I was standing in my garden, looking at the dead leaves and stems, and considering how much work would have to be done to get the garden in shape for planting. The sun was shining, and it seemed like a good time to get started and then I remembered a message that I had received recently from a gardening website. “Let your garden sleep in. Wait until there is at least a week of 50-degree days before getting to work. This year’s pollinators are still sleeping under a coverlet of decaying plants and leaves.” I took a deep breath, inhaling the moist smell of damp earth, and went for a walk! No use in rushing the seasons. Resurrection will come in its own good time.
The Gospel for this Sunday describes the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-10). In the verses just prior to this passage, Jesus makes a public call to discipleship which involves three parts: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Ched Myers in his book Binding the Strong Man, is clear that this call to discipleship involves subversive political activity because “the cross had only one connotation in the Roman Empire: upon it dissidents were executed.” The call to discipleship was an invitation to share the consequences facing those who dared challenge the ultimate hegemony of imperial Rome. The first readers of Mark’s Gospel would not have missed the terrible implications of such a saying. (ibid. pages 245-246) In our day, after a long history of domesticating the radical message of Jesus’s teachings, it is not only possible to miss the implications, it is probable.
The domesticating of Jesus began in earnest shortly after the Edict of Milan, when Constantine embraced Christianity as a way of uniting his empire. Soon the cross was seen on the shield of Roman soldiers. Eventually Christendom itself was an empire complete with wealth, authority, and soldiers to enforce its laws. Jesus the peacemaker, Jesus the advocate for justice, Jesus the faithful one, was invoked to win wars, to support the empire, and to validate enforced conversions. None of this would have made sense to the earliest followers of Jesus who had heard the call to stand up to empire, not with arms, but with love. Jesus resisted the ways of empire. He broke the rules that excluded, condemned, and oppressed. He had an entirely different vision of what the reign of God meant.
In the Gospel, it is right after Jesus’ call to discipleship that Peter, James, and John are taken up the mountain where Jesus is transfigured before them and where the disciples see Moses and Elijah present with the transfigured Jesus. Moses and Elijah both had their own experiences of God up on a mountain at crucial periods of discouragement: Elijah when he tried to flee as he was hunted by authorities (1 Kings 19:11), and Moses when his message was rejected by the people to whom God sent him (Ex. 33:18). After hearing that the way to be disciples was to lead them to the cross reserved for dissidents or insurrectionists, Peter, James, and John were likely in need of encouragement. Like Moses and Elijah they had an epiphany of God in a glorified Jesus.
There are people today professing to be followers of Jesus who have embraced the idea of becoming dissidents and insurrectionists against the empire. They use the language but seem to have missed a few important points. Jesus wanted to include the poor and disenfranchised and Jesus did not advocate violence. The vocal dissidents of today espouse a future where only people who agree with them are full citizens. Resistance to empire in the days of Jesus did not depend on violence and force, and most of the resisters were subversive, that is they operated outside of the public view. For example, they cared for people who were declared unclean and fed people who were poor and oppressed. They shared what little wealth they had, stayed away from the seats of power, and engaged in non-violent, symbolic action. Violence breeds violence. Force does not make converts. Where we see violent trends today, and recognize an exclusive vision, we must discern what we are seeing and hearing in light of the Jesus of the Gospels.
The story of the vision on the mountain top is told immediately after Jesus calls his disciples to be resisters of imperial ways, in order to confirm that Jesus’ words regarding the cross are true. “This is my beloved, Listen to him!” What Jesus said was: “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” For the first disciples who understood what the cross really meant, it was a difficult message.
The first reading for the weekend is from Genesis (9:8-15). It is the story referred to as ‘Abraham’s test.’ It is probably one of the scariest stories for anyone who takes scripture literally as God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. No parent would want to be challenged in such a way. Many people reject the basis of the story because a loving God would not ask such a sacrifice from anyone. Some believe that the story reflects a time when child sacrifice, which was practiced by ancient people including the Israelites, was coming to an end. In the Islamic tradition the Quran tells the same story but with Ishmael, Abraham’s son by Sarah’s handmaid Hagar as the one to be sacrificed. In that version Abraham tells his son what God has asked him to do and the son, Ishmael, agrees since he has been raised to be obedient to God. In neither telling is the mother informed because mothers had no ownership or jurisdiction over the child of their womb. Both stories remain terrifying in the literal sense, which leads to acceptance of the simplest interpretation: Abraham was faithful to God and would do what God asked.
Perhaps this is why we hear the story today. Abraham was asked to do something hard and on a mountain in the land of Moriah, God affirmed Abraham’s faithfulness and prevented harm to Abraham’s son. In the Gospel, the disciples have just been given a hard task, “take up your cross and follow me.” On the mountaintop God affirms what Jesus has told them. “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Mountain tops are where the prophets and holy men and women went to encounter the Divine and discern their way forward.
Jesus’ words to his disciples and to the crowd – and to all those who are considering following him today - are a clarion call to resistance, a call to face opposition. Being a Christian involves: rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection, but we are not expected to do any of this alone. Jesus has already been to the cross. He has already sent the Holy Spirit to be our guide. We have a community of believers as companions and a season set aside for discernment. If we think we hear God asking us to do something violent or harmful, stop! Seek guidance! Ask whether that action fits Jesus who we have come to know as merciful, forgiving, compassionate, and loving.
May our Lenten season of prayer and fasting lead us to a mountain top experience.