At the pinnacle of the stained-glass windows in my college’s chapel, looming high above the majestic pipe organ in the balcony, is what students and alumni lovingly refer to as the transfiguration window. Jesus, clad in white and skin shining, stands astride a mountain next to Moses, Elijah, Peter, and James. Held within the mountain is the vision of the New Jerusalem from Revelation: the fire and the beasts, the elders with their crowns, the river of the water of life, and Jesus at the center enthroned and holding the seven churches in his hands. When the afternoon light hits this window just right, Jesus glows radiantly. It’s glorious.
All of it except the feet. Jesus’ feet in this window are decidedly not glorious. One might even describe them as ugly. They’re skinny and bony and pointy, with callouses. They look like the kind of feet that would smell bad. They are, in fact, nearly identical to the feet of the nondivine humans who stand next to Jesus on the mountain.
God comes to earth, incarnate in a body, but it’s not a perfect body or even a stunningly beautiful body. It’s a human body with very real, very bony, probably very dusty and stinky feet. No transfiguration can change that fact. Yet it’s precisely in the juxtaposition of Jesus’ glory and his humanity that the story of the transfiguration may speak most clearly into a world filled with suffering and sin.
