REsources for Living
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Are you a fan of the “Transformers” action figures or movies? I’m not really into either action figures or action movies myself, but I have to admit there’s something kind of appealing about anything that can turn itself into a whole different thing. The idea of being able to shape-shift shows up in everything from Harry Potter to werewolf movies, not to mention ancient Greek myths. So I suspect that the ability to transform yourself from one thing into another is woven pretty thoroughly into the human soul.
Transformation, for instance, is at the heart of the two major holidays of this month, Passover and Easter. Passover is the story of how one man, Moses, transforms from a tongue-tied sheep herder into a leader of the Hebrew people. But more than that, Passover is the story of how the Hebrews, a group of people living in slavery to the Egyptians, transformed themselves into the Jewish people, a people with a religion and a relationship with God and eventually a land that was their own.
This transformation of the Hebrew people doesn’t happen overnight. They aren’t transformed the moment they escape from Egypt, or when they reach the opposite shore of the Red Sea that had miraculously opened up to make a path for them. They aren’t transformed when they see God going before them as a pillar in the desert, and they aren’t even transformed when Moses brings down from the mountaintop the stone tablets containing the rules that God has set for them. They’re transformed as they go along, and no one can really say at what moment it happens.
The Hebrew people make a lot of mistakes and bad choices, and there’s plenty of grumbling and complaining the whole way. They whine that they would have been better off staying in Egypt than wandering around in the desert eating boring old manna every day. And when Moses goes off to talk with God on the mountaintop the people sort of give up on the idea of one indescribable deity, and start to worshiping a golden statue of a calf.
There’s no single moment when they get enlightened or perfected. They just stumble around in the desert for forty years, and over all that time something…shifts. They become freer, more responsible for themselves, more able to be in relationship with God. They transform. Not from bad or stupid people into perfect people, but from Hebrew slaves to Jewish people in a covenanted relationship with their God.
The Easter story is about transformation as well. Although if it’s hard to pin down exactly the shape of the transformation that the Hebrew people go through after they escape from Egypt, it’s harder still to say what exactly the transformation is that happens in the Easter story. One way of describing the story is that Jesus died, but then he was resurrected—brought back to life again—which, of course, would be a pretty amazing transformation, since people just don’t do that. But really, I think the transformation Jesus goes through in the Easter story is even more amazing—and not so counter to reality as we know it.
For me, the Easter story is about how Jesus transformed from a man who walked and ate and talked with people into something that couldn’t be killed—a set of ideas about how we should treat all people with love and respect; how we should care for those who are poor or hurting; give kindness when we want to take revenge; and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, even if our neighbors don’t look or sound or act the way we think they should. The man who taught these things was transformed into the teachings themselves—something that his companions could take out into the world to share.
Those transformations, from slave to free person, or from teacher to teaching, are anything but small changes. I guess Passover and Easter wouldn’t be big holidays if they weren’t about big transformations. But the truth of the matter is that, although none of us can shift between animal and machine, or wolf and person, or from dead to alive, all of us are transforming all of the time. A five-month-old baby and a five-year-old child are so different that they could be different species, or even from different planets. A person who can read enters a whole new world from the one they lived in before. Anyone who overcomes an addiction to drugs or alcohol relates to the world in a whole new way, as does a person who emerges from depression. Every day, people manage to move from being enslaved to anger or bitterness into freedom. Every day, ideas and insights go out into the world to take on new life beyond that of the people who started them. Every day, folks try things they never dared to try before, and come out of the experience just a little bit different. Maybe these kinds of transformations don’t deserve holidays or action movies, but they might warrant a little recognition and celebration of their own. Happy Transformation Day to you—today and every day.
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