Emphasis Preaching Journal

I am greatly indebted to a book by Ross Parmenter, The Awakened Eye, published in 1968 by Wesleyan University Press. The author coordinates for the general reader the thinking on vision of eye scientists, artists, psychologists, and religious visionaries. I recommend it to the preacher. It pointed me to a way of understanding the transfiguration not as something that happened to Jesus, but as an experience of transfigured seeing on the part of the disciples as they saw Jesus through the prism of the resurrection and the transfigured seeing that was part of that experience. In Jesus of Nazareth they caught a fleeting glimpse of glory. Here is Parmenter's definition of transfigured seeing: "It is an experience in which the everyday aspect of a person or scene is so altered that one feels it looks markedly different than it does under normal circumstances. Yet, paradoxically, as one sees it differently, one gets the impression that one sees it more accurately; it seems not itself. By this I mean that, at the same time as it seems transformed by added elements, it is also seen momentarily with the exactitude of sharpened vision." (v. 43) Albrecht Durer's carpenter friend gave up his own artistic vocation to support through his labor the study of Durer. One day Durer saw those hands in a way that revealed the love and sacrifice of his friend, and so painted a picture that enriches all of us. This was transfigured seeing. -- Kolsti