* not regard Jesus as divine or as a sacrifice or atonement or ransom or a substitute for me. * know an experience of “the resurrected Jesus” or any other positive divine experience as an experience of the immediate and tangible presence of God, to know with confidence the reality of being and being in and of the Kingdom of God.
Both in message and self-understanding, Jesus was non-messianic and non-eschatological. Because Jesus was effective as a messenger and successful as an example, he was killed. * know Jesus as: an intelligent compassionate Jewish mystic who had a strong persistent connection to and participation in and understanding of God who could explain the reality of God to others and introduce them to a personal experience of God and a personal relationship with God a messenger of the Good News and an example of the Kingdom of God. Although I struggle with this word of wisdom, I believe he’s right – If we’re going to understand and appreciate the story of the Transfiguration, we must trust our imaginations. Auden’s suggestion that Christians need to be poets. Since I’m not much into poetry (though I do love music) and I don’t read a lot of novels (though I do like movies), I struggle with poet W.H. Now, I’m a rather analytical, rationalist type, and so this takes some doing on my part. Without imagination, you might end up doing what Jefferson did and start cutting out the parts of the gospel that don’t seem to make sense to the rational mind. As we attend to this story, it becomes clear that understanding the gospels requires a bit of imagination. In this scene from Matthew’s gospel, we watch as Jesus is transfigured and transformed so that we might see more fully the presence of God in him. This morning we’re taking a brief detour to another mountain, where Jesus’ identity is more fully revealed to us. For the past several weeks we’ve been with Jesus on a mountain being instructed in the ways of God’s realm.
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