Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus – February 27, 2022, preached at Holy Wisdom Monastery’s Sunday Assembly – Middleton, WI
Texts – Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 2:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36
Back in early December while I was a away for a couple of weeks visiting friends and tying up the loose ends on my Hawaii church interim ministry gig, back at home, my husband took to some serious storage closet cleaning. He’s better at that kind of thing, or at least more committed to it than I am. He had, among other things, sorted and arranged a plastic storage tub of old pictures, creating files for me and each of our two adult children. But perhaps even more interesting is that when I returned there was that a rather large framed color portrait picture of me which was taken when I was probably six or seven now gracing the wall of one of our condo storage units, alongside an equally large picture of my husband’s late father astride his tractor!
Actually, I am planning a trip this spring to my southwestern Iowa hometown to spend time with my sister, sorting through yet more old family pictures. I’ll be taking along the tub Lee created for me.
Future generations won’t do this, given our practice of taking pictures with our cell phones and storing them, not in plastic tubs, but in something called “the cloud.” I for one find looking at these old, mostly black and white prints, a glorious thing. Those old pictures reveal some pretty fond memories of times past and people now gone. These old print narrate my life, and call up moments/times/events I’d love to freeze-frame and savor.
I suspect a good many of you also have preserved memories like this, golden oldies from the past, that you would like to hold on to (and perhaps a few you’d like to forget!).
Yet as much as I love these old pictures, I realize when I look at them that they capture only a single moment in time, seen through a single lens and focused by one persons’ take on reality. In some ways these captured-in-fixed-form moments can be oddly dissatisfying too, quaint, not quite right when we revisit them. They are true and they are not. Unlike the living repository that is our memory, a picture cannot convey that single moment of life in its totality. Nor can we stay in that moment which they capture, however much we might want to do so.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ inner circle – the trio of Peter, James, and John – seem to be let in on something quite extraordinary. Just prior to today’s story, Jesus had been teaching his disciples a new truth about the cost of discipleship. He had been predicting his own suffering, death and resurrection, while telling the disciples that his followers must be prepared to follow him on the same path he would soon take.
A few days later the transfiguration takes place. Maybe it’s symbolic fulfillment of the prediction that has just preceded it.
In addition to Jesus and his three friends, two of Israel’s greatest figures of history – Moses and Elijah – join them, signifying the blending of the old tradition with the new. Of course we know that both Moses and Elijah are veterans of their own mountaintop epiphanies. Here is Elijah, the prophet promised to be the herald of the divine in-breaking to come (Mal. 5:4-6). And Moses is there too, he who spent six days on a mountaintop before God appeared in a cloud (Exod. 24:16-17).
The Greek word that gets rendered in English as “appeared” in these stories is far from its innocuous sound. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint, this kind of appearing is reserved only when God shows up. And when this Greek verb shows up in the Christian scriptures, it’s reserved only to describe Christ’s post-resurrection appearances. This is not your run of the mill appearing.
On that mountain that day, Peter was like any picture taker of old capturing a moment forever on film. Earlier Peter had been reluctant, to say the least, to consider that suffering and death talk from Jesus. And now Peter is totally caught up in this mountaintop moment. He wants to capture it forever. Let’s settle in, he says. Let’s just stay up here when the air is clear and it’s wonderful and safe and we will never have to change, never have to consider something as dark as suffering and death.
I have a suspicion that Peter was embracing this present moment as a way to forget his embarrassing gaffe. As you recall, Peter could not stomach Jesus’ prediction of his coming suffering and death, and had proceeded to tell the person he had just ID as the Messiah that this was not how a self-respecting Messiah ought to act. Peter’s gaffe brought down hard on him a strong rebuke from Jesus, when Jesus called Peter “Satan”!
Well now on this mount of transfiguration a voice from a cloud, not unlike the voice and cloud at Jesus’ baptism, pronounces Jesus both “Son” and “Chosen One.” And as if to make the point even stronger, the voice directs that Peter and the two others should “listen to him,” meaning pay attention to what Jesus says. Take that, Peter! This moment is not just some suggestion for the future. It is a claim on the here and now. Everything, everything that Jesus has been saying and doing must be believed and taken seriously. Or as Mary Gordon puts it, “Faithfulness is not achieved by freezing a moment”; instead, “faithfulness follows God in trust toward the future.”
I must admit that I have always been challenged by this transfiguration moment in time. It has seemed strangely mysterious and fantastical to me, sort of a New Testament “Lord of the Rings” or ET come home thing, or maybe a “bean me up, Scotty” sort of moment. The story has indeed been called a myth, a legend, a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus read back into an earlier period of his life, or perhaps an expression of the theology of the early church which forecasts Christ’s glory in his second coming. And after all, theology is a different discipline from history!
Jesus himself referred to this experience as a vision (Matt.17:9), or so Matthew says. And we all know that some visions are just worthless, like hallucinations induced by phantasy or a mirage in the desert where there is no water after all. But other visions are charged with meaning and produce profound consequences. So who knows what transpired on that mountain, how to call it. It is not clear to me.
But what is clear to me is that Jesus’ transfiguration is a clear marker in the Gospel stories. Barclay calls it one of the great hinges in Jesus’ life. The transfiguration is a continental divide in the ministry of Jesus. Looking backward, we can see Peter’s confession; the feeding of the multitude; the mission of the Twelve; the rejection of Jesus by his own people – family, friends, fellow residents of Nazareth; mighty works; the call of the disciples; his baptism. Looking forward, we can see the journey to Jerusalem, the entry, the final appeal; the betrayal, agony, arrest, trial, crucifixion and triumph.
Transfiguration says the preliminaries are over. Yes, there’s still some ministry to be engaged in, but now life is changing and decisively for Jesus and for his disciples, even as they are still caught up in this moment of transformation. From this mountain and this mountaintop experience, Jesus will set his face for Jerusalem, and inevitably, for his death. To borrow a phrase from George R. R. Martin, “Winter is coming.” Or as we might say here, “Lent is coming, both figuratively and literally.
Still I think Peter was right in one way. This is an extraordinary moment; a time set aside, an experience to be remembered. On this mountain, Jesus and his three friends are caught up in a moment that seems endless. Here there is an intersection, if only for the blink of an eye, of God and a “world charged with the grandeur of God,” to quote Hopkins’ famous poem. This is a “thin place,” as our Celtic ancestors would describe it, when the boundaries between the visible and the invisible become soft and permeable, when the veil lifts just a bit. Jesus, and eventually these three comrades, recognize the moment for what it is – an experience to be treasured for the gift that it is, but also a moment meant to propel them forward. This is not the time, finally, for the pitching of tents. As we sang at the beginning of today’s service:
Strengthened by this glimpse of glory, fearful lest our faith decline,
We, like Peter, find it tempting to remain and build a shrine.
But true worship gives us courage to proclaim what we profess,
That our daily lives may prove us people of the God we bless.
(Carl P. Daw, Jr.)
That plastic tub filled with old photos and documents is a portion of my life to be sure: a six year old all dressed up to please Mom before the photographer’s camera and so much more. I think that is what we want when we take a picture, not that we stay trapped in time, but that we move forward, with a little help on the way. Perhaps this is something worth remembering on the edge of Lent.
So today we’re present with Jesus, up on the mountain. But tomorrow we must be present for Jesus down below in the need and hurt of this world, as well as wherever our spiritual journey takes us and keeps us. All this reminds me of Jesus, on the move from one mountain, and headed toward another one named Calvary, where he would show us once again what God’s love looks like.