I remember well the late theologian/author/teacher/scholar, Marcus Borg. Borg died in 2015, a great loss to the world of progressive authors and thinkers. When I was taking New Testament in seminary, near-centuries ago in the early1980s, I read one of his articles about Jesus and gasped with something like scandalized joy. Joy because Borg wrote about Jesus-on-earth, as if Jesus was a real man with dirt under his fingernails and sweat on his brow—not hanging from a cross deader than dead or resurrected and unreachable. Scandalized because most academics weren’t talking about biblical figures in other than idealized terms as types only. Still, my favorite NT professor had assigned this article, so it must be legitimate.
Later, I learned that Borg was married to a female Episcopal priest. What could be better? Borg was part of a group called the Jesus Seminar which was more than a little controversial among Episcopal regulars. He wrote a book called Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time that made me a groupie and his fan forever. Here he is being Borg.
Borg once said that students taking his theology courses at the University of Oregon frequently would provocatively declare: I don’t believe in God!
Borg quietly responded: Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Then he waited with a bit of a Cheshire grin. He showed himself —and God—to be open to conversations, to listening. Some students huffed off, claiming fraud, and others took him up on his invitation. I don’t know the results of any of these conversations, but I do know that Marcus Borg’s writing drew me into God in ways I didn’t know were possible. And I was in seminary no less, studying God no less, seeking God with every breath of my brain and every fiber of my body—I thought.
God was not in my head alone, or my mind. I didn’t believe in the intellectual God except on an academic test. I believed in that only partially, but I really sought out the God who would listen and maybe grin and thus make something new happen. This God I sought, and sought to imitate.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, transferred to Sunday.
Ever seen someone transfigured, or felt so yourself? I think I witnessed this kind of sudden transformation once when I was a chaplain in an alcohol/drug treatment center. The staff always referred to me those patients (most all of them) who had difficulty with the Twelve Step Recovery program’s insistence on God, or Higher Power, as an essential ingredient for a good recovery.
A young man I'll call John was referred to me once who told me he had never heard of God. I was aghast. Never? Never. Many people are negative, but this man had never ever heard of God. I fell mute. We sat in silence. I think I prayed. Suddenly I felt a flash of defensive anger rise inside me, followed quickly by an insight with a question:
"Okay," I said to him. "Have you ever felt desperate and alone and helpless when you were all alone in some place where no one could hear and you screamed, maybe sobbed, and called out, HELP! Who did you think you were calling?"
Young John looked up at me, startled. "Oh," he said. "Oh yes, okay. Wow!" His whole face lit up. Then we engaged in a lively conversation, not about God but about him.
I don't know what ever happened to John, but I knew I'd seen a transfiguration.
I can see Borg’s grin even now.
