The hero we have
thumbnail image by Fábio Luciano Sorg from Pixabay
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
March 2, 2025—Last Epiphany C
Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
Each year, before we enter the wilderness of Lent, we pause on this mountaintop. Looking back, we see the power of the kingdom of God unleashed as Jesus heals the sick, restores sight to the blind, binds the rejected back into the community, forgives sins, feeds the hungry, and even raises the dead. Ahead, well, Jesus describes it plainly, right before he comes up this mountain: “[I] must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22).
The Transfiguration is often described as a vision given to the disciples to sustain them for the road ahead. After all, Jesus has warned them that they too will walk the stony path of sacrifice and pain toward redemption. So they will need something to keep them going, both to revive their spirits and to remind them of the goal. And this glimpse of what Malcolm Guite describes (in his poem “Transfiguration”) as “living glory full of truth and grace” just might quicken within them a “sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope.”
But I’m also reminded of what writer Anäis Nin famously said: “We see things not as they are, but as we are.” Which is to ask, in this context: what if the Transfiguration is not just a vision God has granted these disciples (Peter, James and John) to carry them forward, but is perhaps an indication that for this one brief shining moment (literally), these three disciples GET IT? That they have heard what Jesus is saying about the character of the kingdom of God, and the ways in which he and his followers will bear witness to it … that they see the humility, the poverty, and the suffering that lies ahead, and instead of saying “Lord, forbid it!” that in this moment, they already see it for the God-soaked victory and glory that it is. That it will be. That it ever shall be.
And by extension, we too might be able to see the coming of the kingdom of God in what looks like nothing but suffering and defeat. We too might catch that glimpse, and recognize that THIS is the way the kingdom actually comes, even as the road stretches to day after fearful day, and it feels like all you are doing is beating yourself against an unshakable wall of disease, hunger, poverty and oppression.
And we too could be strengthened by that, lifted by that, when we are reminded not only of what victory will look like, but what it will require: it will require us to sacrifice, to reject worldly ideas about fortune and success, to be willing to be LOSERS in the eyes of the world, in order to exemplify the victory of the kingdom of God. Which is healing for the sick and the wounded. Which is feeding of the hungry. Which is destruction of the unfair measures that keep people in poverty. Which is reaching out again and again to bring those who are marginalized to the center.
We will need to be able to see. Which might, as Nin observes, require a shift within us. In this case, it’s a shift in our understanding of victory.
Song-writer Paul Weinfield writes about the ways in which our culture has over-invested in a particular view of the hero’s journey (that adoration of a—usually, which is to say always, male—character who goes on some kind of a quest and is victorious through a combination of wits and violence). He suggests, “People constantly throw around the term 'Hero’s Journey' without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.
“In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.
“If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning.
“But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.
“So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault.
“Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall.
“Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you."
Some parts of your life will look like a classic hero’s journey: you will face a difficulty, you will fight hard, and then harder, and you will win. But much of the time, the hero’s journey holds more complexity than that. Defeat might send you in a new direction, change your perspective on the true goal, make you realize that your enemy is not what you had thought it was.
And God might just appear where you least expect it, and what looks like failure becomes a new pathway. As my spiritual director likes to say: when it looks hopeless, when it appears that the enemy is winning on all fronts, look for the ways in which God is coming around from the flank, and working his way through the cracks.
It probably won’t be happening in the ways that the world expects it to: through money, and violence, and worldly power. As Jesus teaches us, at this pivot point in his ministry, God’s real victories come about through a refusal to play by the rules of the world. Refusing to win by maximizing profit and earnings. Refusing to win by threat of violence. Refusing to win by finding ways to gain power over, or by establishing your superiority over and against another group.
Victory will come by refusing to play by those rules. Victory will come by living in such a way that you demonstrate (if only by contrast) what life and thriving can ACTUALLY look like.
And victory will only come, if you are willing to pay the price that the world will exact from you when you do so.
But … if you are deeply grounded in the reality of God’s kingdom, in what true health and kingdom values look like … then you will know the glory that underlies it all. Underlies the struggle and the loss and the sacrifice. Underlies the tiny, tiny changes, the often miniscule advances of the kingdom of God. And you too, like Peter, will long to dwell there for longer, to see it more clearly, to keep working to make it more visible. May it be so, Amen.