What Thomas Jefferson Didn't See (Reflections on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Year A)

“While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.’” (Matthew 17:5)

The Transfiguration as painted by Giovanni Bellini, 1490

I recently received a lovely gift from some friends. It’s a facsimile of what is called the “Jefferson Bible,” a rare volume from the Smithsonian Institute. The actual title which President Thomas Jefferson gave this document is The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Mr. Jefferson, it seems, was greatly influenced by the eighteenth century philosophical movement called “The Enlightenment.” This movement attempted to make logic and reason the basis for all government and conduct. The disciples of the Enlightenment weren’t real big on religion, and neither was Jefferson. In his later years (sometime around 1819) he took a razor blade to the Gospels and cut-and-pasted his own version of the life of Jesus, removing all references to miracles or divinity—including the resurrection. 

The story of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9) didn’t make the cut—literally!—in Jefferson’s Bible. A glowing Jesus on the mountaintop, a heavenly voice from a shining cloud, and the miraculous appearance of two long-dead prophets was not something which an enlightened fellow like our third president could buy into. According to Mr. Jefferson, things like this simply don’t happen. They are fairy tales which corrupt the story of a great human being and moral teacher.

I grant it’s awfully hard to make sense of this story which closes out the season of Epiphany. The Transfiguration might seem to us more like a TV commercial for Tide or Oxyclean than an insight into our relationship with Jesus. Perhaps we’re taking the story of this festival day a little too much like Mr. Jefferson did. That is, we’re so hung up on the literal impossibility of it that we miss its poetic message. Maybe the enlightened Mr. Jefferson (and history proves he was pretty darned enlightened—just look at the Declaration of Independence!) approached the story with too narrow a mindset.

What if the story wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but was an expression of how the three disciples—Peter, James, and John—experienced Jesus during that prayer retreat on the mountaintop? What could the glowing face and the dazzling white clothing represent? Purity? Glory? What if they saw beyond the earthly reality of their peasant teacher and glimpsed the total goodness of God? The dusty sandals, the sweat-stained carpenter’s clothing, the sunburned face, the hands calloused and dirty from climbing among the rocks disappeared from their vision and they saw their friend Jesus only as the embodiment of God’s love and holiness. Think of the love and awe they must’ve felt when they realized what he meant to them.

Think, too, of how they saw their identity realized in Jesus. Here was the man who actually lived in fulfillment of their law which Moses gave to their ancestors and the zeal of their prophets symbolized by Elijah. In Jesus they found all of their heroes manifested in one calm, wise, loving, healing, and passionate presence. It must’ve been a revelation so inspiring as to be actually frightening.

Have you ever felt that way?

I’m sorry Mr. Jefferson eliminated this story from his Bible. The ray of light which never shined on the Enlightenment was the truth that logic and reason do not run our world, and they never have. We are so much ruled by our feelings and emotions. But in the dense fog that is our lives—in the struggle to understand who we are and what we’re here to do—we need to use our hearts as well as our brains. And if we’re to be passionate about anything, let’s be passionate about Jesus. His is the only light which pierces our darkness. If we’re to understand anything at all it is because we heeded the words, “Listen to him.”

Thanks for reading, my friends. Keep looking beyond for the light of Christ.