Sadako Sasaki died on October 25, 1955. She was just twelve years old, one of hundreds of thousands of victims of the dropping of the atomic bomb on her hometown of Hiroshima when she was a toddler. Suffering from leukemia as a result of radiation exposure, she had heard that if she folded a thousand origami paper cranes her wish to get better would be granted. She folded and folded, crane after colorful crane, hanging them from the ceiling of her hospital room, a rainbow flock fluttering in the breeze. When Sadako could no longer fold, her friends worked together to finish for her. After she died, she was buried with one thousand paper cranes. In honor of their brave and hopeful friend, and in the memory of all of the children killed by the bomb– the Americans called it “Little Boy”, the Japanese called it “Thunderbolt”– Sadako’s friends spread her story and collected funds to create the Children’s Peace Statue in Hiroshima Peace Park. Every year on August 6, Peace Day, garlands of paper cranes are hung under the arch of the statue, which is topped by the likeness of Sadako looking upward, holding a large crane. At the base of the statue, the children’s wish:

This is our cry,

this is our prayer:

Peace for the world.

You don’t have to have seen Oppenheimer yet to feel a certain poignancy today on this August 6th–it’s hard to miss the conversations, articles, and reviews concerning the movie, Robert Oppenheimer himself, and his creation of the atomic bomb at a place near Los Alamos, New Mexico that he named “Trinity.” The bomb’s first use on Hiroshima on this day in 1945 changed the world in a flash. Activist and journalist Dorothy Day called it the “anti-Transfiguration.”

I don’t think the tactical decision-makers consulted the church calendar before deciding when to drop the first bomb, but the irony of Hiroshima’s destruction in a blinding ball of light and mushroom cloud juxtaposed with Jesus’s Transfiguration into a glowing figure accompanied by divine cloud is impossible to avoid. 

All three synoptic Gospels recount the Transfiguration. Matthew’s version says:

“And Jesus was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became whiter than light… While [Peter] was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him’!”

The significance of the Transfiguration lies in the fact that it is an epiphany in the life of Jesus– like his birth, his baptism, and in the miracles that he performed–all of these are events in which Jesus’ identity as the Son of God was revealed. In the Transfiguration the earthly veil was drawn aside, and Peter, James, and John were privileged to see Jesus, not just as the time-bound human son of Mary, but also as the eternal Son of God. Standing in conversation with Moses and Elijah he is manifest as the transition point in salvation history. The Old Testament symbolism is rich here; Jesus, like Moses, has come up a mountain for this divine encounter. His face glows like Moses’ did after he met God on Mount Sinai. Jesus, Moses, and Elijah speak of Jesus “departure” at Jerusalem –the Hebrew word here is “exodus”–it’s not subtle. And to top it off Luke offers a direct connection between this moment and the epiphany of Jesus’ baptism; a voice thunders from the sky just as it did at the Jordan: “This is my son, my Chosen; listen to him.” Not just “In him I am well pleased”, but “Listen to him.” God declares, “This is the One I am calling you to follow.” 

So, Jesus stands in brilliant liminal space: between Old and New covenants; between the human and divine; between time and eternity. No wonder Peter was stunned into incoherence.

Pastor and writer Brian Zahnd, writing in 2020 on the 75th anniversary of the bombing, invited us to do what we would rather not do; to look at the Transfiguration and the Anti-Transfiguration of 1945 in juxtaposition. Like Peter, perhaps, we would prefer to look at the glory of Jesus and dwell there. But Peter, James, and John had to journey back down to face the hard work that goes hand in hand with the transfigured hope that they witnessed on the mountain. Facing what happened on August 6, 1945, though, wasn’t simply hard work; it was horror. The horror and terror of what human beings can justify unleashing upon one another. 

Zahnd challenges us to look at the dazzling brilliance of Jesus in tension with the death flash of “Little Boy.” He writes:

“Harry Truman can justify… the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima… 

but Jesus is what God has to say.

Militarists can concoct arguments to rationalize killing 200,000 civilians with two bombs… 

but Jesus is what God has to say.

Biblicists can point to God-sanctioned killing…

but Jesus is what God has to say.

And what does Jesus say? He says this…

Love your enemies!
Do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who hurt you…

…Jesus is what God has to say.” 

This is heavy stuff for a baptism day. But baptism is heavy stuff.  Heavy joyful stuff. Through water and the Spirit baptism invites us into Covenant relationship with God and welcomes us into the community of the Christian faithful. Luke’s allusion to Jesus’ baptism in the story of the Transfiguration is especially appropriate for a baptism day because the Transfiguration, like the baptism in the Jordan, marked an inflection point in Jesus’ life and ministry. The Transfiguration brought together old and new traditions in one liminal event–the old informing the new even as it sent it off into a new direction; Jesus would go down the mountain and set his face towards Jerusalem and the Cross–calling God’s children to a Way of Love in a broken world.

The traditional language of the Church regarding Baptism centers around cleansing the soul from Original Sin in order to ensure the joys of eternal life. Particularly when we look into the face of babies like seven-month-old Rory Ardente, this image of a soul sin-tainted from the womb boggles the mind. But the tradition of the Church has spoken this way for years, leaving parents primarily concerned with their children’s fate in the afterlife, when it is far, far more constructive to see baptism, not as cleansing, but as equipping those who are dunked or splashed or sprinkled with what they need to meet the challenges of doing the work of world-healing that God calls them to do.

Baptism, like the Transfiguration of Jesus, is about identity–or rather identities–the identity in which we were created, as beloved children of God, and the identity that we choose: “Who am I, and what is my responsibility in the world?”

The promises that we make on Rory’s behalf today are crucial in forming him to make the choices of who–and what–he will follow on his life’s journey.

Because we live in a sinful world. We not only carry the baggage of our lives and of the generations that came before, but also the systemic sin in which we collude by virtue of being part of a society that perpetuates militarism, otherism, poverty, and climate destruction. We may want to argue about whether our DNA includes a sin gene (spoiler alert, it doesn’t), but we don’t need a sin gene when we have the free will to choose a world of chaos over God’s Dream for Beloved Community. or to heed the children’s prayer from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

This is our cry,

this is our prayer:

Peace for the world.

Jesus is what God has to say. Listen to him.