(Exodus 34:29-35)
Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

(2 Corinthians 3:12-18)
Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but 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. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

(2 Corinthians 4:1-2)
Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.

(Luke 9:28-36)
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face hanged, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

(Luke 9:37-43)
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

Anthropological reading

What should be occurring when the church brings Jesus into conversation with the law and the prophets? What should be the focus of this discussion? Read these two questions again and then think about this for a moment before moving on.

Our reading for today contains something precious, something essential if we are to understand the gospel. It is so easy to miss this. In a very real sense it is the Lukan hermeneutic spelled out in exactly the same way as expressed by both Paul and the Fourth Gospel.

So What?

If we’re preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, we have a choice to make before we even begin. Will we focus on the Transfiguration? Or on the disciples’ failure to heal the boy? Or will we try to combine them?

The Transfiguration of Our Lord
Texts: Luke 9:28-43a;
Ex. 34:29-35; 2 Cor. 3:12-4:2

A VISION AND VOICE TO HEAL THE SIN-SICK SOUL

A movie is making big news this week. It's opening this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, and it could be quite important for people of faith, too. I'm speaking, of course, of Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. I've shared some preliminary comments in the newsletter you'll get this week. And I have a feeling I'm going to be saying more about it, after everyone has a chance to see it, including myself.

But this morning I want to begin by talking about another movie, one that led me through one of the strangest experiences I've ever had in seeing a movie. Half way through the movie I was totally confused and disoriented. I didn't know what was real and what was hallucination. I'm talking about the movie A Beautiful Mind, winner of the Best Picture Academy Award in 2001.

Sermon Starters:

What were they afraid of? What about Moses' face so frightened Aaron and the Israelites? Was it just that he looked different, or was it that they were afraid that he had become a different person as well? What might he say now? What would he do?

Does the glow of God on our lives disturb people around us? Will that changed person allow this (shady) action to go through now? Will he or she speak out for a cause in public? When a person has truly been in the presence of God in life-changing ways, sometimes even those in the church are disturbed! This is not an invitation to bizarre behavior in the name of the Lord, but rather an invitation to acknowledge and embrace changed lives because we have been in the presence of God.

With Unveiled Faces. A wonderful companion verse to this passage is 2 Corinthians 3:18:

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (NRSV)

Although life may force us to tone down or cover up who we are, we are free to be unveiled in God's presence. Being in God's presence has an added benefit: As we see the glory of the Lord, little by little, we are transformed into the image of Christ.

In the movie "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain," two English map makers arrive at a Welsh village to measure the town's mountain. After several days of meticulous calculations, the measurers sadly report to the townsfolk that their mountain is, in fact, only a hill. It lacks the mountain designation by 16 feet. Devastated, the people fret and worry and try to convince the Englishmen to call their hill a mountain.

"It's a mountain to us!" they exclaim.

"Ahh, but it's not truly a mountain, is it now?" comes the reply.

And so the people do the only thing that's left to them. Pail by pail they began hauling dirt up the hill to increase its height to mountain status. After several days and hundreds of trips up the hill, the townsfolk at last succeed in creating a mountain.

Why go to all that trouble over 16 feet of dirt? If you've ever been on a mountain, you know why: Mountains are magical. Hills are part of our everyday lives, but mountains-when you get to the top of a mountain, you see the world in a whole new way.

The biblical writers know the importance of mountains. When big things happen in Scripture, they often happen on mountains. After the flood, Noah parks the ark on a mountain. Moses goes up a mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. And, then, at the end of his life, Moses scales Mt. Nebo to get a glimpse of the Promised Land. In the Bible, big things happen on mountains!

Did you hear the story about the little boy who was riding his wagon on a sidewalk? Suddenly, one of the wheels fell off. The little boy jumped out of the wagon and said, "I'll be damned!" A minister happened to be walking by, and he said, "Son, you ought not use words like that! That's a bad word. When something happens, just say, 'Praise the Lord,' and everything will be all right." So the little boy grumbled and put the wheel back on the wagon and started on down the sidewalk.

About 10 yards farther, the wheel fell off again. The little boy said, "Praise the Lord!" Suddenly, the wheel jumped up off the ground and put itself right back on the wagon. The minister saw it all and exclaimed, "I'll be damned."

We are a lot like that minister. We believe completely in God's miraculous, glorious power; we just don't expect it to happen to us.

There is one aspect of this story that receives little attention: Peter proposed building shelters for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. This is a very human and common reaction. It doesn’t matter what sort of mountain-top experience it is; it could be an emotional high, it could be religious ecstasy, it could be the intensely good fellowship of a worshp service, it could be a vision or some spiritual gift; we always want it to last. Have you ever attended a worship service, Bible study, or prayer meeting that went into overtime because everyone was so electrified they didn’t want it to end? So we like Peter try to build shelters for our mountaintop experiences, so they can last. However, we find that the experience doesn’t last and before long we come down the mountain into our usual emotional economy. It never lasts. We always look back on that crystal moment and sigh about how good it was and how it didn’t last. What a shame.

Grinding up the steep incline,
our calves throbbing,
we talked of problems
and slapped at flies.
Then you touched my shoulder,
said, "turn around."

Behind us floated
surprise mountains
blue on lavender,
water-colored ranges:
a glimpse from God's eyes.

A child in my congregation recently asked, “why doesn’t God talk to people now like God did in the Bible?” As his pastor and as a theology professor, I took his question seriously. Certainly, to quote Karl Barth, mystical experiences and theophanies (appearances of God to mortals) are essential to the “strange world of the Bible.”

Just like of a few of the the life-transforming encounters – Abraham and Sarah and their angelic hosts, Jacob’s and Joseph’s dreams, Moses and the burning bush and Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai, Mary and the angel Gabriel, Paul on the road to Damascus, Peter’s dream, and John’s vision on Patmos. While I suspect that most of the time Biblical characters like Moses tended flocks and Peter set up evangelistic meetings and dealt with the challenges of quotidian life just like ourselves, the ancients saw the world as “permeable,” as a “thin place” in which God’s presence could become transparent at any given moment. God was alive and communicated with humankind, and we can see and hear the divine presence in our lives. Many of us today neither expect nor desire encounters with God, even in light of our Christian experience. Despite the growing interest in auric readings, channeled spirits, and near death experiences, most mainstream Christians still agree with Lily Tomlin’s joke, “if you speak with God, they call it prayer; but if God speaks to you, they think your crazy.”*

-The Celtic peoples talk of "thin places" where the distance between heaven and earth seems thin. What have been the thin moments and thin places for you? What role have they played in shaping your witness in daily life?

PRAYER PHRASES

-Lord, in so many ways we are blind to you. We fail to see you for

who you are. Sometimes we do not even try to see. Our eyes are so

filled with the glitter of this world that we miss your transfiguring

and transforming presence among us. For give us, Lord.

Only Luke tells us the content of the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah that points to the heart of the event. They were "speaking of his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem" (v. 31).  The Greek word used here highlights the significance of this conversation.  Luke uses the term eksodov, exodus, to describe Jesus' trip to Jerusalem and the events that would unfold there.  More than simply referring to a physical "departure," there is clear allusion to the saving acts of God in the exodus as he led the Israelites to freedom from under the slavery of Egypt. But it is also an unmistakable reference to Jesus' exodus from Jerusalem, that is his death, which would be the outworking of Jesus’ preceding and following teachings about his passion. This detail moves this entire experience from a "mountain top" religious experience that is usually associated with positive emotions and joyful response to a much more somber tone as the shadow of the cross lengthens over this scene.  But it is not a somberness to be mourned, for this shadow will eventually reveal the true light!

What did they expect when they set off with Jesus that afternoon? An intimate conversation among the four of them? A chance to talk Jesus out of that strange, scary stuff he had been saying about suffering and dying, about saving or losing their lives?

Of course, whatever they expected, they got much more than they bargained for on that mountain: a dazzling experience of the holy, an encounter with the transcendent, Christ transfigured before their very eyes. Biblical scholar Eduard Schweitzer has said that "for a brief moment the curtain... is drawn aside," and the disciples are "allowed to see in Jesus something of the glory of God and [God’s] kingdom, of that other life to which human eyes are otherwise blind."

The Gospel text is an interpretation of the transfiguration event. Whatever may characterize Luke's interpretation, nothing in the transfiguration itself supports anti-Judaism. The same God who encountered Moses on one mountain transfigured Jesus on another. "While he was praying," Jesus joined Moses and Elijah in the circle of those who had seen God. If Luke's interpretation was influenced by the polemics of the latter part of the first century, then interpreters today need to reread the event in the light of what else is known about Jesus and his relationship to the Judaism of his day. Perhaps we can borrow Luke's emphasis on the continuity of God's activity. In our day, when the credibility of the entire tradition is at stake, the continuity among Moses, Elijah and Jesus is more important than the discontinuity.

Moreover, in Luke the transfiguration does not look back so much as it looks forward. It inaugurates Jesus' journey to Jerusalem - the goal that Moses and Elijah were discussing with Jesus. From here to the cross, Jesus will increasingly journey alone. For Luke the journey has universal significance: at his own expense Jesus opened the door for all.

n Luke's Gospel we now discover Jesus is more than just another human being. This story has all the classic elements of an ancient form known as “Theophany” which is a fancy way of saying that God has made an appearance. Luke is making a theological statement, but not a complete one. Not yet.

This event, by itself, means nothing. So God shows up. So what. If there is nothing but the blinding power and presence of God, then humanity is still hopelessly mired in the problems that the “otherness” of God present to us. We are still cut off and cannot hope to be in a relationship with God that makes a difference for us in our world. Even the Greek gods came to visit. They came, they played with humanity, they left. And the world was not enriched by their presence.

This event, in light of Jesus “exodus” means something different. English translations of the Greek text do us no favors when they simply talk about this as a departure for Jesus. (Exit, stage left, hanging on a cross.) This is more than a departure. An exodus: an intervention of God leading the people out of bondage and into a new kind of freedom. An exodus: God mixing in the very real lives of people, in the political, the geographical, the struggles of every day life. An exodus: a covenant that God makes to establish God's reign among the nations. An exodus: an event of rescue and wholeness.

Transfiguration Sunday - C

Call to Worship
We gather as the faithful of God,
we come to listen to what God
has to say to us.
God has invited us to this place:
may our faces reflect our hopes
and our hearts.
We gather as the faithful of God,
people of the new covenant of
hope and of promise.
We boldly enter into the presence of God,
hoping to be transformed into new people.
We gather as the faithful of God,
our fears melting away in the heart of God.
We come to share in the freedom of the Spirit,
we come to praise God's holy name.

PRAYER OF ADORATION AND PRAISE
Great and holy God, ruler of all time and space, we worship you with awe
 and adoration - your holiness and your glory are beyond our imagining.
The whole created universe proclaims your glory and majesty.
Yet you have reached out to us in Jesus and have revealed in him
your abundant love for all people.
We adore you, O God, and we praise your holy name.
Let this time of worship bring honour and glory to you, holy and
merciful God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

O holy One, we bow before the mystery of your workings in Jesus. Like the disciples of old we too have great difficulty in moving from the old to the new. We want to frame things in ways we can understand even though the mystery is beyond words and beyond description. We are bound by our limited past and our limited conceptions. Lead us this day to the place where all things are made new. Lead us to the mountain top as Jesus led his disciples.

Worship Resources

February 18, 2007

Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year C

  

Call to Worship

 

The Lord of the mountaintop calls us to behold the divine glory. We proclaim the greatness of the Lord, worshipping upon God’s holy hill, eager to listen and have God transform us, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

(Congregational response: Amen. Alleluia!)

  

Prayer of Invocation

 

Holy Spirit, remove our veils so we can see your light. Open our ears to your voice and then lead us down the mountain to take up the cross for your glory and the good of others. In the name of our transfigured Lord we pray. Amen.

Those of us who spend a lot of time in church have heard Luke’s story of the transfiguration so often that we may think of it as a public event. According to Luke, it was not. Only three other people were there, which means it was an event not for the many but for the few. Let us forget for a moment that Luke’s story may not be a factual account of an historical moment. We are not concerned with historicity here. We are concerned with epiphany, which ordinary time and space cannot contain.

When I first read our text for today about the dazzling light on the mountain, I immediately decided on the title, "Fire on the Mountain."  But after I did a little research, I discovered that I am not the only one to like that phrase.  Perhaps you have heard it elsewhere.

Yes, life down here in the valley and on the plains is difficult, and full of obstacles. You may remember that the Chronicles of Narnia, by theologian C.S. Lewis, are some of my very favorite books. In one of the books of the series, the Silver Chair, a young girl named Jill finds herself on a high mountain, being given a task by Aslan, the Christ-like figure of the series. Though she likes being on the mountain, near to Aslan, she soon must travel down into the world to set about the tasks he appointed for her. As she is traveling into the world, he speaks these words to her. "I give you a warning," he says, "Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the Signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the Signs and believe the Signs. Nothing else matters." (1) In our day to day life, we don't always hear God as clearly as we'd like. We get confused about the clarity we saw on the mountaintop, and we can't remember what it was like to see God face to face. Nonetheless, God goes with us. Though we have to look harder, listen more carefully, risk more completely, we find God in the valley, on the plains, in the people, as well as on the mountaintop. So come on down: we've got some good new to share. Come on down, we've got some people to reach. Come on down, we've got a journey to walk, as we turn with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Come on down. Amen.

The story is told about a man took his new hunting dog on a trial hunt one day. After a while he managed to shoot a duck and it fell in the lake. The dog walked over the water, picked up the duck, and brought it to his master.

The man was stunned. He didn't know what to think. He shot another duck and again, it fell into the lake and again the dog walked over the water and brought it back to his master.

Hardly daring to believe his eyes, and not wanting to be thought a total fool, he told no-one about it - but the next day he called his neighbor to come shooting with him. As on the previous day he shot a duck and it fell into the lake. The dog walked over the water and got it.

His neighbor didn't say a word. Several more ducks got shot that day - and each time the dog walked over the water to retrieve them - and each time the neighbor said nothing and neither did the owner of the dog.

Finally - unable to contain himself any longer the owner asked his neighbor - "do you notice anything strange about my dog??"

Yes - replied the neighbor - rubbing his chin and thinking a bit - come to think of it I do - your dog doesn't know how to swim."

It’s all a matter of perspective.

One of the most powerful religious movies of this year was based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. It tells the epic struggle of a brave fellowship of hobbits and humans whose sole goal is to rid the world of the Ring, the Ring that has the power to destroy all that they love. Through the story, these brave souls climb towards the mountain of Mordor, the place where the Ring began and must be destroyed. The quest often seems hopeless, completely unattainable, and the nearer they get to their goal, the more impossible it seems.

But still they stagger on. 

At one point the kind Samwise Gamgee says to the hero, Frodo Baggins, 

We shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t…[6] 

As Sam and Frodo climb the mountain, they leave more and more of themselves behind. Packs and provisions, friends, even the hope of ever getting home. But they are on a journey to the mountaintop, and they will not be deterred. 

 “The knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed and difficult to climb.” 

a theology of certainty doesn't leave any room for faith.  Faith is not certitude.  Faith is a kind of paradox. Faith is not being absolutely sure of something.  It is leaping into the unknown.  It is living by something we most deeply believe in.  It is the willingness to walk the human journey and to do that inwardly and in company with others.  It is the courage to walk through the fears that we have and not be paralysed by those fears even when we are stuck in dark rooms and cannot see the light.

 

How did William Faulkner put it:

‘We can see so much further when we stand in the darkness than  we do when standing in the light, we try to probe the darkness.’

 

It is true that some people are lucky enough to experience in marvellous ways the dazzling light of God’s glory.  What the rest of us have are stories of transfiguration and the chance to decide for ourselves whether we will believe what they point to.  Such faith is a choice—and one in which I too would say with Sam Keen, —I do not know, therefore I trust.   I trust, it is so…Amen!

We are called, each one of us, not to a "ministry of condemnation," as the apostle Paul put it (2 Corinthians 3:9), but a "ministry of justification." We are called to see the world through the eyes of Christ, to see the "bright spots" all around us. To see with his light, to be his light, to help others to see and to be his light in a world that prefers to see only so much and no more - that is our calling, is it not?! To share good news, to be good news, and to help others give birth to, become, and share good news, themselves, in a world that only seems to dwell on bad news - this is our purpose - is it not?!

We are called to be "revealers" in this world, to draw attention to God’s presence and power, to God’s glory - even/especially in the "little" stuff that most everyone else tends to ignore. However, we cannot take the veil off, we can’t reveal God’s glory in the world around us if we don’t first remove the veil from our own faces. That’s what the Spirit of the Lord helps us to do, day by day. We become free to see and to reflect this glory.

I love the last line from the first hymn we sang this morning. Let me end, then, where we began. "All praise we would render; O help us to see - ‘tis only the splendor of light hideth thee."*

But then there is that mountaintop. While we cannot go there, while we cannot "explain" what happened there, we can hear the affirmation. Jesus is God’s Son, as The Chosen One. We are reminded that we see in him all of God that we can ever hope to see. We are reminded that in him, God has come into the world and reconciled it to God’s self.

And so we listen. That is why we gather here. For this brief time each week, we shut out the cacophony of other voices, the other would-be-gods, and listen to Jesus, hear his words of life, hear his call to live. It is not a mountaintop. But its close enough, because here our confidence in Christ is affirmed and we, like his disciples, go renewed in our faith and empowered for his service. Amen.

If you take a good look at Jesus' life you'll see that before every major decision, he spent time in prayer. Usually he went to a high place away from the crowds. Before he chose his 12 disciples he prayed. And throughout his earthly ministry Jesus retreats from the crowds to pray. We are familiar with his prayer in the garden of Gethsemene. Before giving himself up to be killed he talked to his heavenly Father.

Here again Jesus has retreated for prayer. Jesus took Peter, James and John, his three closest disciples, and retreated to a high place to pray. This however was no ordinary retreat. There had been many others before, but the Bible tells us little about the details of them. This retreat however was important enough that the Bible gives it a prominent place.

Not every encounter with God results in a face that glows … as was the case with

Moses. (As though that is what anyone would want … you think). But whether

the skin on one’s face shines from exposure to the glory of God or not, there is

always the likely possibility of significant transformation in our lives, when and

as we spend time with the Holy One. That is what I want us to reflect on this

morning.

Exodus 34 records for us one of the more unusual and dramatic instances of how

being in God’s presence changes a person … sometimes even physically. The

account in Ex. 34 certainly makes the case that this happened to Moses. And

should anyone have had doubts about the leadership and authority of one of God’s

chosen leaders, in this case … Moses … this was meant to put his or her mind at

ease.

No veils for Paul! No veils for Peter, James and John! No veils for us. The disciples on the mountain saw the glory of God without a veil. They looked right at it and the voice of God said, “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!” No veils, just a straight forward encounter with God! That’s what Anne LaMott and her son, Sam had in their car that day with Josh, a straight forward encounter with God. That is the gift of Jesus’ transfiguration.

That is what the little boy who was demon possessed had on the day that Jesus and the disciples came down from the mountain. The boy was brought to Jesus by his father and the man begged Jesus to heal his son because Jesus’ disciples had not been able to. Jesus cast out the unclean spirit and healed the boy. And he got a little exasperated with his disciples. “How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” They don’t get it. Not yet anyway. Their straight forward encounter with God has not yet fully sunk in. But it will.

Today's texts all involve the glory of God revealed to humankind in a real and powerful way. These are some of the rare times in the Bible where the tremendous glory of the Trinity was revealed directly to human beings. Most of the time God's glory was revealed in more subtle ways, such as through miracles or wise teaching. Today's text from Luke involves God's glory revealed by Jesus. This text is traditionally referred to as "The Transfiguration."

The Eastern Orthodox Study Bible concisely describes the Transfiguration as, "the demonstration that Jesus is the Lord of glory despite the fact that he will later suffer and die on the cross." It is a foreshadowing of the Risen Lord. I guess you could say that the experience the apostles had on the mountain was a break from all the madness of the world. It was a brief, but important, encounter with God's glory, and God's plan for all people. The transfiguration of Jesus revealed to his closest disciples the heavenly transformation to glory that awaits all the saints of Christ. The text from 2nd Peter makes the point that the revelation of the Transfiguration proves that Christianity is more than just a novel superstition. Christianity is about the Power of the Son of God.