The Transfiguration of Jesus - an alternative interpretation

Mark 9:2 - 9

If you read the Bible as a factually correct account of history that is without error then that is right for you, but today I am saying that there is another legitimate way of reading and interpreting the scriptures.

 In Mark 9:2-9 we read the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. But how should we read this message from the Jewish Gospel writers to the mainly Jewish readers and listeners in the synagogues at the time of writing? I emphasize, Jewish writers for mainly Jewish listeners and readers. It was not written for Gentile minds such as ours.

 The Transfiguration story was written some 30 years or more after the supposed event, and many churches celebrate it today as literal truth; as an historically accurate record of what really happened to Jesus.

 If that is your understanding then I encourage you to be faithful to it while you also engage with the issues that I bring to you this morning. In my experience, the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus was not written to convey factual or historical accuracy but to communicate Eternal Truth within its Jewish rabbinic Midrashic style of writing.

 Midrash is an ancient form of rabbinic writing in which the old faith stories were reworked into the writer's contemporary context to help people understand what their God was doing in their own time and place. But more of that in a moment.

 Notice that in the Hebrew and Christians Scriptures, mountains usually signified an important encounter with God, a place of supernatural revelation. Consider again the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. It is the Midrash retelling of the Moses story!

 Jesus took 3 of his followers with him as he climbed high into the mountain, probably Mount Hermon whose summit is in present-day Syria on the border with Lebanon and the Israeli controlled Golan Heights. The nearest town at the time of Jesus would have been Caesarea Philippi.

 Consider also Exodus 24, written 600 years before Jesus during the Babylonian Exile, where we have the story of Moses taking with him 3 followers high upon Mount Sinai.

 Notice what happened next in these parallel stories. A cloud descended upon Jesus and his 3 followers as they stood high up on the mountainside, just as a cloud had descended upon the mountain and enveloped Moses. Jesus was completely changed, and the story says that the disciples witnessed that his clothes became much whiter, like a shining light, just as the followers of Moses had looked on and are said to have witnessed God's glory covering the mountaintop like the light of a blazing fire.

 This is not a prophetic or miraculous coincidence - it is Midrash at work.

 Think again about the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, where the disciples claim to have seen Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. Consider what happened to Elijah at the end of his life. In 2 Kings 2, written just before the Babylonian Exile and revised at the end of that Exile, we read that Elijah was so close to God that God did not let Elijah die. Instead, it is said that God sent a fiery chariot and swept Elijah away into heaven to live in God's presence forever.

 The Jesus Transfiguration story started with Mark some 30 years after the death of Jesus and was subsequently copied by Matthew and Luke. Both Mark the Jew and Matthew, the most Jewish of all 4 Gospel writers, were steeped in Jewish religion, history and the rabbinic Midrashic tradition.

 Similarly there was Luke, the Gentile convert who found Jesus the Jew to be so fresh and life changing that he wanted everyone to know about it. So what were the Gospel writers trying to convey - not as history but as Midrash?

 First, Moses and Elijah are enormous characters in the Jewish religion, history and tradition, but these Gospel writers were saying that in Jesus they had found the One who is part of that same Jewish tradition and status of both Moses and Elijah. This would have been a profoundly important statement to Jews at that time.

 Just as the fire and light of God's supernatural presence was shown to be with Moses and Elijah, so in the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, there is the confirmation of greatness when the same fire and light of God's supernatural presence falls upon Jesus.

 Similarly, just as Elijah experienced something supernatural as he moved from life on earth into the eternal presence of God, so there was something supernatural in the death and spiritual resurrection of Jesus as he later ascended from life on earth into that same eternal presence of God.

 These supernatural experiences of Elijah and Jesus were not historical events, but they were similar in the creativity of Jewish rabbinic Midrash. But there is more!

 The ancient Hebrew thinking was that Elijah must come again before the great and awful day of the Lord. But there was no obvious evidence, at least to the disciples, that Elijah had returned.

 But in Mark 9:13 Jesus apparently deals with this puzzlement for them: "But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him."

 When, where and who was Jesus talking about? Have you noticed that the missing person from the Transfiguration story is John the Baptist?

 Here, using the gift of historical hindsight and theological interpretation, Mark is attributing to Jesus the explicit link between Elijah and John the Baptist! In other words, for Mark, Elijah has come again in the form of John the Baptist.

 Mark's Gospel had already raised this issue in ch.6: vv14 -15, following the execution of John the Baptist and the emergence of Jesus of Nazareth with his miracle working and wisdom teaching: "King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. He was saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him." Others said, "He is Elijah." And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago."

 Consequently, in the developing theology of Mark, Jesus of Nazareth now could be considered to be the Christ/the Messiah. This was a literary device - an interpretative explanation rather than an accurate historical record of what Jesus may or may not have said.

 When I study the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures I try to set aside my western thought patterns that have, all too often, treated Scripture as literal and historic truth. 

To treat these supernatural stories in this way is a travesty of what the Hebrew and Christian writers were doing. They were not always trying to communicate fact and history but, where appropriate, a Midrashic understanding and association between their contemporary experiences of God and the stories of the great leaders, prophets and events of their Jewish history.

 The Jewish hearers and readers would have had no confusion as to what the Gospel writers were doing. But to our western Gentile mindset, too many Christians for far too long have taken the Gospel writers at face value, as giving us literal truth and historical accuracy.

 By interpreting the Scriptures in that way, we have misunderstood and misrepresented the Jesus of history. We have corrupted the very heart of the Hebrew and Christian Testaments.

 It is such literalism that greatly contributes to the majority of people living in the post-modern 'western' world to reject Bible stories as being unscientific and therefore untrue, and with it, the Christian God and the messages of the Christian Church are dismissed with seldom a second thought.

 But why is all this important to us in these post-modern days in which we live? Why should we not just accept the Gospel stories at face value as they appear to be written? Why complicate faith with Biblical scholarship? Why should we not just simply close down our minds and believe the unbelievable and the unscientific?

 The reason is this: literalising what is metaphor and Midrash is killing the Church in our times and chasing away people who are seeking the spiritual but who cannot believe the unbelievable and the unscientific as seemingly presented by the Christian Church.

 Faith has nothing to do with believing the unbelievable, and the sooner we study the Scriptures with our post-modern understandings, Biblical scholarship and the Jewish metaphorical and Midrashic style of the writers of those Scriptures, then the sooner we will rediscover the authentic message of Jesus and of the early Jewish Christian writers and followers of the Way.

 As I study the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in the Jewish Midrashic style rather than through the eyes and experiences of Gentile literalism and 4^th century creeds, I am discovering many new and exciting things about the Bible, God and my faith as a Follower of the Way of Jesus. 

 There is a new excitement from reading the Scriptures with the fresh understanding that they are Jewish writings best understood, as far as we can, through the mind set of the Jews who wrote them.

 Surely the Church today needs to move on from the past and let go of the killing literalism of the Gentiles. We need to look to the open and progressive Biblical message to give a new direction to people who remain in the church, along with their doubts and uncertainties.

 We need to look to the open and progressive Biblical message to give a new direction to those who have abandoned the church because they can no longer believe the unbelievable and the unscientific.

 We need to look to the open and progressive Biblical message to give sustenance to those outside of the churches who are spiritually parched but who are seeking a real spirituality not found in trying to believe the unbelievable literalism of the Christian Church that emerged as a reaction to the Enlightenment.

 The future of the Church is with those who will ask honest questions of our faith, rediscovering the real Jesus through myth, metaphor and Midrash. In this way the Bible can be revitalized not only for today's sceptical, rejecting and dismissive generation but also for Followers of the Jesus Way who are seeking to make sense of faith in a rapidly changing world.

 To come afresh to the Bible, interpreting it as myth, metaphor and Midrash will help us to find a new and vibrant understanding of Jesus, leading us to a genuinely fresh expression of faithful experiences of Jesus that we can share with both spiritual and intellectual integrity with all who will listen.

 In conclusion, although the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus is, in my experience, not an historically factual event, nevertheless it is a sacred story packed with eternal truth. It is transformational truth to be lived in our day-to-day experiences as we encounter the glory of the presence of God within all whom we meet.

 

Copyright ©: 2012, Rev John Churcher. All rights reserved. Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.