I preached this sermon on Sunday, February 15 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH.
I didn’t grow up in a churchgoing family, so there wasn’t any religious art in our house. No pictures of Jesus on the wall or images of the saints. If you have ever visited my office here at church, though, you’ll see that I’ve made up for lost time. I’ve got icons and I’ve got statues and I’ve got drawings of Jesus and of Mary and Jesus with Mary, and I’ve got praying hands and prayer beads and portraits of my favorite saints and on and on and on. And I love it all!
But I noticed something this week as I was sitting in my office ensconced in all that religious imagery. I looked at the images of Jesus and the pictures of the saints—these figures whose lives reveal the inner life of God—and I realized they all shared something in common.
None of them are smiling.
Have you ever noticed this in Christian art? I’ve visited European churches and countless museums looking at religious art with all of these depictions of key moments in the story of Jesus, and in nearly every one, the characters do not look happy.
Mary at the Annunciation often looks like she’s about to say some word other than “Lo” (if you recall my Christmas sermon). And the saints are either in the midst of being martyred or, at best, look a little bit dazed and confused, like I do when the alarm goes off in the morning.
And Jesus…well, Jesus is almost always depicted as either somber, or sad, or suffering, or stern, or some combination thereof. We’ve got one big image of Jesus in this church, hanging up on the wall behind you, and don’t look now, but I can tell you he’s not having a good day.
If I try to call to mind a famous image of Jesus smiling or laughing, I struggle. In the long and venerable tradition of sacred art, at best he usually looks rather subdued.
And maybe it’s just because life feels a little heavy these days and I’m hungry for some joy, but this feels off to me. We just heard the story of the Transfiguration this morning, and I happen to have an icon of the Transfiguration on my bookshelf, so I looked at it.
Now the Transfiguration is a supremely important moment in the Gospels, a moment when the disciples get to see Jesus as he really is, fully human and fully divine, radiant and beautiful. How exciting! How wondrous!
And yet in this icon, there is Jesus standing on the mountain, in communion with Moses and Elijah, and there are the disciples looking on and everyone looks…downtrodden! Dismayed! They look sort of like I did when I was doing my taxes this week.
And I thought, my God, what is it within us that tends to depict our faith through the lens of fear or pain or resignation rather than joy and peace and celebration? Isn’t it possible that, on that magnificent mountaintop, Jesus’ smile was as radiant as his garments? Could we dare to believe in a God who smiles sometimes?
Mother Alane said something lovely in last week’s sermon that has stuck with me: that God gave the Law as a gift, as a joy for the people of Israel. Not as a cold stone monument to power. Not as an impersonal set of rules and regulations to suppress human freedom. No, as a joy. As a roadmap of sorts to a place where God and humanity can coexist in deep harmony with one another. And yet, on down through the millennia, too many times we have depicted this Law and our Lord who fulfills it as a rather unsmiling affair.
Consider the reading from Exodus today. How do you picture Moses in that dark cloud atop Mt. Sinai? Terrified? Trembling? I usually do. But what if he was actually dancing in that cloud? What if the Law was pressed upon his heart in that hidden place like a vow made between two lovers? What if the stone inscriptions he carried down to the people were like a Valentine to humanity? What if he was laughing and crying tears of joy as he scrambled back down the mountainside, unable to contain his delight that at last he knew how to live in harmony with each other and our Creator?
Perhaps we would smile in the telling of it.
And what if the same could be said for the Transfiguration? What if Jesus and Moses and Elijah were not holding somber council with one another, as my icon shows, but laughing like old friends reunited after many years? What if the disciples were indeed awestruck by this vision but in that life-giving way, like when the sun breaks above the horizon and you can’t help but gasp and weep for joy at the deep, generous beauty of the world? Why don’t we tell the story like that or paint it like that?
I am not just trying to be cute or sentimental here. I’m just tired of the fact that, so often, Scripture has been used as instrument of fear and shame and gloom. I think, if the church is to meet the historical moment we’re in, we have to let that go. We have to tell and live a different version of the story.
I spent years estranged from my faith, believing that God frowned upon everything I am. How much sooner I might have come back if I’d realized that God did, in fact, love me unconditionally, that Jesus could indeed smile upon me, and not just look at me with pain or pity in his eyes. It took a long time before I dared to imagine such a thing. I wonder how many people are out there feeling the same way. I wonder how we can reach them.
Because in too much of the our Christian history, especially among the most powerful institutions, there has been a poverty of joy. A sense that this is all very serious business. And I suppose if a church’s primary motivation were to maintain or wield various forms of cultural force, then it is pretty serious.
I don’t know about you, though, but I am looking for something different from church. I am not here to win a culture war. I am not here to judge who is worthy and unworthy. I am not here to be an instrument of empire. I am here to be transfigured. I am here to know what real joy feels like, maybe for the first time in my life. I am here to love and be loved, imperfect as I am. I am here to learn to love my neighbor, no matter who they are. I am here to learn how to smile again after a long spell of tears, and I am looking for a God who smiles back. I’m not willing to settle for a Gospel that is anything less than Good News for me, and for you, and for EVERYONE.
I think that’s what the Transfiguration points to, in the end—not just the glory of God revealed, but the joy of God shared. The joy that’s found when we realize the divine light is hiding, not just in Jesus, but within us and everyone we see. That the whole earth, though it may seem saturated with darkness, will ultimately learn to shine again.
Hold onto that vision if you can, especially as we turn towards Lent this coming week.
So often I hear people say that Lent is all about sorrow and regret and somber things. Nonsense! We’ve probably just been looking at too many religious paintings. There’s no law against smiling in Lent. Sure, we may stop saying Alleluia for a while, we may get a bit quieter and more reflective, but really we are just clearing out some space in our hearts and minds so that we have more room to dance with God.
No matter what you have been taught in other seasons of your life, we do not need to surrender our happiness in order to be a proper Christian.
Quite the opposite, in fact. The world is starving for an honest, defiant sort of joy. In a culture that so often traffics in platitudes, in cynicism, in discontent…a deep and genuine smile might be the most beautiful, powerful, subversive, transformative thing we can offer people. Our religious art might not always reflect it, but we certainly can. So if you’re looking for a Lenten discipline, consider offering a kind word or smile to all the people you come across. It just might transfigure everything.
By way of conclusion, a funny story: I’d almost finished putting together this sermon on Thursday afternoon, and I was concerned that all this talk of God smiling was a bit absurd.
And then, suddenly, I received a text from Mtr. Alane. She’d just arrived at the retreat center down in Glendale and was feeling good about her weekend ahead and randomly attached the snapshot of a picture she’d seen hanging on the wall.
And I kid you not, it was a picture of Jesus with a smile on his face.
I see what you did there, Holy Spirit. I see you, Lord.
Help us all to truly see you. Transfigure our hearts to be like yours. Help us to dance with you in that bright cloud. Give us your joy.
By Another Road 