Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss leadership, inherited stories, and transfiguring moments in Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9. The texts are appointed for Transfiguration Sunday, in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Claiming that Story (Transfiguration Sunday)
Voiceover Voice:
What do we require of leaders? And I think that might look different in different communities.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.
This episode, we have Joel Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education, and Tisa Wenger, Associate Professor of American Religious History.
They’re discussing Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9—yes, somehow we tricked Professor Baden into talking about a New Testament passage. These texts are appointed for Transfiguration Sunday, also called the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, in Year A. Here’s the text.
[Exodus 24:12-18]
The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there; I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up onto the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come back to you. Look, Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.”
Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Israelites. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
[Matthew 17:1-9]
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Joel Baden:
Tisa, we’ve got a pair of passages, one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, both of which take place on a mountaintop.
Tisa Wenger:
Yes, they do.
Joel Baden:
We have in Exodus, Moses going up the mountain to receive the tablets of the 10 Commandments, and in the New Testament in Matthew we have the episode of Jesus’ transfiguration. I’m not sure, despite the fact that we just started that way, that it’s immediately apparent to the average reader that these two texts are pretty well linked, thematically and perhaps intentionally so.
Tis Wenger:
Perhaps intentionally so by the author of Matthew. But I think also clearly intentionally so by the calendar of the lectionary, which puts them together.
Joel Baden:
Right. So really in both cases, the major leader of a movement, the charismatic leader and figure, main character of each text, going up the mountain and receiving something from God. In Moses’ case, receiving tablets, but also as we know, when Moses comes down his face is going to be shining. He’s going to have to wear a veil to protect himself. And Jesus also is going to be transfigured. Is going to essentially also have his appearance changed as a mark of having been in sort of certain proximity…
Tisa Wenger:
Right.
Joel Baden:
…to God on this sacred mountain.
Tisa Wenger:
Right. And both Moses and Jesus clearly had already been recognized as leaders before these events. But there’s something about these stories where they’re being anointed by God on the mountaintop, and these kind of miraculous narratives of the clouds and the transfiguration as the word is…
Joel Baden:
Sure.
Tisa Wenger:
That gives them a special kind of anointing and a new level of divine authority, of charismatic authority.
Joel Baden:
I think that’s actually very interesting. In both cases, there was no doubt that this person was the leader, right? Moses was Moses and Jesus was already Jesus. They had their followers. People already knew who they were and knew that they had some sort of special status. Why do they need this? Why do they need to have a new level of recognition as it were?
Tisa Wenger:
That’s a very good question. I mean, I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. I think they’re…What do you think?
Joel Baden:
Well, that was a fair turnaround. I think we might ask questions of when it comes to the leaders of movements, in both cases, what is it that we are expecting them to be or do? How are we expecting them to act or behave? Are they just like us and happen to have fallen into this role?
Or is there something actually distinctive and special about them? And are they, not just marked by deeds, whether it’s Moses’ birth or Jesus’ birth, or Moses slaying the Egyptian, or leading the Israelites, or miracle working, but there has to be something existentially different about them. They’re just not normal people.
Tisa Wenger:
Right. Well, this clearly marks them as being specially chosen, and not just chosen but anointed by God as sacred beings really set apart from everyone else.
Joel Baden:
Right. I think about the more than once in the Hebrew Bible where we learn that Moses, unlike everybody else almost in the history of humanity, is able to talk to God face to face without dying. So, there is some sort of special something. But what do you think that might suggest that in both, in both communities of writers and readers, that there was a need to mark the founding figure as sort of on a separate plain. Does that say something to us maybe today about the way that we think about our own leaders? Do we require something?
If we’re going to say, you know, this person, whether it is, Rabbi or Pope or Clergy. I remember when I was a kid, my rabbi was just not a normal person. Right? I grew up to discover that he was. But there was, you know, there’s some different something about him. He had an aura. Is that something we do we require?
Tisa Wenger:
What do we require of leaders? And I think that might look different in different communities.
To what extent is the leader really set apart, seen as anointed, given a kind of a special power, and which leaders assume that? And is in, you know, if we’re thinking about the way leaders function and leaders of religious communities or political communities function today, is when they gain that aura of sort of inevitability or specialness or set apartness, is it something that they themselves do to achieve that? Is that something that the community kind of creates a narrative around them? Or is it something as in these stories it’s presented as God anointing them?
Joel Baden:
Yeah. It’s nice that to remember in that like that neither Moses, nor Jesus wrote these stories about themselves.
Tisa Wenger:
Right.
Joel Baden:
This is not self-proclaimed, in terms of like the stories that we’re actually reading. The texts in question. Despite obviously the classic notion of Moses having written the first five books of the Bible. Moses is not the person who said, I got this special.
So, it is a community that has placed this upon them. But I like what you said, thinking about whether it is that helps us in terms of thinking about how we do that today. Are we doing that with our leaders? Are we saying, you know what, there’s just something different about this person that makes me, that compels me to follow that person. Or is it the person themselves saying, I’m different and special. Follow me.
Tisa Wenger:
Right. And I’m always interested in how people in public life, or in ministry, or in politics narrate history. And so, where do they put themselves into a history? How do they narrate a history in order to make a sense of their current situation and to make sense of the collective identity of the group in question?
So, I think we could also see the transfiguration story in Matthew in that light. You know, if the author of Matthew is really writing Jesus into, not only creating a specialness and a sacredness for Jesus in a way parallel to Moses, but making Jesus the heir of taking on the mantle of Moses and more than Moses.
Joel Baden:
Sure. And what’s interesting is in contemporary life, in fact, for generations and generations, hundreds of years, people have often taken on the mantle of Moses. Almost nobody takes on the mantle of Jesus. That’s a little, it’s like a bridge too far. But it’s not uncommon for people in, again, in narrating the stories of themselves and of their communities, to put themselves in the place of Moses. In some, it sounds cheeky but you know, I have been to the mountaintop.
Tisa Wenger:
Yes.
Joel Baden:
Perhaps most famously. Again, part of that is a reaction to a community having invested a leader with that sort of status. And part of it is a trying to understand the world around, right? Where are we in that story?
Tisa Wenger:
And that’s part of the power of the Bible, the biblical text, right? Is there’s so many stories in which people can put themselves. And there’s such a long legacy of us, of people putting themselves into these stories. That to tap into that power, is really immensely powerful for community building and for claiming a kind of a place in the biblical narrative.
Joel Baden:
Right. There’s a sense in which people, after the Bible, doing what we just said. That is claiming that story, claiming the position of Moses, are not doing something outrageous, but are actually, as I think you just sort of suggested, are sort of just imitating exactly what Jesus and the New Testament were doing. That is recognizing the power of that story, the power of that kind of transfiguring moment of leadership and appropriating it and bringing it to bear on their contemporary situations.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening. And thank you, Professors Baden and Wenger, for talking through these texts with us this week.
The transcript of this episode and lots more Bible study resources are at YaleBibleStudy.org.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. Mixing on today’s episode, and our theme music, are by Calvin Linderman.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
ExodusMatthew
Subjects:
ExodusMatthew
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.