sacrifice I desire is your gratitude. The one who sacrifices gratitude pays me the only true tribute. 

How amazing. That should be easy, right? Not at all. I am not grateful for suffering, violence, lies, human oblivion to holiness, racist, sexist, ableist, classist injustices. No. Neither is God, but NOTICE: God’s judgment does not equal God’s abandonment.

But can I, can we, choose gratitude? It is a choice. Can I choose it in the midst of both the glory and the mess? Gratitude I think is close to absurd hopefulness. Can we choose hopeful gratitude in the mess as well as in the glory?  Not on our own, no. 

The psalm closes with these words: The one who sacrifices gratitude pays me the only true tribute, pay attention to the road. I will illumine to you the visible salvation of God.

Attend. Watch. Creator-God will illumine visible salvation. Visible—in shining faces, lovely windows, on mountains and in gulleys, in grace and in sin. God will illumine. 

Oh, God, thank you. Thank you.