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The Transfiguration of our Lord

Morning Prayer Homily

February 26, 2006

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

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

 It’s hard to find the words to describe them. Transcendent moments, some say. Thin times, Barbara Brown Taylor calls them, when the boundary between heaven and earth is very thin. A glimpse of glory. A mystic experience. A meeting of past, present and future. A sampling of the more that is always there with God. A mountaintop experience.

It’s hard to find the right words, but maybe, by God’s grace, you have experienced such a time when just for a moment you knew that you were on holy ground.

At the risk of sounding like I’m name-dropping, I’ll tell you that I have just experienced a mountaintop—even several of them in recent days. On Friday I returned from Porto Alegre, Brazil where I attended the 9 th Assembly of the World Council of Churches. I can’t tell you what it was like to gather with nearly 4,000 Christians from around the world, to see their faces, to hear some of their stories, to pray together. It’s praying the Lord’s Prayer together that touches me so very deeply—all together we prayed, everyone in their own language, still as with one voice. Gathering in the worship tent gave me, I think, a little glimpse of heaven. It was holy ground and God was clearly present.

Many times, though, those transcendent, thin times are not spectacular but rather quiet moments of deep knowing when, for example, there has been a moment of real forgiveness and reconciliation in a relationship or when God’s grace and goodness has been especially clear or when you have experienced such beauty in sight or sound that you know it is from God. Maybe, by God’s grace, you have experienced such moments.

They never seem to last long. They are glimpses, tastes, fleeting moments of God’s revelation. There is always the temptation to try to hold on to them, to capture them, or to fit them into some categories we know, but they cannot be explained or defined or captured—rather they can only be received, savored, contemplated. They encourage us in the “now” and draw us on toward the “not yet” that God has promised.

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Mountaintops had been known for generations to be places of God’s revelation—thin places where heaven and earth could almost meet. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with mountaintop stories. Moses, for example, communed with God on Mount Sinai and came down with God’s renewed covenant with that people whom God through Moses had led out of slavery in Egypt. He came down with what we have come to know as the Ten Commandments. God continued to use Moses to shepherd the covenant people through their years of wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land.

And the great Old Testament prophet Elijah encountered God on the mountain. Maybe you remember the story. He was fleeing in fear from Jezebel who had threatened to kill him because Elijah had shown up all of the prophets of her god Baal and then had killed them. Elijah was scared and discouraged and ready to give up and die. Finally he made his way to Mount Horeb where God came to him—not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire—usual forms of God’s revelation. God was in the sheer silence or what is sometimes translated the still small voice. From there God sent him on to the rest of his prophetic life until he was carried off to heaven as we heard in today’s first lesson.

On the mountaintop in today’s reading from Mark, Elijah and Moses join Jesus. Often in Mark’s Gospel Jesus goes to the mountain to pray—to commune with the one who sent him, perhaps to clarify his identity and mission. Perhaps this mountaintop experience was the encouragement Jesus needed to continue the journey to Jerusalem, to the cross.

But this time Jesus didn’t go alone to pray. He took along the inner circle of disciples—Peter, James and John. Just six days before, Jesus has begun to talk with the disciples about his coming suffering and death. They didn’t want to hear it, and they really didn’t understand it. Perhaps Jesus knew that they needed a mountaintop experience to help them through what was to come.

They saw Jesus, there on the mountaintop, transfigured, metamorphed, changing shape right before their eyes. Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white. The dazzling white might have been reminiscent of divinity or prefiguring the resurrection or recalling the white robes of the martyrs. They saw Jesus talking with Elijah and Moses who were both long gone from this earth. It’s not clear how they knew it was Moses and Elijah, but evidently they could recognize them. Here past, present and future are all joined. The law and the prophets—everything that had gone before—came together with Jesus. It was all pretty frightening to the disciples.

Peter wanted to build dwellings—or tents or booths. Some people think that Peter’s wanting to build three booths there was linked to the Jewish festival of the booths which was linked to the coming of the Messiah and the end of the world. Others think Peter just wanted to settle in and live with this wonderful experience there on the mountain. In any case, it doesn’t seem that that is what God had in mind.

They were soon covered with a cloud often in the scriptures a sign of God’s presence, and they heard God’s voice: “This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” They hadn’t been listening to the stuff about cross and suffering and death. Now they are told—right from God’s own mouth—that Jesus is the one. Perhaps they will soon need that assurance when they get to Jerusalem and all hell breaks loose.

And then suddenly it is all over—no cloud and voice, no Elijah and Moses, no dazzling clothes, only Jesus walking with them down from the mountain and very soon talking again about suffering and death.

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The people who first read Mark’s gospel could easily identify with Peter, James and John in this story. They were a persecuted people, suffering much. They needed reassurance and encouragement that the last word was not to be found in suffering or even death. They must have found comfort and hope in the glimpse of God’s glory that they saw in this story. And even more they must have found comfort and hope in knowing that Jesus did not stay on the mountain but came down into the midst of life like theirs.

Last week in Brazil, I was in a small Bible study group with a bishop from Tanzania. He said he thought most people who came to church came not for the glory but came because they were suffering. There, he said, they find a God who cares and is with them in their suffering.

This is surely a message that we, too, can receive from this text. The mountaintop transfigured savior and the suffering savior on Calvary are one and the same. When we listen to the Beloved One we learn of the God who is with us in all things even unto death.

And we can receive our mountaintop experiences—fleeting and far between though they may be—as reassurance and encouragement to continue the journey, to take up our cross and follow Jesus, to give up our lives in service to all those God so much loves.

It’s a good perspective for us to have now, just three days before Lent when we begin our forty days of prayer, fasting and works of charity.

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It seems to me, though, that we can find an even deeper meaning in this story. We are about to enter Lent, but we are still a post-Resurrection, Easter people. We are no longer disciples just witnessing the transfiguration. We are also being transfigured.

In baptism, we are joined to Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and we are joined to each other to form Christ’s body in the world. That is the beginning of our metamorphosis. We receive double measure of the spirit of the Risen Christ, and our transformation continues. We listen to the beloved One as the Word is read and preached and taught, and we are changed. We gather around the table and receive into ourselves Christ’s body and blood, and we are never the same again.

This isn’t just about some solitary, individual, personal change in me. It is about us, together as Body of Christ—joined with all those who have gone before and will come after—and joined with all those around the world—together as Body of Christ, we are transfigured.

It’s not always easy being together in the cocoon while the metamorphosis is taking place. Here in the cocoon of the church we are held together, and we learn how to live with differences, how to forgive and be forgiven, how to share what we have, how to receive others gifts strange as they may be, how to work together, how to share burdens and joys, how be together even with those we don’t want to be with, how to tell our story and Chrsit’s. Being together changes us.

As Body of Christ, like Christ, we exist not for ourselves but for the sake of the world. By God’s grace, we may well one day find ourselves on someone esle’s mountaintop. We—imagine that, the likes of us—might be the means God uses to give someone a glimpse of God’s own glory. We might be the means through which God’s grace and love becomes clear to someone. We might be that thin place where someone gets a taste of heaven.

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The theme of the World Council of Churches Assembly was “God, in your grace, transform the world.” The message to the churches adopted by the assembly is in the form of a prayer. I read a portion of it:

Amen.

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