Leonardo, He Was Right

I discovered something recently. It's on your bulletin cover. Although familiar with the paintings of Raphael as well as his status as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, I was unaware of how important this painting was, his work, The Transfiguration. I did not know it was considered the most important painting in the world for four hundred years.

The legend is this painting was part of a competition. The powers of Rome wanted to determine who was the greater painter, Raphael or Michelangelo? This was Raphael's offering, his entry. Leonardo DaVinci declared Raphael the winner and proclaimed this painting to be the greatest of all.

Consider how today we speak of Leonardo's Mona Lisa as the greatest painting.  But that was not his opinion.  Nor was it the world's for four hundred years.  When Napoleon conquered Rome, this was his prize.  He took Raphael's Transfiguration back with him to Paris.  When Napoleon died, the Vatican said, "give it back." 

              I must confess at first glance I thought, "this; really?"  But then I saw it, the eyes.  It's the eyes of the people.  There are in this painting three types of gazes, three kinds of vision. And you can see this when you start to follow their line of sight, what they are looking at. 

              But to see this you need to know that Raphael did something quite bold and ingenious.  This is not a painting of one story, but two.  Just as we did this morning, we read two stories of Luke, so did Raphael; he painted two.  The Transfiguration, obviously, and then, the failure of the disciples to heal the demoniac child. He smushed the stories together.  The power of the painting is how these stories complement each other and talk to each other. 

              If you start at the bottom, and it is the right place to start, you will find the 9 disciples on the left and the family of the boy on the right.  In between them, Raphael has added a character to the story, the mother.  She kneels and gazes at the disciples as her hands point to her son.  It as if she is pleading, "look at him; heal him; do something; you can save him."

              This bottom scene is chaos, confusion.  Some disciples look to her, some to the boy, some to a book, some look away.  The demoniac boy, Raphael has one of his eyes look to the audience and one to the frightened disciples above him.  His eyes are going in different directions. 

              Here sight, vision, gaze is immersed in suffering, pain, chaos.  If you have ever been desperately afraid for a child, you know this frenzied look.  The search for rescue, searching everywhere in everyone.  Panic.  Everyone can see the suffering but there are no answers in their eyes. 

              The middle scene is the averted gaze of Peter, James, and John.  They see Jesus and Moses and Elijah, but they must turn away.  They see glory, but they cannot look for long.  Here is Raphael's great account of wisdom.  We can see beyond or be lifted above chaos and suffering, but the glory is too much.  The humble disciples cannot stare; they must turn away.  It's too much.  They know they are not worthy to look on Jesus the way Moses and Elijah do. 

              What Raphael has done though is not only contrast these but also find a balance.  If you look to the mother, she kneels in humility and looks at the disciples, she points to her son, she dares them, she demands grace, she is strong even as she humbles herself. She is a kind of ballast.

              And then the third vision, what Jesus alone can see, behold.  Look at his eyes.  He is looking beyond, above, to the glory of what is eternal, a beauty transcending the earth, celestial, flooded with the light of the first day. 

              In this depiction of Jesus, we have a sublime moment of faith.  We believe Jesus because his words are true, his acts are merciful, his life is beautiful; we can trust him.  And then, here, in this final type of sight there is something more.  We believe he sees beyond us, above us, unto heaven.  We can trust this too.

              A part of me believes Raphael was the greater painter. This was his dying work, final painting. I believe his skill and mastery are all quite clear.  All the markers of the Renaissance are evident in full execution.  But another part of me believes this is the greatest of paintings because it conveys a truth bringing freedom.  The painting is healing. 

              I have always associated our two lessons today from Luke with the need for humility and the limitations which drag us all down.  The three on Mt Tabor who witnessed the transfiguration were humbled by the voice from above and they were afraid.  The traditional interpretation of this passage is a warning to the religious, zealot, the ardent one: better to listen to God in humility than to create a place for God to dwell, a temple of your own making.  The transfiguration is often read as a cautionary tale to preachers. 

              The healing the demoniac child, this has a similar interpretation.  The failure of the nine is a warning.  Just when you think you are all that, part of the power, things fall apart.  The transfiguration says listen to God; the failure with the demon possessed child infers even if you do listen, you don't hear well. 

              These stories are tough.  The disciples look like rubes and idiots.  Raphael doesn't change this directly.  The nine disciples in the bottom frame look useless, scattered, worried.  Peter, James, and John, although humbled, don't look good.  He paints them in a kind of agony.  Almost shame.  But then wonder takes over.  The failure, the shame, they are there, but something wonderful happens.

              The greatness, I believe, starts with the mother.  She alone has a steady gaze, a steady hand.  For Raphael, she is the church.  Demanding mercy and never losing sight, never turning her focus from her child.  It's her hands and her eyes. In a similar way the disciples above her are fearful and humbled, but they saw glory.  Couldn't control it or define or determine it in any way, but they saw it.  Jesus and Moses and Elijah, the very presence of what is true and merciful and beautiful.  In this they are not humiliated but made right in humility.

              But the greatest part of the painting is what Raphael leaves out.  There is no place for Jesus to be frustrated, to treat the disciples with contempt.  It is not needed. 

              Just before I mentioned how I believe this painting is healing.  This was a very new thought to me.  Not that the stories and teachings of Jesus do not liberate us and heal us; they deliver us from evil.  I know they do.  But I had never considered, until Raphael's great painting, what could be healed here in these stories smushed together.

              What I heard this week in a memory and a song was this: we, you and I, can be healed of conceit here.  The disease of conceit.  That's what Bob Dylan called it.  His song kept running over and over again in my head this week.  Quite irritating.

              He wrote: There's a whole lot of people in trouble tonight from the disease of conceit/Whole lot of people seeing trouble tonight from the disease of conceit/Give you delusions of grandeur and an evil eye/Give you the idea that you're too good to die/Then they bury you from your head to your feet/From the disease of conceit.

              I didn't understand how this fit until a memory percolated up, a memory more than 30 years old, something I buried quite deep.  Raphael's painting dragged it out of me, and I remembered.  I remembered Doug.

              Doug was the new pastor of our church, our home church, the one that sent us to seminary, the church that blessed us, encouraged us.  He followed the beloved Paul Pullium who married Kathy and I, cared for us.  Knew us.  I got a letter from Doug, and it said, "I don't know you; can't vouch for you; not sure the church should support you or endorse you."  Now at this point we had been gone 4 years and it was a big church, so it wasn't like we were the only seminarians, but this hurt. It was as if all that we had done before was of no value.

              So, I got a plane and flew to San Diego and talked to Doug.  You might guess I am not a big fan of Doug.  The good news is that I grew up in Evangelical charismatic hypocrisy, so I knew the passwords and the secret handshakes.  I could punch above my weight in theology.  Hence, after we spoke for 30 minutes after flying 3000 miles, I was approved.  Okayed. In that moment, and this I have not remember in a long, long time, I saw it.  The eye roll, the boredom, the posture of someone who no longer needs you.  I saw his conceit. 

              In the end he didn't need me or couldn't use me.  So, I could go.  The impact of his conceit was minimal for me.  His letter caused worry, true.  He was someone who could derail our lives for a time.  In the end his impact on us was minimal.  But his conceit did do real damage to others.  He was the sort who demands all staff resign and reapply for their jobs; he put together a code of conduct all employees must sign if they want to continue.  But like my brief conversation, it was all false.  All of this was a conceit.

              Doug wanted to fire the organist, Bob.  But he needed cover. He needed to question everyone to fire one person. 

              Bob the organist was beloved.  He played at our wedding.  But Bob was gay, and everyone knew this.  Yet, no matter his long tenure and perhaps because of how loved he was, he needed to go.  So, the new code of conduct was that you can't lie or cheat or steal and you can't be gay. 

              If pressed, someone like Doug will talk about the bible and morality and ethics and leadership and what it means to build a team and righting wrongs long left unattended.  But in the end, it was nothing but conceit.  There was no way this Evangelical bible believing man of God was going to share the chancel with a degenerate.  Doug possessed great clarity and conviction and standards and lot of other words that mean nothing if you have no humility.  He lived as if he were in the upper part of Raphael's painting.  He was above us. 

              That is what conceit does.  It elevates you, lifts you above the fray.  You are not one of the disciples who abide in failure because you see what other don't see, or you gaze upon the truth while others cannot because shame and moral failure keep them from seeing.  At the very least you are a different version of the disciples.  You know the resurrection, so you don't turn away from glory; you know for certain. 

              The disease of conceit.

              Doug's conceit made for a long week for me; for Bob this was a level a heartbreak I can't begin to imagine.  For the church let this conceit abide. 

              I haven't thought about this in decades.  But this week with this painting the memory rose and goaded me, saying, remember me. In the remembering something in me was healed, made better, right.  The healing is in the stories already.  But the painting led me to look with wonder.  Raphael encouraged me, there is a cure to the disease of conceit.  Look to the mother in the painting.  You will find freedom from conceit with her.  Leonardo, he was right.  Amen.