After the Transfiguration, Jesus has what appears to be an outburst of frustration. But is it? Maybe they are more revealing than that.
For Sunday
The Last Sunday after Epiphany
Collect
O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
“You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”
Reflection
Jesus is up a mountain with three of his followers in an event we refer to as The Transfiguration. It is one of the central stories in the gospels. It is also one that continues to confound and challenge its hearers.
Less surprisingly, what happens up the mountain always seems to overshadow what happens down the mountain after it.
The disciples, who had just returned from traveling all over and healing the sick themselves are now stymied while Jesus, Peter, James, and John are away for a handful of hours.
I think this encounter should be read as their being filled with just as much confusion as the Transfiguration. Because the disciples should be able to handle the problem.
That’s why Jesus’s words tear right through me whenever I read them:
“You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”
They hammer home at the moment of what seems like intense failure.
While it would be so much easier to talk about the Transfiguration, its fallout is far more troubling. And I have long held the conviction of not avoiding the hardest question in the text.
So what do we make of this cry of frustration?
This insult to the people? A statement that seems as directed at the disciples and the crowds and the poor guy who came as the bearer of bad news who just wants his son freed? I don’t have any easy or comfortable answers.
What I do have is an assortment of less-than-comfortable responses. And here’s the one that tickles my attention most.
When the disciples go out into the world themselves, they are able to be like Jesus. When Jesus seems to give three disciples special attention, suddenly the group isn’t up to the task.
We also see in the coming chapters a constant sense of competition which derails them and leads them to constant confusion. There’s something about the way they see each other that seems to get to Jesus.
The words, however, sting.
They don’t just sound like the voice of his frustration, but his judgement. And yet I also don’t take them as permanent or descriptive. He no more appears to be saying this is definitive of all time than he is just “blowing off steam.”
I suspect that these are words of disappointment. Not because he thinks we are bad, but because we are capable of so much more than this. In other words, Jesus knows we are capable, talented people. And that we are always worth the effort.