On Jesus and Scripture

 

On Jesus and Scripture

February 3, 2021

 

It’s a familiar enough story to most Christians. The lectionary many of us use makes it the Gospel reading each year for the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. We call it “the Transfiguration.” You’ll find the oldest version of it at Mark 9:2-9. Versions of it also appear at Matthew 17:1-8 and Luke 9:28-36. We’re told that Jesus took the inner circle of the inner circle of disciples, namely, Peter, James, and John with him up a mountain. “And he was Transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Mark 9:2b-3 NRSV. Mark gives us no details of any physical change in Jesus himself, just a change in his clothes. Matthew adds that his face shone like the sun. Matthew 17:2b. Luke says the appearance of his face changed but doesn’t say how. Luke 9:29a. In all three accounts something dramatic, something otherworldly happens to Jesus. He is “transfigured.” Secular dictionaries define “transfigure” as to change physically, usually for the better and sometimes in a spiritual way. Artists usually depict the Transfiguration by showing Jesus bright white with some sort of divine light emanating from him. It must have been quite the scene. Then it gets even odder. In all three Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration two figures appear and talk with Jesus. We aren’t told what any of them says, but we’re told that the figures who appear are Moses and Elijah.

Now, the story of the Transfiguration is striking and puzzling if we take it as a factual account of something that actually happened. Did it actually happen? Who knows? Maybe yes, maybe no; but as with every Bible story the important thing isn’t whether it actually happened but what it means. The meaning is (or meanings are) there to be found whether the story ever happened or not. I suppose the chief meaning of the Transfiguration story is that there is something special about Jesus. Perhaps he’s transfigured the way he is to tell us that there’s something divine about him, which of course there is. There are other meanings in this story too, and I want to talk about one of them here.

This meaning arises from the identity of the two figures who appear and talk to Jesus. They are Moses and Elijah, who are two of the central figures in the salvation history of Israel as it is told in the Hebrew Bible (which is the Protestant Old Testament and part of the Old Testament for every Christian tradition). Moses is the great if hesitant leader who leads the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Elijah is the great prophet who confronts evil kings and is taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. It is striking that they appear here and talk to Jesus. There is however a symbolic meaning to that appearance that I think many Christians miss. It has to do with how Moses and Elijah relate to Hebrew scripture.

Judaism today thinks of the Hebrew Bible as consisting of three types of texts. They are the Torah (or the Law), the Prophets, and the Writings. The Torah is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These texts are the foundational scripture of Judaism and hold a place of higher honor and authority than do the other Hebrew Bible texts. Among other things they contain the 613 laws that make up the Torah, which is also called the Law of Moses because as these books tell it God first gave the Law to Moses, who then gave it to the people. The Prophets are first of all the books of the Hebrew Bible with prophets names on them—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others. The Prophets also include some books that we tend to think of as more historical than prophetic—Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. The Writings are everything else. They include among others Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth, Esther, and Job. All three of these parts of the Hebrew Bible are sacred scripture in Judaism today, but that was not the case in Jesus’ time. In the first century CE Judaism had elevated the Torah and the Prophets to the status of sacred scripture. The Writings however had not yet attained that status. At that time Hebrew scripture consisted of the Law and the Prophets but not the Writings. Thus in the New Testament the phrase “the law and the prophets” is a reference to all of what was Hebrew scripture at that time. See for example Matthew 22:40.

In the story of the Transfiguration Moses and Elijah function as symbols for the Torah and the Prophets. Moses represents the Law, which traditionally has been called the Law of Moses. Judaism considers Elijah to be the greatest of the Hebrew prophets. He is the only person in the Bible who goes to heaven without dying first. Faithful Jews leave an empty place for him at the Passover Seder. They say he will return to herald the coming of the Messiah. In the figures of Moses and Elijah the Law and the Prophets have a come to Jesus moment. They come to him and converse with him.

So what do we learn from this element of the Transfiguration story? We learn how to resolve the most difficult question we face when we read scripture. The Bible contains so many voices, so many different views of God, and so many contradictions. What in all of that are we supposed to listen to? The God who tells King Saul to kill every living thing among the Amalekites? 1 Samuel 15:1-3. Or the God of Psalm 145:8-9 where we read that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love? Those two certainly aren’t the same God, but they’re both in the Bible. How do we choose between them?

Moses and Elijah coming to Jesus gives us the answer to that question. When we read the Law or the Prophets, or anything else in the Bible for that matter, we must bring that text to Jesus the way Moses and Elijah come to Jesus at the Transfiguration. We must filter everything we read in the Bible through Jesus. We must look at everything in the Bible through the lens of Jesus. What does that mean? Jesus taught us that God is all about love, compassion, forgiveness, distributive justice, peace attained nonviolently, and transformation of the world through an inner transformation of ourselves. For us Christians at least everything in scripture that speaks those truths is true, everything that doesn’t isn’t. Jesus understood in this way must be our guide to scripture precisely because we are Christians and not people of some other faith. To be Christian is to commit ourselves to following Jesus as fully as we can. It is to commit ourselves to living in imitation of Christ as fully as we can. It is to commit to seeing everything in the Bible, seeing everything in life actually, through the lens of Jesus. As an example of how seeing the Bible that way works let’s look at the foundational story of our mother faith Judaism, the story of the Exodus.

As that story opens the Hebrew people are all slaves in Egypt. Their lives are brutally hard. The Egyptians are working them to death and abusing them at will. They aren’t free or able to leave. God appears to Moses in a burning bush and says that God has heard the cry of God’s people and has come to liberate them. God sends a very reluctant Moses to do the job of convincing Pharaoh to let the people go. Pharaoh says no. So God sends a series of plagues upon Egypt. Several times in the story Pharaoh decides to let the people go but changes his mind because the God of the Hebrews, who supposedly wants the Hebrew people out of Egypt, hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that he won’t let the people go. The plagues continue. The last of them is so horrific that we could call it a crime against humanity if a human were to do it. God kills the firstborn child of every family and the firstborn farm animal of every Egyptian. Every family in Egypt loses a child, a valuable animal, or both to the murderous anger of the God of the Hebrews. Pharaoh finally lets the people go. As they are leaving Pharaoh changes his mind again and sends his entire army to capture them and bring them back. Through Moses God parts the Red Sea so that the Hebrews can cross on dry ground. Then as the Egyptian army pursues them into the parted sea God closes it so that all the men and horses of Pharaoh’s army drown. On the other side of the Red Sea the Hebrews celebrate the victory their God had supposedly given them.

What does this story look like when we read it through the filter of Jesus? We see that the story gives us a profoundly ambiguous image of God. There is divine truth here, and there is diabolical falsehood as well. This God desires and demands freedom for God’s people. When we apply our understanding of Jesus to this story we see that that part of it speaks divine truth. For centuries the story of the Exodus has functioned as a profound and profoundly true sacred story of God’s desire that all people be free, not least of all for the slaves in the American south. To that truth in the story we all say Amen! Thanks be to God!

But then there’s another part of the story, the part about what God does to the Egyptians. God makes their lives a living hell. Locusts devour crops. Water turns to blood. All of the men and horses of Pharaoh’s army drown. The firstborn child of every Egyptian mother and father is killed, all at the hands of the God of the Hebrews. Much of this havoc happens because God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that God can continue sending plague after plague upon the Egyptians. The God of this story is both a liberator and a mass murderer. The Hebrews with whom this story originated probably did not see their God Yahweh as also being the God of the Egyptians, as a God who would care about the Egyptians, but we do. Those ancient Hebrews apparently cared not one whit if the Egyptians suffered, but as Christians we do, and we must. Our Jesus filter tells us that the part of this story that presents God as liberator is true, the part of it that has God killing babies is not. In this analysis we have brought Moses to Jesus just as Moses came to Jesus on the mountain of the Transfiguration. Doing that has informed our understanding and use of this story in a profound way. In a profoundly Christian way. Our Jewish siblings may reach the same understanding of the story although they would get there by a different path. Be that as it may, the God we know in Jesus Christ wants freedom for all people just as the God of the Exodus wants freedom for the Hebrews. But the God we know in Jesus is not a terrorist in the way the God of the Exodus is portrayed as being. As Christians we accept and celebrate the liberator. We reject the other image of God this story gives us. That’s how bringing scripture to Jesus works. We won’t ever do it perfectly, but even if we do it imperfectly it will guide us through scripture in a different—and better—way.