"What Happened Next Will Amaze You" Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany - February 27th, 2022

Psalm 99; Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:12 - 4:2; Luke 9:28-36
 

Yasuo Nakajima considered himself an interesting person. A former competitive bodybuilder with an extensive knowledge of insects and plants, his main passion these days is his three Yamaha motorcycles, which he repairs in his living room and rides around the Japanese countryside for weeks at a time.

Thus, when the divorced father of three had been posting about his adventures on Twitter for months and had only netted six followers, he was disappointed. “No-one wants to read what a middle-aged man posts,” he later told interviewers on a TV variety show.

It was thus that Soya was born. Having seen his kids playing with the appearance-altering FaceApp on their phones, Nakajima—with a few taps—transformed himself into an attractive young woman. He created a new Twitter handle—a mash-up of his kids’ names—and began posting as his new persona. Soya did all the things Yasuo did… repaired the bikes, posed at scenic overlooks, talked about life. When he was frustrated, it showed in her normally-beaming face.

Unsurprisingly, Soya’s posts were far more popular than Yasuo’s had been. Before long, she had thousands of followers, and Yasuo began adjusting his real-life appearance to make the ruse more effective, growing out his hair and experimenting with skin care treatments to help the app do its job. Soya’s manner of speech—though sprinkled with emojis —was largely a product of Yasuo’s own personality, and over time his two identities grew closer together. “When I compare how I feel when I started to tweet as a woman and now, I do feel that I’m gradually gravitating toward this persona … this fantasy world that I created,” Nakajima told the Washington Post. “When I see photos of what I tweeted, I feel like, ‘Oh. That’s me.’ ”

What began more or less as a gag was hard to turn off when each post was rewarded with so much positive attention. Over time he allowed more of himself to imbue Soya’s persona, and hers into his. He is far from the first person to experience what Stanford University researchers call the Proteus Effect, where the drivers of virtual-reality characters, or avatars, start to adopt qualities of their creation as if they were their own.  

In the Internet’s early, text-only days, it was possible to reinvent oneself completely and thus escape the expectations that match your real-life age, gender, and appearance. Few people used their real names on message boards. Victims of bullying and abuse found a safe forum to escape their isolation. Virtual-reality platforms like SecondLife allowed users living with disabilities or insecurities to create characters who look however they wish, free from stigma or baggage. And many of them started to “own” those idealized characteristics to some degree.

It wasn’t until the advent of smart phones and social media platforms like Facebook that real-life identity checks became the norm, in large part so they can assert control over your wallet. And in the age of the “selfie”, it would be difficult to keep up a fake persona for long.

Until now. Advances in image-altering filters like the one Yasuo used, which can respond in real time to  every nuance of your expression, are making it possible for any smart phone user to create still images or even video with an idealized or distorted version of ones’ self (or someone else) that many others will unquestioningly accept as real. Researchers are eyeing this with fear that blurring the lines between fantasy and reality will have damaging effects on our culture’s standards of beauty, and with it our collective sense of self-worth. Child psychologists are already worried about the effect this is having, particularly on young women and girls. Some "deepfake" influencers, as they are known, have been exposed with side-by-side photos of their true, less-perfect selves. It could also have profound political or legal implications if we can no longer assume that a video of a politician speaking about foreign policy is really and truly that person saying those words.  

Once Soya’s popularity had taken off, Yasuo’s debated what backlash there might be if he was “outed” especially how his kids might react. Our choices—even when they’re good ones for us—can have a real impact on the people who know us, or think they do. As we heard in the reading from Exodus as well as Luke’s Gospel, humans generally crave predictability. We expect those in our lives to be the people they have always been. When someone close to us reveals that they have been carrying a secret or that they are changing the trajectory of their life in a way that does not match our image of them, we can find it disconcerting and don’t know how to react. We may find ourselves like Peter, babbling about construction projects in a misguided show of support, but more often find ourselves wanting to bury our heads in the sand like the Israelites around Moses, rather than cope with the cousin who wants to be called by a new name or referred to with pronouns we don’t know how to pronounce.

The transgender people I worked with at Integrity and the OASIS all asserted they did not “become” the other gender when they transitioned. They were always that person; they were just finally allowed to fully be that person in the world. In other words, they were not putting on a mask; they were finally taking it off. That insight helped me relate a little better to what the apostles, including His own siblings, must have felt when Jesus told them, “I am still the man you have known all this time. But I am also, and always have been, God.” and also His heartache when time and time again they—and we—don’t get it.

For his part, Yasuo does not identify as transgender, nor did he try to gain any reward through his deception, a practice called catfishing. But he realized last spring that fans were starting to realize there was more to Soya than met the eye. Perhaps unconsciously, he had allowed glimpses of his unaltered body and mannerisms to slip into her world. After struggling with the possible consequences for a while, finally one night he posted an image on her account of a motorcycle with his unaltered face visible in the mirrors.

To his amazement, his fans by and large took the revelation in stride. Beyond the flurry of media attention to the technical novelty of his “creation”, people, including his own kids, seemed to understand that Soya—though not a real person—is authentically part of who Yasuo is. While he may have masked himself in a way that was more likely to get us to notice, the stories he shared were his own, and the number of people following Soya’s adventures continues to grow.

I am not suggesting there was anything particularly admirable about the path Yasuo took, but as someone of similar vintage who spends probably too much time online, I do understand his motivation. The social internet is clearly ruled by the young and the genetically gifted. I may think my long-winded stories are interesting, my dad jokes are funny and my pictures are pretty, but the algorithm apparently disagrees and saves opportunities to be seen—called impressions—for the more-sought-after demographic, leaving me with the digital crickets, scrolling through the carefully curated versions of their lives that the beautiful people deign to share. So I can look at another guy’s long-haired midlife crisis with some empathy.

I think the take-away here is not so much what Yasuo did or why, but how the public responded when he came clean. Each of us faces the choice of how to react when those we love reveal layers of themselves—be they dreams or shortcomings or simple, hard truths. Maybe we would inwardly prefer that they continue to masking these aspects of themselves, at least when there’s company, while Grandma’s alive, in front of the neighbors. However—as Paul said—isn’t it us, then, who stubbornly keep putting on a veil, over our minds?

God—who sees past any filters we can dream up—thinks we can do better.  As Paul told the Corinthians, “All of us, with unveiled faces, are seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

Let us pray and strive to bring about the realm of heaven right here… that we might all have the grace to welcome and listen to even those whose choices or ideas challenge us… maybe even especially them. That this can and will be a place where no masks—physical or metaphorical—are needed, so that all who enter can feel seen and heard and safe and loved… just as they are.

Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?

The Last Sunday After the Epiphany

Exodus 34:29-35
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-43


I spent most of the past week in that slightly foggy state brought about by a cold. I’m not telling you this in a plea for sympathy, but it may give some context to the rest of what you’re going to hear. It definitely helped me identify with the followers in today’s readings, who were left trying to process events seemingly out of a fever dream. This is your brain. This is your brain on NyQuil.

I tend to fixate on strange details even while operating at 100%, and my preparation for this morning was no exception. With all the glowing faces and booming voices in today’s readings, the thing that caught my attention was that little veil that Moses kept playing with. Go in to talk to God… take off the veil. Come out to talk to the people… put on the veil.. What was that all about? The people of Israel are about to embark on a new covenant with God, with new rules for life, and here their leader is, having his own personal masquerade party.

"Mardi Gras Mask" by Caitlin Reagan
Used under Creative Commons License. Some Rights Reserved

Speaking of masquerade parties, Tuesday is Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday” has its roots in the church. It represented the last chance to use up ingredients like butter and eggs, back in the time when Christians abstained from not just meat but all rich foods throughout Lent, not just on Fridays. This rigorous dietary observance had a practical aspect as well: meat that they had stored away for winter was nearing the end of its usefulness, and there would be lean days ahead until spring produce was ready.

Mardi Gras marks the end of a season known as “Carnival” (literally “farewell to meat”) which may have been adapted from the Roman pagan festival of Saturnalia. In the Middle Ages, when Lent was a period of intense spiritual practice and self-discipline, people needed a good party first to get themselves in the right frame of mind.

As Europeans colonized various parts of the world, they brought these traditions with them, where they would get combined with and flavored by indigenous practices. Different cultures at various times in history have marked the period with more of a wild party atmosphere that would overtake a whole city, still true today particularly in New Orleans, Rio, and Sydney, to name but a few.

Even today there is a scattered practice across the various mainline churches to informally designate the last Sunday before Lent as Mardi Gras Sunday. Some churches will have special brass music at worship, cajun food or even a dance. In the Anglican church, pancakes became the symbolic food of choice, and I hope you will all join us for some on Tuesday night.

Masks, costumes, and other disguises have always figured strongly in the observance of Carnival. From the earliest days, it was an opportunity for commonfolk to put on rich regalia, sometimes poking fun at their wealthy neighbors or otherwise putting the social order on its head.

Venice specifically has a tradition of elaborate masks, which were allowed to be worn from the Feast of St. Stephen (December 26th) until Lent began as a temporary escape from the city’s rigid social hierarchy. This practice lasted from the 12th century until 1797, and was revived in 1979. Carnival of Venice, as the song goes, is again a major celebration and tourist attraction.

On my last trip to New Orleans, I visited a little museum in the Treme neighborhood that showcases the tradition of “Mardi Gras Indians”. These groups of African-Americans pay homage to the native american tribes around the city who once sheltered people escaping slavery, by creating elaborate beaded and feathered costumes. Each outfit takes six to nine months to make, weighs up to 100 pounds, and is generally worn once or only a few times.

In modern-day Belize, prominent community leaders cross-dress or wear decadent costumes while dancing for money and prizes in a traveling band known as a comparsa. Carnival in all its forms presents an opportunity to level the social playing field and escape the norms of behavior that are otherwise expected, and in some times and places brutally enforced.

.But let’s get back to Moses and that veil, shall we? Moses, unable to contain the glow his face took on after speaking to God, covers himself with a veil to soothe his frightened followers. Likewise in the Gospel, Jesus appears transformed into dazzling white before three of his disciples, accompanied by Moses and Elijah, which renders the sleep-deprived Peter incoherent.

Why do you suppose the followers in both these stories were so disturbed by the change they observed in their leader? Moses, surely somewhat enraptured from his one-on-one encounter with the Almighty, didn’t even notice his face had changed until it was pointed out to him. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit bad for him, like “Hey, P.S. I just spoke to God! But sorry if my suntan is freaking you out.” Likewise, I wonder if Jesus, bemused by Peter’s reaction, was tempted to tell his dumbfounded disciples “Fasten your seatbelts, kids. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

But yet we can identify with the followers in both these stories as well, can’t we? They were tired, maybe impatient. They’d already been asked to take extraordinary leaps of faith, giving up their familiar lives and wandering into a physical and spiritual unknown. We tend to like for the people we know to behave predictably, and I suspect they did too. But now, in both stories their leader was suddenly looking radically different and they were being told God was speaking through him with new, life-changing commandments for them to follow.. How much more could be expected of them?

I thought we would spend a few minutes on the kinds of masks we wear in our own lives.  Not actual masks, mind you, although that would make the office or the grocery store more entertaining. To mask or veil something, or ourselves, suggests deception. This isn’t always a literal or visual tactic. Sometimes it can be as simple as the details we include or leave out when telling a story. I think we all do this to ourselves and others by varying degrees, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes in self-defense, or to seem nice or smart or successful or normal. How often do we say or hear “how are you?” and the acceptable one-word response is “fine”?

But it can also be as profound as hiding a major aspect of our identity, like the people who live silently for decades with anxiety, illiteracy, addiction, or abuse; or who suppress feelings about their gender or sexual orientation out of fear they will be rejected by the people in their lives.

Then there are the physical masks we wear. We can say things about how we want to be perceived by others by the things we buy, where we go, and what we do, and we have a multibillion dollar marketing industry ready to help.

The online world introduced a whole new set of masks for us to play with. While we may think of social media as a way to present a more glamorous or exciting version of our lives to an online audience, it also allows people to tap into communities and exchange ideas that either cultural taboos, physical isolation or even political oppression would have made impossible ten years ago.

Anonymous screen names have allowed people to organize resistance movements or escape dangerous situations. However, like real masks which can allow anonymous injury to others, these online personas can have a dark side, too, like when they also allow us to spew vitriol at strangers that we’d likely never have the nerve to say to their faces.

It is not always with deceptive or malicious intent, however, that we embrace these masks.. Sometimes it’s because we don’t think the other person can handle the unshaded truth, and it’s easier or kinder to let them be with an alteration. Maybe Moses donned that veil to keep the people from being distracted while he tried to get them on board with what the covenant with God was going to mean for them, which was far more important, but Paul suggests he wasn’t doing them any favors, because instead of remembering the covenant, their minds went back to the veil.

But sometimes it’s because we’re afraid of how the “real” us would be received. Moses, you may recall, was a stutterer who was dragged reluctantly into a leadership role. When he obtained “that glow” after speaking to God, maybe he was just as uncomfortable with the attention to his appearance as his followers were seeing him in this different light. How often do we stifle our own needs or ideas for fear of sounding silly or presumptuous or “high-maintenance”? There’s an element of our culture that discourages thinking of yourself as too special, and thus we might take steps to “fit in” by dumbing down our dreams or putting them aside to be what is “appropriate” or convenient for those around us.

Yet when Moses went back in to consult with God, the mask comes off. And so it should be with us, as if God couldn’t see past it anyway! Paul tells us, “when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” How freeing indeed that we have a God who knows our frailties and selfish idiosyncrasies and loves us anyway?

My hope for this Lent is that we can all examine the masks we wear, the limits we put on ourselves and others, that are born of fear and doubt; That we challenge ourselves and those we encounter to be transfigured by God’s presence, and not hide but embrace the irrepressible glow that comes from God’s love for us. We have only to listen to to the words and model the actions of his son, whose covenant with us requires only love, pure and unmasked, for God, one another, and ourselves, just as we are. And what a celebration that would be. Amen.