The Rev. Keri T. Aubert   February 22, 2009

2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm 50:1-6

1 Corinthians 4:3-6

Mark 9:2-9

Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, RCL    

In today’s Gospel reading, Mark says that Jesus’ “clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”[i] This suggests that the history of the intentional bleaching of fabric is a long one. The fibers used to make fabric at the time were off-white. Fabric would have been bleached most simply by laying it out in the sun. But bleaching was also enhanced with chemical aids, in the form of natural alkaline substances such as earth and ash. Not everyone could have afforded the time and resources necessary both to acquire such fabric and to maintain the clothing made from it. Because the rarefied is more highly valued, it makes sense that in the Bible and elsewhere, white in general and white clothing in particular are associated with wealth, with the supernatural, and with purity. In a sense, the attainment of “white” carries all these implications today, and we are urged to its pursuit: we hear about clothes whiteners and teeth whiteners and even eye whiteners. Yes, we should all be clean and healthy, but sometimes it’s hard to know where good hygiene ends and mere obsession begins.

My first career was in chemical engineering, and in my first job out of college I worked for a company that made, among other things, chemicals called “optical whiteners” or “optical brighteners.” Optical brighteners are added to laundry detergent. When clothes are laundered, these microscopic fluorescent particles are left behind on the fabric, where there they reflect invisible ultraviolet light back as visible light. Thus optical brighteners make fabrics appear brighter and whiter, and therefore cleaner. It’s something of an optical illusion, because the clothes aren’t actually any cleaner. In fact, though they look cleaner, they’re arguably dirtier, because they’re carrying a film derived from some seriously toxic chemicals.[ii] This is merely one indication that we may have gone overboard in our obsession with white, but I can relate to the urge.

Both my parents grew up poor during the depression. Both were taught that they might not have fancy clothing, but their clothes and their bodies could still be neat and clean. For my family, it was about self-respect, but it was also about trying very hard not to lose socio-economic ground. These values were passed on to me. For me it was also about self-respect, but it was also about improving on the hard-won socio-economic gains my parents had made. And so, if my family is any indication, the attainment of white is part of maintaining or even advancing one’s place in society. Maybe it’s not holiness exactly, but we might think of it as a sort of civil sanctity. If you can’t attain white, literally and metaphorically, then you might not measure up. If we consider the implications of this in terms of race, if you’re not white, then you might never measure up.

I first moved to Vermont in the fall of 1999. That first winter and spring, I lived in Plainfield. Lacking other employment, but enjoying the blessing of economic security, I decided it was my opportunity to realize a lifelong dream of working with horses, and so I took a job at Water Tower Farm in Marshfield. Mostly I spent my time mucking stalls. I loved almost every minute of it. Perhaps it is easier to love hard work when you know it is short-term. It was a dirty, smelly job. I wore my grubbiest clothes, which no amount of laundering seemed to completely clean. And after a day of work, well, you can imagine what I looked and smelled like. I soon began to notice that, when I stopped at a store on the way home from work, people seemed to look at me differently and treat me less respectfully than they did when I was dressed in my usual manner.

My suspicions about this were confirmed one day as I mucked stalls at the farm. Most of the owners who boarded horses at the farm were friendly and kind, and I made several friends among them. But there was one owner who treated me and the other staffperson as if we were invisible. His wife was quite friendly, and so I knew some things about him—for example, that he was a physician—but he had never spoken to me before. That day he had a question, and I was the only person in the barn. After I gave him his answer, I could see him stop and really notice me for the first time. Something about my response failed to fit with his previous assumptions about me. And so he asked me a question, “What do you do?”

I thought I knew what he was getting at—that I couldn’t possibly be just a farmworker. But I was “just a farmworker,” and happy to be one. And so I leaned on my rake and answered, “I work here.” “No,” he said, “what do you really do.” I didn’t want to affirm his presumptions, but I didn’t know what else to say, so I reluctantly replied that I had been a chemical engineer and technical writer. Suddenly he wanted to talk. This information didn’t make me any more or less deserving of his respect. Nonetheless my esteem rose suddenly in his mind, and I was no longer invisible.

For personal and social reasons, maybe it makes sense that, despite my own experiences, I still want my whites to be white. And maybe it also makes sense that, despite my own experiences, at times I catch myself assessing others who are not so metaphorically neat and clean, and uncharitably so. If I want my whites to be white, perhaps it is also inevitable that I negatively judge those whose whites tend toward gray. You’d think I would know better, yet the voice of judgment sneaks into my head. And if I tend to judge, then I am probably also concerned less about the other person and more concerned about losing ground myself. It is this very tension that advertisers tap into when they sell laundry detergent and teeth whiteners and eye whiteners. It is this very tension that advertisers tap into when they sell Botox injections and fad diets and just about anything else. Ultimately, it’s a standard that none of us can attain.

Let’s back up here and return to our Gospel reading. Mark says, Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”[iii] We mark today as Transfiguration Sunday, but it’s perhaps worth noting that the word transfiguration is not one that we commonly use. In my mind it is attached to this singular religious event; I can think of no secular application. While the use of such a rarefied word helps to mark this event as special, it might also serve to distance us from it. When I think about what a “transfigured” Jesus might look like or what that might mean, I find that I come up short. One commentator suggests that a better translation is transformation.[iv] Imagining a “transformed” Jesus may be a bit closer to our sensibilities, but we might be even better off going back to the original Greek. The Greek word that Mark uses in this story is actually a variation on the word metamorphosis. And so, rather than say that Jesus was “transfigured,” we might therefore say that Jesus was “metamorphosed.”

Metamorphosis is of course the word scientists use to describe the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The butterfly has long been a Christian symbol of the resurrection. But maybe as a symbol it works for more than that. Now, I’m not suggesting that you think of Jesus and picture a caterpillar. Or, I’m not suggesting exactly that. This is the last Sunday of the season after the Epiphany, and so we remember the ultimate revealing of the human Jesus as the divine God. Jesus is God made flesh but not only God made flesh; Jesus is also bringer of the divine light to each one of us and to every other person.

I think our challenge is, when we look at a caterpillar, to also see the butterfly. Whether a person is a farmworker or a chemical engineer, whether they live in the White House or in the entryway to a business on Church Street, each person has a story that is uniquely theirs and that is uniquely precious. For me, for you, for everyone, the circumstances in which we find ourselves are not who we are. They do not define our value as a human being. We are part of and yet more than the position we happen to be occupying at any moment. Further, the people with whom we interact are not defined by their interaction with us; they are ever so much more than that.

Unfortunately, judgment still has a place in my life, and so it is something that I still need to work on. But it happens less than it used to, and I think that has been one of the many blessings of my assumption-challenging work with disadvantaged people. Every once in a while, with family, with friend, or with stranger, God saves me from my own judgment. Just at the moment when I can feel judgment setting in, I am blessed instead with something else. I can feel God’s love enveloping us, and I can see God’s light surrounding us. God is with us and in us.

God calls each one of us to strive to listen to Jesus, and that means listening to the Christ whom we seek and serve in all persons. May we continue to open our hearts so that we can be filled with God’s light. May that light bleach our hearts with purity and holiness and love.