Experiencing the Real Jesus

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT. Gospel -  Matthew 17:1-9. Theme: Experiencing the Real Jesus

In today’s gospel, we hear about the Transfiguration of Jesus which took place after he had informed his disciples that he was going to be arrested and crucified. The fact that this mystical event happened on Mt. Tabor was no accident because it was an important place of a great military victory for the Jewish nation. And this is a key to unlocking the meaning of the Transfiguration. 

You see, many of the Jews of Jesus’ time believed that the Messiah-Savior promised by God was to be a great Warrior-King who would free them from Roman tyranny. They believed that he would give Israel another military victory, their greatest victory actually, by overthrowing the Kingdom of the Pagans and establishing the Kingdom of the God of Israel in its place. That this National-Hero would be captured by the Romans and be shamelessly put to death by them was the polar opposite of their expectations. That the liberation he brought them would be from sin and death, and that his kingdom would not be of this world, didn't even enter their minds. This did not fit in with their concept of a Messiah or what he would do for them.

Jesus bought the disciples to Tabor, the mountain of military victory, to show them that he was, indeed, the Savior-Liberator.  But at the same time, he wished to reveal to them who he really was underneath the flesh and bone of his humanity.  He wanted to straighten out their false understanding of who he was and what he was going to do for them.  Even God the Father entered into this revelation, confirming who Jesus was by thundering his declaration, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him."

Of course, the disciples did not at first understand the full meaning of what they had seen and heard.  Like their peers, they too were expecting a Savior who was a Warrior-King and Mighty-Hero, but Jesus would help to correct their misunderstanding by including two other heroes of Israel in this Transfiguration vision   They were not the political-military heroes of the Jews such as Joshua, or King Saul or King David. Rather, they were the spiritual warriors of Israel: Moses, who received the Ten Commandments and liberated God’s people out of Egypt, and Elijah the Prophet who called the people to turn from sin and worship the Living God.

Through the Transfiguration, Jesus was visually telling his disciples that yes, he was the Messiah, but no, not the one they imagined. He was God come-in-the-flesh and his victory would not be military but spiritual.  On that mountain, Peter, James and John learned a lesson that we call can benefit from and take to heart: that our expectations of who Jesus is and what he will or can do for us, are far beyond what we can hope for or even imagine. That’s a powerful message for us today

Like Peter, James and John, we can all develop false ideas about who God is and have our own short-sighted expectations of what we want him to do in our lives.  And I think that if we are honest about it, we must admit that our default expectation is that God will grant us all our wishes and make our lives as perfect as can be.  I call this a “genie-in-a-bottle” type of god.

And I think that this warped sense of who God is and what he will do for us is a major reason behind the loss of faith among those who begin to style themselves as "atheists".  And it's becoming quite common to encounter pop-culture atheists today, especially among the young.  But when you have a real conversation with them, you often find out that their budding or imagined atheism is really not unbelief.  Instead, it’s anger at or disappointment with this the false god of their expectations.  Very much the same way that the Jewish people formed a false idea of the Messiah and then rejected him when he did not deliver what they had hoped for and wanted.

Many of these new-style atheists had created for themselves an unrealistic god, a god fashioned according to their own making, a god of their own imagining and hoping.  And this false god simply did not deliver on what they wanted. Perhaps he did not hear their tearful prayers for their parents to not divorce, or did not bring these parents back together again to somehow form a happy family. Or maybe it was a god who allowed grandma or grandpa to die, despite the child’s desperate prayers to spare their lives; or who disappointed them in some other traumatic way.

But I also think that along with this personal disillusionment they have been listening to and following the false voices in our culture that drown out the voice of the beloved Son. They hear the voices of secular society, of selfish materialism, and of hedonistic celebrities constantly piped into their brains through music and social media. These voices lie to them and plant within them unreal expectations.  They are bombarded with the false messages of happiness through the accumulation of wealth, of popularity at the expense of moral integrity, of striving for happiness independent from the God who gives them life.

So many people today need to encounter the real Jesus and banish from their minds the false ideas they have about God and about what brings us true happiness.  When Jesus and the disciples came down from that mountain, he gave Peter, James and John the mission of sharing what they had personally experienced with others after his resurrection took place. It was not an experience that they were to keep to themselves. The testimony of those three disciples, their experience of Jesus on Mount Tabor, helped to form the very foundation of the Church and to produce the Gospels that give witness to Jesus. By not keeping quiet about it, they literally did their part in bringing hope to others and changing millions of lives throughout the centuries.

Our experiences of Jesus today, our meaningful encounters with him through prayer, through pondering the gospels, and in his real living presence of the Eucharist, can be like our own personal transfigurations. They can be times when God somehow allows us to see Jesus, with spiritual vision, in a special way and understand what he means in our lives. And as with the disciples, these spiritual experiences are not something that is meant to be kept to ourselves either. Our personal testimony is meant to be shared with others. 

By sharing what Jesus and our faith-relationship with him mean to us, by inviting them to come to Mass and encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, we can help those with whom we live, work and socialize to seek Christ. We can encourage them to listen for the voice of the Beloved Son speaking to their hearts. Like the disciples of the Transfiguration, we can bring hope to others and reveal to them the true Jesus, the real Jesus, in whom they will find the love, acceptance and peace that they have been seeking.