A Semi-True Story (Reflections on the Feast of the Transfiguration)

“It's a semi-true story

Believe it or not

I made up a few things

And there's some I forgot.

But the life and the tellin'

Are both real to me

And they all run together and turn out to be

A semi-true story...”

(from “Semi-True Story” by Mac McAnally)

Poor Brian Williams. He really pooed the scrooch when he told a semi-true story about his exploits covering the war in Iraq. As a professional story-teller myself, I sympathize with the desire to embellish details in order to make the tale more interesting. But news anchors and pastors trade on folks' belief in our honesty—the need people have to know that there's someone who will give it to them straight.

Of course, the Brian Williams' of this world have it a bit easier than I do. The stories they report often have the appearance of plausibility. This Sunday's gospel, on the other hand, the story of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9), tends to stretch credibility. I mean, who is going to buy the story of Jesus on a mountaintop miraculously glowing like a halogen lamp, his clothes turning dazzling white, and two long-dead prophets suddenly appearing at his side? Add to this the voice of God coming from a cloud and you might have a pretty hard time getting folks to believe you.

I wonder if we sometimes avoid thinking about the more far-fetched miracles of the scriptures. We don't want to have to confront our own cognitive dissonance, so we just file such stories under "Take It On Faith" and don't pay much attention to them. I once had a confirmation student who left the class because he felt that unless  everything in the Bible was literally true, nothing in the book could be trusted.

So what do we do with a yarn like this? Is it a literally true story that went down exactly as the Bible tells it? Perhaps. After all, there's no one around to say that it didn't. Is it purely a poetic analogy told to make a theological point? The way we answer this depends on how we view the Bible as true.

Here's what I think: I'm going to come down on the side that this is a semi-true story if viewed in the literal sense. I'll bet that there really was a moment when Jesus took his closest friends up to a mountaintop to be alone and commune with God. I believe that in that experience Peter and James and John came to recognize Jesus as one intimate with the Creator God, just as scripture had taught them Moses and Elijah had been. I believe that whatever happened to them on that mountain was so exquisitely wonderful and powerful and personal that they had no way to express it except in the expressionistic form in which it appears in our gospel lesson. So if you're into biblical literalism, this is only a semi-true story. The challenge is to see the truth which lies behind the cultural details.

But to me the more important question might be why is this tale included in the gospels at all and why do we keep coming back to it year after year? Matt Skinner, a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, reminds us that it's not important to have Jesus all figured out. The story is here in order that Jesus might be appreciated. (See his commentary at www.workingpreacher.org) If we are seeking to know God, and we look any place other than at Jesus—like to nature or art, for example—all we will find is a frightening and uncertain planet or a mirror of our own loneliness. But in the human person of Jesus we see love, compassion, inclusivity, forgiveness, sacrifice, thanksgiving, righteousness, suffering, and faith. In short, in Jesus we see life because in him there is reason to live. He comprises all those things which make being a human worthwhile. In Jesus we are touching divinity.

We may never know exactly what those disciples experienced on that mountaintop all of those centuries ago, but we really don't need to know. What is important is knowing that once upon a time real men found in this real man the metaphoric light of their lives which let them see everything in a new way. He changed them and scared them and filled them with awe and zeal and love. And he is still able to do this. Lovers of Christ are still bringing this light into the darkness of the world. News anchors may play fast and loose with the truth, but the truth of the Bible remains.

God bless you, my friends.