Moment of Clarity (Transfiguration Sunday)

A Moment of Clarity

Last Sunday of Epiphany (Year B)
19 February 2012; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass

Transfiguration Sunday
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon  

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9 

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. (Mark 9:2-9)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

Here in Ashland, we have great light.  After a day of working on this homily on Monday, I found myself driving with Elena over to the Y for an evening workout.  As we came across Ashland Street, we looked up to the East.  The late afternoon sun fell on Grizzlie Peak, wrapped in fog, appearing to us as fluffy white clouds hugging the cedars and ridges. Lit by the light reflected back up from the snow on the ground up there, the clouds suddenly glowed brightly, even brilliantly, as if hiding a great light up on the Mountain.  The magical moment gave me a very vivid visual image in my mind to work with as I struggled with this text on the transfiguration of Christ up on Mount Tabor. 

All of today’s readings are about light or sight:  Elisha must see Elijah taken up into heaven in order to have a double dose of his spirit, Paul in 2 Corinthians says that “the god of this world” has blinded “the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light,” while God has given to believers “the knowledge of the brightness of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain, where they see Christ change shapes (“metamorphosed”), burst into brilliant light, and then appear alongside Moses and Elijah.

What Paul calls the “brightness of God in the face of Jesus” is what the story of the Transfiguration is about:  the steady, unchanging sum of brightness around the Deity.  Jesus' transfiguration is a brief glimpse of the true state of affairs, normally hidden from our sight.  

Transfiguration Sunday ends the season of Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  In a very real way, the scene here is what we call in popular parlance an epiphany, a moment of clarity when all of a sudden we see things as they really are. 

We all have seen such a moment of clarity, both good and bad.  It is when you realize you have found the love of your life.  It is when a person in discernment comes to know what it is that God is calling her to.  It is when you suddenly are sure what your passion in life or work is.  It is what makes a destructive drunk "hit bottom" and begin to reach out for help.  It is when you realize you are in a destructive relationship and need to break it off.  It is when a diagnostician suddenly puts together all the symptoms, pathology, and life details of the patient and intuitively knows what disease she is dealing with.  It is when a scientist suddenly recognizes the pattern and comes up with a new hypothesis or theory.  It is when, of a sudden, we know that we love and trust God. 

But this epiphany to Peter and his companions stretches his mind a bit beyond what it is ready to receive.  His reaction to this revelation of Jesus’ true glory shows he has misunderstood.  Seeing the two great icons of the Jewish tradition before him alongside Jesus—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets, he calls Jesus “Rabbi” and says it is a good thing that these figures have come to endorse the authority of Jesus.  He suggests that he build three Succoth—temporary shelters—in their honor.  

Succoth (tabernacles, or booths) were set up for the duration of the major harvest festival.  They stood for the tents of Israel during the 40 years of wandering in the desert while being fed on the Manna, the bread from Heaven, and symbolized human reliance on God, an appropriate sentiment for a harvest festival.  

The prophet Zechariah had said that when the Messiah came, all the nations of the earth would go in pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Succoth Festival and build such Booths as commanded by Moses.  God would punish any nation not doing by withholding the rain and sending drought, the punishment that Elijah had famously brought on King Ahab for three years (Zech 14:16-18; Exod 23:16; 34:22; 2 Kings 17).  

Seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Peter wants to build small shrines commemorating the event that showed that Jesus was yet another great figure in the history of the religion of the Jews, perhaps even the Messiah who would force all Gentiles to become Jews by invoking Elijah’s curse of drought.  But the narrator comments, “He didn’t know what he was saying. He was scared witless, after all.” 
 

The glory of God reflecting in the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter's assumptions.  He is confuses things, and thinks somehow that Jesus is getting his authority or endorsement from the appearance of the ancient prophets.  

But God intervenes and sets things straight.  A light-filled cloud appears and covers everything. A voice identifies Jesus as the first thing, the real item. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to what he says!’   The cloud disappears, and all that remains is Jesus himself.  Moses and Elijah are not longer around. 

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples that they don’t fully “get” until after the resurrection: that the “glory of God is shining in the face of Jesus,” that, in the words of John’s Gospel, “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.” 

Just before the verses we read today in 2 Corinthians, St. Paul says that Christ is the image of God, and that we all, beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ, “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). 

How is it that we can "gaze upon the glory" of our Lord?   How can we “listen to what he says” rather than build tents on the hillside, memorials to our own prior conceptions? 

It is important to reflect on our Lord and Savior often and regularly.  That is why daily prayer and scripture reading is an essential part of any Christian’s effective spiritual discipline.  Regular Church attendance helps, but in gazing upon the Lord's glory, we must be the Church, not simply attend Church.  It is not just a passive act of admiration.  Following Jesus in doing corporeal acts of mercy, in serving our fellows, in standing with the outcast, the downtrodden, and the sick--these give us an experience of who Jesus is and what he does. 

Given the stresses of life, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to believe that people cannot change.  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God can change us.  In the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  This makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that we shall be changed. 

Just as God sent that shining cloud to drive away Peter’s silly preconceptions and plans, God works with us as we look into the glorious face of Jesus and try to hear his voice. 

The faith that we are being changed from one glory to another in the direction of the image of Jesus is reflected in the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Lord, I know I ain't what I outta be.  And I know I ain't what I'm gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain't what I was!"

Such change is sometimes hard, so hard that at times we do not know whether we will be able to bear it.  At other times it is seems easy as taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.  

When Paul says this turns us into "the image of Christ" he is not saying it removes our individuality.  What he describes is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us, with all that makes us who we are, but absent the brokenness that we so often mistake for what makes us who we are. 

One of the greatest foundation stones of my personal faith is the experience of seeing transformed brothers and sisters around us, and seeing ourselves over the years as God works with us and changes us.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, only that God is making progress in finishing his creation in us.

Charles Wesley in one of his hymns summed it up this way--

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
'Till in heaven we take our place.
'Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.  

It is not just in heaven when all of God's creation is done that this happens.  As we are transformed here and now, quickly or slowly, it makes us look around us in amazement of these tokens of God's love and then gaze all the more, "lost in wonder, love, and praise," on the author and pioneer of it all. 

As we look upon Christ's glory, may God so work with us all and change us.   

 In the name of Christ, Amen.