The Light That Leads Us
TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
II Peter 1: 16-19; Matthew 17: 1-9
This is Transfiguration Sunday the season finale of Epiphany Season…
Mountains matter in the Biblical story.
Things happen on mountains.
God makes appearances on mountains.
The story more often than not peaks on mountaintops.
Perhaps the most important mountain event in the Old Testament happens on Mt.
Sinai…when Moses meet God face to face and receives the Ten Commandments.
Jennifer and I had the opportunity to visit Mt. Sinai back in the late 1990’s.
I remember it so clearly.
We spent the night at hostel at the foot of Mt. Sinai.
Just outside the walls of St. Catherine's Monastery.
We arose about 3:00 a.m., mounted our camels and, in the dark of night,
made our way up the mountainside of Sinai. The goal, of course, was to make it to the
peak in time to see the sun rise—to have the light dawn upon us on that Holy
Mountain.
We made a few minutes before sunrise. However, I was over at the Bedouin tent,
buying some hot chocolate and cookies at the moment the light dawned!
So much for my Epiphany!
According to tradition, Mt. Tabor is the site of The Transfiguration.
Jesus takes Peter,James, and John up a high mountain. And there he is transfigured
before them, "his face shone like the sun”
I can’t explain it…that’s above my pay grade.
But I take it face value..asrecorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke…
And referred to in the text from II Peter…There Peter admonishes us….
to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts.
In the Eastern Church, the miracle that was the Transfiguration was NOT understood as
something that happened to Jesus… the miracle of the Transfiguration was what
happened in the Disciples…Namely, their eyes were opened. and they beheld Jesus as
he truly was. What they witnessed was not the suspension of reality, but its full,
unfiltered exposure.
A monumental moment worthy of a monument.
Three monuments, actually as far as Peter was concerned.
Peter does not want it to be lost with the passage of time: building monuments to mark
monumental moments was a well documented Jewish practice,
Peter suggests three such monuments be constructed:
one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.
Let’s be honest, who among us would not have been on board with Peter’s proposal?
Who among us cannot stop ourselves from reaching for our phones whenever we see
anything or anyone doing something that we don’t want to forget or we want others to
see…or at least we want others to see us seeing it.
Being in the moment is not enough…we want to capture and store it to guarantee its
availability to us at will. We store up experiences in our effort to keep from forgetting
them…only to forget where we stored them or how to retrieve them.
The truth is, if the moment does not live in us,
no stored image will make it live again.
but these high moments don’t keep that way…
we don’t keep them…they keep us.
Nothing more depressing than to see people gathered in the moment of transcendence
with cell phones held aloft in front of their faces. Being there, in the moment, is not
enough…de-face the moment…
In a “put your phones away moment” the voice from heaven shuts Peter down…they
would not be allowed to stay there…to locate faith in its fullness there…in that place.
For centuries…Sites were hard to find….lives in encounter….living relationship…
Interestingly, Peter’s proposal is overrulled…literally overshadowed by a cloud and a
voice from heaven:
“This is my Son, the Chosen, Listen to him!”
At the center of the faith that is Christian is the demand that we listen to Jesus…the
demand that, above all things, we cultivate a listening heart.
Let’s be honest, listening is tenuous, is not easy…especially to Jesus.
Monuments feel a lot more tangible, concrete, permanent, and reliable…controllable…
There is a Christianity afoot in this country that claims to follow Jesus but has ceased to
listen to him. It has opted for the building of monuments and fortresses and walls.
It has decided that now is a time for waiting is over…it is time to take control, time for
seizing power in the name of Jesus…that time for listening has passed.
Who can blame them?
Who knows where listening to Jesus might take us?
Jesus would lead them down from that mountain, move them on eventually to another
mountain…equally monumental…and revealing..but in a completely different way….
Jesus was already envisioning another mountain…in the verses that preceded the
passage we read today, Jesus had begun to tell them that he was destined for suffering
and even death…and that they would have the prepare for the same.
It is the place we would come to call Golgotha…the place of Crucifixion of Jesus….
The contrast between the two moments, the two mountains could not be more
striking…both mountains would be remembered by the disciples…equally revealing of
who Jesus was.
There there would be no unapproachable light…
only an impenetrable darkness
There would be no place for three monuments,
but 3 crosses would stand..
no prophets of the likes of Moses and Elijah to be seen at Jesus side…
just two anonymous thieves
no dazzling robe…
only a naked body stripped of every shred of dignity and honor.
there would be no assuring voice from heaven, “This is my son…”
There would only a human solitary cry of abandonment….
”My God, my God why have
you forsaken me”
Herein lies the mystery of the ages:
On both of those mountains the nature of God and of God’s undying love and mercy
for this world was revealed…
To listen to Jesus is to allow ourselves to be thrown forward into the midst of life and
death and everywhere in-between…to not cease from our listening and following…and
in all our listening and following to not lose heart or hope.
If all we had was the one mountain, Mt Tabor…the mount of
Transfiguration…following Jesus would come with the guarantee of comfort,
resolution, transcendence…one that makes all things bright and clears up all the
ambiguity and messiness and struggle that is our human circumstance!
If all we had was the mount we call Golgotha, we would have nothing more to tell than
the a tragic story of heroic martyrdom. The full truth of Jesus can only be
comprehended when both of these mountains are before us…
There are, to be sure, glimpses, sometimes even flashes of unambiguous clarity and
meaning, along the way. But there are moments, even monumental moments, that
point up and to the mystery and wonder of it all.
The wisdom of the church in the placing of Transfiguration in juxtaposition to Ash
Wednesday…we must move on from the heights of glory and make our way into the
valley of the shadow of death….and we begin the journey toward Easter….
We begin with what is beyond doubt…in order
to prepare us to be grasped by what is beyond belief. It’s an amazing journey we are on together.
I had been at my new congregation for just a few months, and one of my members was not exactly taking to my preaching. “I’
m not sure this church is a fit for me anymore.”
She elaborated, “When I joined here several years ago, before you came, I joined
because it felt like a place where I could find casual religion. Every week I could count
on a pep talk that would get me up and going for a new week. Now I feel like every
time I come here, I need to do something, be something, change something.”
Of course, I took it all quite casually.
I’ve never forgotten that turn of phrase, “casual religion.”
It screams, “banal, boring, and beside the point.”
Incarnation…Transfiguration….Crucifixion…Resurrection….casual stuff, to be sure.
Our life here together is many things…hopefully not casual…but it is first and foremost
the experience of being moved on together in faith hope and love…with glimpses of
glory along the way, experiences of transcendence amidst the dailiness, sometimes the
darkness…and in the many many countless moments in-between.
I am always amazed at the stories I hear from people who have had visions of God and
who seem to live with an undiminished sense that God is near…I believe them. I have
no doubt that my perception of reality is all its fullness is exceedingly poor…
But I don’t find such stories nearly as important to my own understanding of faith than
the stories of fellow pilgrims who are making their way through the darkness, the
absence, and the silence…and have come to know the nearness of God there.
I remember a time in my own life when I felt somewhat lost. In the margins of my
Bible, in a Psalm I had read that day, I wrote:
“Lord, help me to remember in the dark
what I learned in the light.
And, Help me to remember in the light,
what I learned in the darkness.”
In this Lenten season that lies before us,
Let us pray…for the
Eyes to see
Ears to hear
And the courage to follow.
until, as St. Peter admonishes, “the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts.” Amen.