In the Transfiguration we see Jesus as he truly is: the Divine Presence, which was normally obscured within the human form. In our lives together as the Body of Christ, the trick is to see ourselves as we truly are — a fellowship of immortals, gloriously reflecting the one who is Light of the World. For us to truly appreciate those who share the pew with us we’ll have to imagine a little transfiguring in our midst.
Robert Burns (1759-1796) was a poet best known for “Auld Lang Syne,” the lyrics of which are sung badly every New Year’s Eve, which no one understands anyway, because Burns wrote in Scots and not English.
One of his other better-known poems is titled “To a Louse.” It was inspired by an occasion when he sat behind a well-dressed woman in church, and suddenly spied a creepy crawly he calls a louse on her bonnet, slowly ascending to the top. He was both fascinated and repelled by the insect’s journey. He can’t take his eyes away as the insect crawls among the ribbons and bows of her headpiece. Burns concludes with the following stanza, also in Scots:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!1
Which translates to: “If only there were some spiritual power that let us see ourselves as others see us. It would free us from many a blunder and foolish notion. Maybe we wouldn’t spend so much time or take such pride in our appearance.”
We all need to be brought down a peg or two on occasion by getting insight into how we appear to others. But more recently, as our churches struggle to make sense of who we are as the Body of Christ after the pandemic, we could all use even a healthy dose of seeing each other with God’s eyes. Perhaps a clue about how we look to God might be found in today’s passage about the Transfiguration.
Metamorphosis
This p
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