Caterpillars and Butterflies

    Nature is a curious thing. In Nature, tadpoles transform into frogs. They don't change back. The tadpole is gone, it will forever be a frog. They transform. If there aren't enough female clownfish to keep the colony populated, some of the remaining males will transform into female and keep the colony alive. They don't change back. They transform. Caterpillars transform themselves into butterflies, but they don't change back. A quick visit to dictionary.com informs us that transform the means to change in form, appearance, to change in nature.

    

    That brings us to Transformation Sunday, a curious thing. How many things do you know of that can transform in one day? Not many, I bet. So how did Transformation Sunday get its name? In church, you learn as a child that it is marking the day Jesus was transformed. And that, is a very interesting claim.

    

    Let's look at the story for a minute. “As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning... a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my son, whom I have chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone.”

   

     So, Peter, John, and James saw Jesus, his face changed, and his clothes became bright white. Then, they themselves were covered with the cloud. Just as suddenly, everything, including Jesus, was back to normal. So normal, in fact, that, if we look at the next verse, “The next day... A man in the crowd called out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. I begged your disciples to drive it out but they could not.” The man from the crowd recognized the transformed Jesus immediately. So, how has Jesus changed in nature?

    

    Someone went to the disciples for healing, and they failed. They couldn't do it. Just the day before, God himself told them to trust in Jesus. Did they? No. The disciples drop the ball. Jesus actually loses his cool and he scolds them. “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring your son here.”

    

    I am pretty sure I have heard many adults scolds their children in the same exact way. Jesus said this to the disciples, my grandfather said to my father, my father said to me, and I am sure I have said it to my own child. Nothing changed. It has That, I'm sorry to say, tells me that absolutely nothing was transformed on the top of that mountain. Jesus did not change in nature, he was still preaching and healing the very next day, still getting frustrated by the lack of faith his chosen 12 had in him. Jesus merely changed in appearance. Where does that leave us and this beloved story? It leaves us looking in  the mirror.

    

    Let's examine this story again. They heard the voice of God exclaim that, “This is my son,” and that they should “listen to him.” Didn't God know that the disciples believed Jesus was the Son of God? Did God doubt the faith of the disciples? When I look back at the bumbling nature of that group, I have no doubt. God felt they needed a kick in the seat of the pants, as he has so many times given me. God saw their faults, as he sees ours. Throughout Jesus' ministry, the disciples, time and again, just don't seem to get it. None of them are exactly the shiniest penny in the fountain. They are just ordinary people, like us. Very ordinary. Any one of us could have been chosen as a disciple. Most likely they were more ordinary than any of us. We have heard story after story during the season of Epiphany about Jesus trying to prove that he is truly the Messiah. He has been building his ministry. He has thousands of people turn out to meet him every where he goes. Famously, 5000 people turn out at one point, because they believe Jesus to be the Messiah. Yet, somehow, Jesus himself has hand-picked 12 people that just don't get it. They seem to have less faith in Jesus than the thousands that Jesus is ministering to. Just a few chapters ago, Jesus told a woman that her faith had healed her, yet the disciples don't have faith. It got so bad that God stepped in, changed Jesus to get their attention, and then spoke to them himself.

    

    My mother has told me that she believes she has heard God's voice. Not a feeling, his actual voice in her ears. Twice. She also used to tell me, more than twice, that God was just a story to keep people behaving themselves. Then, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and she was unconscious and having a ruptured aneurysm in her brain repaired, God spoke to her. God told my mother that she was going to be okay. My mother was transformed. She became a believer in God. Then again, when she was having a triple heart bypass, God told my mother that she was going to be okay. Both times, she nearly, and arguably should have, died. Both times, God told her she was going to be okay. She believed him. She recovered completely from both surgeries, because God told her she would. My mother is still not a religious person, but God spoke to her, and she believed him.

    God told the disciples that Jesus was the son of man. God commanded them to listen to Jesus. At the beginning of this chapter, we learn that, “Jesus now called the 12 and gave them authority and power to deal with all the demons and cure disease. He commissioned them to preach the news of God's kingdom and heal the sick.” Yet, the day after God spoke to them. Most likely several hours after God told them, reminded them, to listen to Jesus, a man told Jesus he had asked the disciples to heal his son, and they couldn't do it. They didn't believe they could.

    In thinking, and praying, and researching the sermon, I have come to a conclusion that Jesus was not transformed, was never meant to be. He had always been the Son of God. Jesus IS God. How could he ransform? Into what? He changed, sure. That is, his face and his clothes changed, but they changed back. Jesus was not the subject of the transformation. Jesus was not the target of the transformation. Jesus was never meant to be transformed. Jesus was, and is still, supposed to be the reason for transformation. 

    

    The disciples were the subject, the target, of the transformation. God spoke to those disciples to transform them. It was their moment. It was time for them to break out of their cocoons, spread their wings, and take flight. But, like so many times in The Bible, they didn't transform. Perhaps that kick in the pants from God himself got the ball rolling, but it didn't quite do the trick, at least not that day. We know that because a man asked them for healing, and they said they could not do it - even though God told them they could. It took a while.

    

    It took a long while. It took until Jesus was crucified, plus a few weeks, plus a few after postmortem visitations, but they finally made it. They spread their wings and carried the message across the world. I can't be too harsh though because it took me a long while as well. I was a caterpillar for far too long. I was a caterpillar until I realized that God was on my side. God was cheering for me. Maybe not with a voice in my very ears, but in many ways I failed to recognize. I was afraid to recognize. I was afraid that I wouldn't believe enough, of be good enough at it.Maybe that is what the disciples were feeling as well. I was lost in my own ordinary self, not realizing that God made that perfectly ordinary person,and inside were all the trappings of a beautiful butterfly.

    

    So, here's what I propose. Let today mark the beginning of the Season of Transformation. Let today be the day God tells you to get the lead out, to listen to Jesus, or simply, that it will be okay. Then start truly believing him and believe him deeply with your every fiber. Believe him, and starting today, let your faith heal you. It may take a while, and that's okay. God may kick you in the seat of the pants along the way, and that's okay also. Begin. Make a start. Reach out to God and do something to begin the transformation of you. Just ask for it.

Do you want to be a caterpillar, or butterfly? Today you get to choose.