Transfigured Troublemakers

February 16, 1958
Akron

Stimulated by the remarkable gospel story called the Transfiguration, the subject today concerns transfigured troublemakers. The Transfiguration is one of the stories that we liberals are tempted to dismiss without much consideration because it lacks scientific validation. The astounding miracle is not likely to have been literally true to human experience. Imaginative persons might see the incident as lovely imagery and poetry created by the early Christian community as a testimonial of their conviction that Jesus was the Messiah.

Because Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets, messianic fore-runners to Christ, the glorious vision included their imposing personalities. Few tolerant persons could quarrel violently with such symbolic interpretations of this miracle story.

However, without being either critical of, or hostile to a poetic interpretation of the Transfiguration, one can also reason that behind the imagery and miraculous vision, there can be found an expression of the provocative fact of human social relations that many persons who are trouble-makers in their own age are crowned with glory and honor by people who live centuries later.

There is another seed of religious development in this gospel story. If we exercise the liberty of reconstruction, perhaps we can see Jesus and a small group, who were his closest friends, gathering in the hills to talk and pray. In the quiet, intense fellowship there would be created a clearer understanding of the cost of a faith which Roman rulers and their collaborators would exert great pressure to suppress. There were old folk-tale beliefs that these quiet hills were haunted by the spirits of Moses and Elijah.

According to the gospels the disciples were afraid. We can begin to understand why fear should stir when they thought they saw Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus.

Moses was the Law-Giver. Although he did not write the first five books of the Bible, he towers above all the heroic figures of Hebrew history. The impact Moses made on his life aid times was so great that three of the world's greatest religions claim him as the Law-Giver and founder of their faith, Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

But we would fail In our understanding if we saw Moses only as the stern teacher who became the embodiment of Law for several great cultures. Moses was also a revolutionist. He struck with violence at oppression. He killed an overseer who was abusing a slave, one of Moses' fellow-Jews. Moses opposed Pharaoh openly, must have conspired revolt secretly, and organized cells of resistance. Otherwise the Exodus from Egypt and the frustrated defeat of a powerful Pharaoh could not have occurred. Moses was a trouble-maker. Yet more than a thousand years later he is one of the figures in the strange religious experience of the Mount of Transfiguration.

Even as Moses was the personification of Law-Giver, so Elijah represents the fearless figure of the religious prophet who refuses to go along with the crowd. Living when the religion of most of his country-men had decayed, Elijah resists popular pressures. This is never easy.

Ahab was then seventh king of Israel. Because it was politically advantageous, he had married Jezebel, princes of Tyre. This Canaanite nation had a cruder, more-primitive religion. The priests of Baal were in the bridal party carrying with them the customs of the religion of Baal. For Ahab, this was politically necessary, or at the very least, convenient. The crowd went along with him; the crowd usually does.

Elijah, however, was determined to restore and exalt the religion of Yahveh, the one Eternal God. Neither Jezebel's fury nor the political maneuvering of the priests of Baal dampened Elijah's courage. He won a spectacular contest with the priests. Even when he had to resort to fight, because his agitation provoked King Ahab utterly, Elijah was conscious that the nation's great need was to find God in simplicity and morality. There was little real importance whether the national political structure crashed or not if the people had lost touch with high religious values.

Elijah was a trouble-maker. Yet nine centuries later he was the second figure identified on the Mount of Transfiguration. The disciples were afraid because, like many of us, they had the feeling that it was better to be a live coward then a dead, revolutionist. They knew that Jesus was a trouble-maker. The story of the vision goes on that they heard a voice through their fear, "This Is my beloved son, -- listen to him." Fear came easily to these disciples. Who can doubt that they nay have had some intimation that this non-conforming leader was a trouble-maker in the eyes of the Roman rulers, even though the poor and dispossessed heard Jesus gladly.

A skilled historian could make a considerable contribution to our store of knowledge and our fund of inspiration if there could be produced a study of how the world has been made better by troublemakers, -- persons who in their time were bitterly opposed, viciously attacked, but whose lasting goodness has been transfigured by time. This is why the jesting definition of the conservative, has rather serious historical realities: "A conservative is a person who worships dead radicals."

The trouble-maker is sometimes considered destructive, non-cooperative, a poor member of "the team." Time may transfigure him. There was a news story recently sent from Warsaw, which told how Poland's Communist rulers were preparing sterner measures to squelch independent writing. In that country if an author wants his work published, he must conform to the party-line. This, of course, is nothing new in the Soviet countries. What is of interest is the comment made by Party leader, Leon Kruczkowski, (NY TIMES, Jan 20, 1958) that "hostile tendencies were coming to the surface, tendencies alien to socialist ideology and exerting a destructive influence over the community."

One does not have to be a prophet, or the son of a prophet to predict that the influences that Polish leadership now calls "destructive" will one day be transfigured and the writings enshrined like the Declaration of Independence, The "Crisis," and "The Age of Reason."

Historically, the converse of the "transfigured troublemakers" is also true many times. The correct, safe, "constructive," position of power may carry with it influences alien to human-kind and civilization may be injured for generations. Bertrand Russell, with characteristic insight and trenchant language describes the conservative career of Germany's famous 19th Century Chancellor:

"Bismarck with extreme astuteness won three wars and unified Germany, The long-run results of his policy has been that Germany has suffered two colossal defeats. These resulted because he taught Germans to be indifferent to the interests of all countries except Germany and generated an expressive spirit which in the end united the world against his successors. Selfishness beyond a point is not wise," whether individual or national.

This is no plea that all trouble-makers will be transfigured, eventually, by history. It is a hope that we will make intelligent distinctions about why a person is a trouble-maker. Governor Faubus and Negro leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, are both trouble-makers. In the first instance I believe there will be no Mount of Transfiguration. In the case of the scholarly, young Negro minister, already faint streaks of the light of transfiguration are beginning to illuminate. Martin Luther King has been the living messenger of the power of love to overcome almost impossible barriers. He too reminds us that there are times to speak words of trouble: "The tragedy of today is not the noise of the bad people, but the silence of the good people ... there is a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds." (quoted Christian Century, 1/22/58).

Some of today's sermon thoughts originated in two books published last year, THE LUNATIC FRINGE, by Gerald Johnson, and THE SQUARE PEGS by Irving Wallace.

Mr. Johnson took his title from Theodore Roosevelt's AUTOBIOGRAPHY. The famed Rough-Rider was describing the "lunatic fringe in all reform movements." Ironically enough Theodore Roosevelt, himself, could be included among the "lunatic fringe," or the "transfigured troublemakers," for he was called a lunatic when "he insisted that the irresponsibility of men of wealth threatened to bring the whole capitalist house of cards tumbling about their ears."

Both these books bring additional bits of evidence to support the contribution of massive trouble-makers who became transfigured like Moses, Elijah and Jesus.

Did you ever hear of Ignatious Donnelly? In 1892 he wrote the planks for the party platform of the Populist Party, He included recommendations for the graduated income tax, a sub-treasury system, restriction of immigration, shorter work week, election of Senators by popular vote, and Government ownership of railroads and communication. Because of these political ideas, Donnely was not only included in the gallery of cranks, but also he was roundly abused as an "enemy of society." Yet today, everything he advocated with one exception is now generally accepted as good governmental democracy in our country.

Did you ever consider how many of the men and women who made significant contributions to humanity's real wealth of ideals achieved were jailed and persecuted? That doughty old social-gospeler, Walter Rauschenbush once said, "When God holds court, he always packs it with humanity as a witness."

The marks of persecution are important evidence. There is a legend about St. Martin of Tours. Meditating in his cell one day, the saint was interrupted by an impressive personage. "Who are you?" asked St. Martin. "I am the Savior." But the saint was suspicious (some say that saints must be in this world), and asked, "Where then are the prints of the nails?" -- and the Devil vanished.

Paul was a trouble-maker on two continents. He was beaten; he was jailed; he was run out of town. Joan of Arc, now a symbol of the right of freedom of conscience, was an object of scorn to the mob and was cruelly executed. Savonarola, the monk of Florence, with uncompromising ideals of honesty, holiness and community responsibility was jailed end then burned at the stake by those who tried vainly to suppress truth and justice. These trouble-makers were transfigured as history began to understand the nobility of their dreams and the courage with which they defended their ideals.

In 1688, England's Glorious Revolution brought to a head all the principles of liberty which had fought for over long centuries, A few years prior to that John Bunyan was imprisoned for refusing to pay lip service to the Church of England. He could have stayed out of jail by giving lip service to the law and holding a mental reservation. But he was a trouble-maker; he believed his right to dissent was more vital than his desire to stay out of jail. While in Bedford Jail he wrote Pilgrim's Progress. This allegory demonstrates that Bunyan was a transfigured trouble-maker. Behind the allegorical imagery of Mr. Greatheart, Judge Hate-Good The Black River, the mires pits and the Golden Mountains is the courageous principle that pure religion in every land has always supported, -- the denouncement of corruption, individual and social, and the holding up of better ways, not only for some vague future, but for now.

George Washington broke the king's law, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, John Murray, and all the rest whose names we revere, were either jailed or would have been if they had been caught. Lafayette and Tom Paine, fighters for freedom in both America and France, were jailed because they refused to tolerate despotism, even in the name of freedom, equality and fraternity.

In any age the majority is not necessarily right. Just because TV outdraws the forum, the study-group or the worship service is no guarantee that salvation for mankind is resident in a 24" screen. There are good laws and ways, -- there are bad laws and ways. To conform to them all, indiscriminately is to resign from the ranks of those who hope to progress. The irritation of the sand in the oyster produces the pearl. It may be the irritation in the body politic, the body religious, [which] produces pearls of progress.

You may have heard of that very peculiar animal, the Lemming, native to Lapland. The Lemming is about the size of a rat and multiplies at a tremendous rate of productivity. Zoologists have observed that at certain times of the year the lemmings start to migrate. Gathered in armies too large to count, the Lemmings, old and young, large and small begin to march. They move in a straight line, -- over mountains, through lowlands. They swim rivers and lakes. None of the lemmings go off by themselves; they all stay as part of the crowd. They pass through towns and eat their way through crops. Bears, wolves, foxes, hawks and other predatory animals attack the moving mass of lemmings constantly, but the countless swarm follows the leader. Multitudes perish on the way, but nothing stops the survivors until the end of the march is reached. More often this is the sea into which they plunge to drown while still following the leader in that straight line.

Only the sourest pessimist would compare the human family to the horde of lemmings. But metaphorically at least, we should be warned. The revival of wholesomeness in our civilization will come from the honesty, courage and vision of the minority, -- perhaps only a few individuals who are pointing the way like the frequently-jailed, and finally sacrificed Gandhi. In the end the few independent thinkers, who may be called dreamers, members of the lunatic fringe, or trouble-makers may be the ones who stand on the Mount of Transfiguration as leaders who have influenced humanity to more worthy goals and higher moral character, though they may not have stayed out of jail or off the cross.

David Hayeman, Universalist Minister, in a radio broadcast told the wonderful story of the Chapel in Leicestershire, England, built in the 17th century, when a good many hopes were at a low tide. A tablet mounted on one of the walls of the Chapel bears this inscription, "In the year 1653, when all things were throughout this nation either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, founded this church; whose singular praise it is to have done the best of things in the worst times and hoped them in the most calamitous."

The Hebrew prophets were the deepeners and strengtheners of the moral tissue of the culture. Truly they did the "best of things in the worst of times, and hoped in the [most] calamitous." It was easy to see them as trouble-makers in their own times, we will see troublemakers in ours, but we know that in the working out of justice in history, there will be a Mount of Transfiguration for those who have been concerned that the human being should become stronger morally and infinitely kinder to his fellows.