“. . . a spirit from on high is poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field” (Isaiah 32:15) – Dennis Ormseth reflects on the cosmic Christ revealed in the Transfiguration.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary
Readings for the Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year B (2015, 2018, 2021, 2024)
2 Kings 2:1-2
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
“For those who are in Christ, creation is new. Everything old has passed away. Behold, all things are new.” 2 Corinthians 5:7 (translation by David Rhoads)
In the Transfiguration of our Lord, we behold God’s new creation. The light that shines in darkness in the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:3) now shines from Jesus into the darkness of the world that will crucify him. As the culmination of the Season of Epiphany, the event develops themes we have lifted up in our comments on the lectionary readings for the season’s Sundays. As in his Baptism, we are taken to a remote location where creation is the strong and sustaining witness to the meaning of his presence—at his baptism, in the water of the River Jordan; here on the high mountain. The disciples called from their work close to the earth are now challenged by the voice from the clouds to forsake their resistance to his announcement that he must suffer and die: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 8:31-36). As Ched Myers describes the event,
“The inner circle of disciples is taken up onto a mountain where they encounter a kind of salvation-history summit conference at which Moses and Elijah stand by Jesus, and where a cloud subsequently descends and the heavenly voice speaks. What is the meaning of the appearance of Moses and Elijah here? At the level of intertextuality, each of the two great prophets represents those who, like the disciples at this moment, beheld Yahweh’s epiphany on a mountain at crucial periods of discouragement in their mission. In the story of Elijah, the great prophet has for his trouble become a man hunted by the authorities. He tries to flee, but is met by Yahweh who dispatches him back into the struggle (1Kgs 19:11ff). And in the case of Moses, he is Yahweh’s envoy whose message has been once rejected by the people, and who must thus ascend the mountain a second time (Ex 33:18ff).” (Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988; p. 250).
Their shared experience entails a dramatic end to “business as usual,” in precisely that “fundamental reordering of socioeconomic relationships” which encompasses both people and land and so leads by a new way of life together to creation’s restoration. Supported by the vision of Elijah and Moses, Jesus and his disciples will now engage with demonic powers in a battle to heal creation.
Or is that not what the “mountain-top” experience is about? Is the God who speaks from the cloud not the God of all creation? Is the mission into which they (and we) are called by Jesus not the liberation of all creation? Skeptics may well protest at this point that we have introduced a concern for care of creation which is not really there in the Biblical witness. We think that the event of the Transfiguration shows that the concern is indeed there, and significantly so, as a hope for precisely “new creation,” in the joint appearance of Moses and Elijah. As Ched Myers observes, their presence functions to “lend credibility to the teaching Jesus has just delivered; the cross stands now with ‘the law and the prophets.’ This is meant as a dramatic confirmation of Mark’s repeated claim that his story stands in continuity with the ‘old story’ (1:2)” (Myers, p. 250). Granted that the credibility lent to Jesus’ teaching is of first importance for the church, we would urge nonetheless that the continuity runs in both directions at this juncture. For the church, “Jesus transfigured” is an originary theophany which opens access to the authority of the “law and the prophets;” it also invites both their study and, consequently, covenantal loyalty and obedience to their God, who as our Epiphany readings have repeatedly affirmed, is the God of all creation. Our first reading suggests that a prophet’s power grows in strength in the degree to which he revisits the full story of redemption: Elisha gains a double share of Elijah’s spirit by first journeying with him to Bethel, Jericho, and a crossing of the Jordan that is reminiscent of the Exodus. So also does the story of Jesus gain much of the spiritual power it has in relationship to all nations and the cosmos by revisiting and drawing from the stories of the Exile, Exodus and Creation. (This is indeed a very important aspect of this commentary on the readings of the Lectionary, with their regular linkage between Hebrew and Christian scripture).
Walter Breuggemann urges the importance of this point in arguing that the “practice of Torah is not only study; it is also worship. It is being in the presence of the One who lives in, with, and under this authoritative text, and who is present in the ongoing work of imagination from this text.” Obviously true for Jews, it is also true, he insists, for Christians: “the practice of Torah as a practice of obedience and imagination that issues in communion is a way of thinking not only about Torah; for Christians it is a way of understanding Christ, who is both the one who commands and the one who offers self in intimacy” (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997; pp. 598-99).
With respect to creation, Torah looks to “a world beyond nullification:”’ there is something “ at work in Yahweh’s interior, something to which Israel boldly bears witness, that works against, disrupts, and mitigates Yahweh’s free exercise of wrathful sovereignty. Something moves against destructiveness, either to qualify it or to begin again post destruction” (Brueggemann, p. 542). In the prophets (specifically Hosea and Isaiah,) Brueggemann locates the voice of Yahweh, “who publicly and pointedly claims authority to replicate the initial creation, only now more grandly and more wondrously. This promised action of Yahweh is clearly designed to overcome all that is amiss, whether what is amiss has been caused by Yahweh’s anger, by Israel’s disobedience, or by other untamed forces of death.” The promised “newness of creation” encompasses all things: “All elements of existence are to come under the positive, life-yielding aegis of Yahweh . . . so that hostilities at every level and in every dimension of creation will be overcome. ‘All will be well and all will be well’” (Brueggemann, p. 549; the famous phase is from Julian of Norwich, Showings).
“At Yahweh’s behest,” creation has three seasons: first, “blessing,” in which Yahweh acts for “the well-being and productivity of the world. Yahweh has the power and the inclination to form a world of life-generating proportion”; second, “radical fissure”: “Creation is not necessary to Yahweh, and Yahweh will tolerate no creation that is not ordered according to Yahweh’s intention for life. The world can be lost!”; and third, “a radical newness”: The reason? Perhaps it “is not in Yahweh’s character to be a God who settles for chaos. It is in Yahweh’s most elemental resolve to enact blessing and order and well-being” (Breuggemann, pp. 549-50).
Terry Fretheim shares Brueggeman’s view. In his persuasively documented study of God and World in the Old Testament (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2005), he, too, uncovers the deep thrust towards “new creation” in the events of the Exodus and Exile. The return from Exile and the Exodus, Fretheim writes, are . . .
“understood as redemptive events, forging the identity of the people of God. But the relationship is not so simple as to say: just as God acted back then, so God is acting now. The exodus is also contrasted with what God is now about to do in returning the exiles home and planting them in the land: “Do not remember the former things . . . I am about to do a new thing’ (Isa 43:18-19; Jer 15:14-16). The “old” exodus event no longer stands on its own as a redemptive and cosmic event; indeed, it is sharply reduced in importance compared to the new. God is now creating something genuinely new; not only will Israel be newly constituted as a people of God but also the cosmic significance of the event will be more wide-ranging in its effects .” (Fretheim, p.192-93)
God, Fretheim insists, drawing particularly on the prophecies of Third Isaiah, “has a future in store for the entire created order, not just human beings. For the sake of that future—a new heaven and a new earth–God’s salvific activity catches up every creature” (Fretheim, p. 194). And it is important, Fretheim concludes, that this “new heaven and new earth” is not simply a return to Eden:
The most fundamental difference from Eden is that this new covenant does not have the possibility of being undercut by human failure; that cycle will never be repeated. This new day will come when the words of Isa 32:15-18, 20 will forever describe that new creation:
a spirit from on high is poured out on us,
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,
……………………………………………………….
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
………………………………………………………..
Happy will you be who sow beside every stream,
who let the ox and the donkey range freely
(Fretheim, pp. 197-98).
Christ is this new creation to whom the “law and the prophets” give witness, and as our second reading from 2 Corinthians proclaims: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6). But as the disciples, having been silenced by Jesus on their way down the mountain, would struggle in subsequent days to comprehend, Jesus, too, would come into the fullness of “new creation” only after passing through the “radical fissure” of his crucifixion and death.
Originally written by Dennis Ormseth in 2015.
dennisormseth@gmail.com