“Elephants and Donkeys, Super Tuesday, and Transfiguration”

Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9; Psalm 99

Rev. David A. Kaden

February 3, 2008

An elderly gentleman was sitting on a park bench, basking in the sun, when another elderly fellow sat down. They looked at each other for a moment but did not speak. Both men sat there, staring straight ahead.

After a while, one of them heaved a big, heartfelt sigh.

The other stood up immediately and said, "If you're going to start talking politics, I'm leaving."

I saw a bumper sticker downtown recently, which said, ‘Don’t vote, it only encourages them.’

Super Tuesday is a comin’; so let’s talk politics…but please, don’t get up and leave.  We’re not here to be partisan.  It’s not the church’s job to endorse or support a particular candidate or party.  But—the driver of that car downtown notwithstanding—presumably, most of us will enter voting booths this coming Tuesday to select a candidate we feel would best lead our country for the next four years. 

Something to think about as people of faith during election cycles is:  What values are we bringing with us into the voting booth when we vote? 

Like last week, I’m again amazed that the lectionary readings for this week speak directly to the topic at hand.  In our gospel reading for this morning, Matthew tells one of the most bizarre stories in the whole New Testament about a transformation Jesus undergoes that causes his face and clothes to shine like the sun, while being visited by ancient Hebrew notables, Moses and Elijah. 

For a brief moment, while on the mountain, the disciples who accompany Jesus are permitted to see his unveiled glory, peering behind the shroud of human flesh to get an ephemeral glimpse at what is otherwise a hidden divinity.  They then experience the enveloping presence of God, depicted in the text as an overshadowing cloud out of which a voice booms, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved…listen to Him!’

God’s voice in scripture is frequently described, but never fully encapsulated, in human words.  Sometimes it’s described as thunderous—with a boom so strident that it shakes mountains and earth, bringing down trees in its wake.  Other times God’s voice is likened to the roaring rush of a waterfall.  But, whatever these disciples heard, Matthew tells us they were ‘overcome by fear’. 

In this brief moment of deafening sound, brilliant light, paralyzing fear, awe and bewilderment, the disciples got to peek ahead in the story of Jesus and glimpse his resurrected glory.  This vision in the midst of Christ’s ministry foreshadows the coming glory at the end on Easter Sunday.  Human, but dazzlingly strange.  Tangible, but just beyond the reach of comprehensibility. 

Matthew describes this instantaneous change with one Greek word—metamorphosis.  In a flash, not only Jesus, but the disciples’ whole world, was transfigured.  They saw the flickering form of a promised Kingdom embodied in this person, Jesus of Nazareth—whom they would come to know as the hope of humankind.

Promise, change, hope.  One of these is spotlighted every time we turn on the TV, click on the internet, listen to the radio, open the paper, or watch a speech on YouTube, and get updated on the latest news of the presidential race. 

In this campaign thus far, we’ve heard about a politics of hope—candidates promising to bring change to Washington, transfiguring themselves into an image they think will most appeal to a diverse electorate.  But beneath the glitzy surface; the rallies; the handshaking and fundraising and promises and policies and patriotism of the candidates, is an underlying reality that God’s Kingdom is not going to come through the election of one candidate or another.

God’s Kingdom transcends our politics.  The hope for humankind is not this or that candidate; this or that political party.  It’s not the legislative process, or the naming a certain kind of Supreme Court Justice to the bench.  The hope of humankind is the transfigured Christ, who transfigures our vision of the world in which we live.

Like many of you, I happen to like one candidate and am currently registered in one of the political parties, but I’m not wedded to either of these.  I would gladly switch tomorrow if I thought another party (there are more than just two), or another candidate could better reflect the values of God’s Kingdom.  And this is the issue, really:  Who best reflects the values of God’s Kingdom?  It begs the question:  What is it that God values? 

The answer comes in Psalm 99, the text I just read a moment ago.  The otherness of God in this Psalm remarkably resembles that in Matthew’s Transfiguration story.  Three times the Psalmist declares that God is Holy.  Holy means other; set apart; distinct; some theologians have used the expression ‘wholly other’.  The Psalmist exhorts people to worship this God of otherness, while realizing that God will always remain just beyond the grasp of comprehensibility, never definable by paltry, finite words.

And yet, the Psalmist tells us very clearly what this mysterious God values.  ‘God is a lover of justice,’ he writes.  According to scholar Walter Brueggemann, to be called a ‘lover of justice’ means that God is one who is absolutely committed to justice.  God can be trusted to actively intervene in society on behalf of those who are weak and powerless. 

Four hundred and twenty four times in the Hebrew Bible, the word ‘justice’—mishpat in Hebrew—appears.  It is one of the most frequently mentioned values in scripture.  ‘Justice,’ writes Walter Brueggemann, ‘is not charity, nor is it romantic do-goodism.  It is rather a mandate to order public policy, public practice, and public institutions for the common good and in resistance to the kind of greedy initiative that damages the community.’

Justice is more than simply caring for the marginalized.  Justice asks why there are marginalized people in the first place.

Once upon a time there was a town that was built just beyond the bend of a large river.  One day some of the children from the town were playing beside the river when they noticed three bodies floating in the water.  They ran for help and the townsfolk quickly pulled the bodies ashore.  One body was dead so they buried it.  One was alive, but quite ill, so they put that person into the hospital.  The third turned out to be a healthy child, who they then placed with a family who cared for the child and who took the child to school.

From that day on, every day a number of bodies came floating down the river and, every day, the good people of the town would pull them out and tend to them—taking the sick to the hospital, placing the children with families, and burying those who were dead.

This went on for years; each day brought its quota of bodies, and the townsfolk not only came to expect a number of bodies each day, but also worked at developing more elaborate systems for picking them out of the river and tending to them.  Some of the townsfolk became quite generous in tending to these bodies and a few extraordinary ones even gave up their jobs so that they could tend to this concern full-time.  And the town itself felt a certain healthy pride in its generosity.

However, during all these years and despite all that generosity and effort, nobody thought to go up the river, beyond the bend that hid from their sight what was above them, and find out why, daily, those bodies came floating down the river.

Generosity and charity care for bodies—justice goes up the river and asks why there are bodies in the first place. 

Our presidential candidates are talking a lot about war and peace; getting out of or staying in Iraq.  They’re talking about immigration, health care, secure borders and tax cuts—these are all important issues.  But how often have we heard the word ‘justice’ mentioned on their lips?  (I’ve heard it…a few times.)  And, I’m not talking about criminal justice (though wrongful convictions are certainly justice issues).  I’m talking about real, 100-proof, Bible-saturated, prophetic, justice that transfigures the way we see our world.  Justice that convicts every society to take a long hard look at itself and see how its poorest and weakest members are faring, recognizing that a society is only as good as the justness of its systems.  It’s only as good as the fairness of its laws—the equality of its schools—the options it provides for upward mobility for all. 

One politician did say recently that he could envision America becoming a “Superpower for Humanitarianism”.  This candidate, however, isn’t a Republican or a Democrat, and won’t be on Tuesday’s ballot in most states.

In our society, to see how the poor are faring, we have to look at our cities.  In a speech he gave at the UCC’s General Synod back in June, Bill Moyers told this shocking story:

Under a headline stretching six columns across the page, the New York Times reported that tuition in one of New York City's elite private schools, kindergarten as well as high school, would hit $26,000 for the coming school year. 

On the same page, under a two-column headline, the Times reported on a school in nearby Mount Vernon, just across the city line from the Bronx, with a student body that is 97% African American.  It is the poorest school in the town.  Nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of ten lives in a homeless shelter. 

During Black History month last February, a sixth-grader who wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes could not find a single book about Hughes in the school library.  Nothing about the man, or his poems.  There’s only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass, none on Rosa Parks, or any other path breakers like them so significant to black history.

Except for a few Newbery Award Books bought by the librarian with her own money, the books were largely from the 1950s and the 1960s.  There's a 1967 book about telephones in the library, with the instruction, "When you phone, you usually dial the number, but on some new phones, you can push buttons."  The newest encyclopedia in the library dates from 1991, with two volumes, B and R missing.  And there is no card catalog in the library, no index cards, and no computer.’

This was 2007!  In America!

I can testify to similar inequalities in the places I’ve worked since college:  Washington Heights, Manhattan; Seth Boyden, Newark; 8^th Street and Central Ave., Newark—where the school one block from our house graduated just 10% of its students each year 

All of these places are less than 30 minutes from some of the wealthiest suburbs in America in northeast, NJ with some of America’s finest public schools.  I know.  I went to one of them that graduated 99.9% of its students and sent 98% of them to college each year.

Charity and generosity would care for underprivileged kids and try to pump more money into the system.  Justice would ask why there’s such a disparity between schools in America? 

Are we lovers of justice?

Not since the Great Depression, when our economy crashed, has the gap between the rich and poor been so great.  No less than the Wall Street Journal—not a Marxist paper by any stretch—the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, from last July, declared that we are living in a ‘Second Gilded Age’.  I tremble for my country, wrote Thomas Jefferson, because God is a God of justice.

Bill Moyers has said:

‘this new struggle for a just world – it's not a partisan affair.  God is not a liberal or conservative.  God is not a Democrat or Republican….to see whose side God is on, just go to the [biblical] record. 

It's the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor who are blessed in the eyes of God.  It is kindness and mercy that prove the power of faith, and it's justice that measures the worth of the state…Kings are held accountable for how the poor fare under their reign; Presidents, too. 

Prophets speak to the gap between rich and poor as a reason for God's judgment.  Poverty and justice are religious issues, and Jesus moves among the disinherited.’

What matters to God is not so much the political party we support, or the candidate that most effectively transfigures his or her image.  If the Kingdom of God arrives in fullness on Tuesday, or in November, it won’t be because of the election.  Instead, the question God is most concerned about is:  What values are we bringing with us into the booth? 

Are we, like the God we serve, lovers of justice?

AMEN