Transfigure
2And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.3Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”Today’s transfiguration text, the transfiguration of Jesus into a dazzling heavenly transformed white, is pivotal in the gospel as a whole; like a mountain peak, the gospel has come up to a point, and now it will go back down through rich mountains and dusty valleys, down to the garden of Gethsemane, and then finally back up a little ways to another strange mountain peak, as Jesus is raised up on the cross.
Today’s lesson is that transformation and change are critical to maintaining our spiritual awareness and experience.
If we’re stuck in a rut, it’s because we’re stuck in a rut – so God offers us many ways to re-imagine and reorder life so that we can go on; today’s text offers us the re-imaging of ourselves as spiritual bodies, as Jesus is transfigured into, as the ultimate gift that God gives to us as God gave Moses and Elijah.
Transformation and change are vital to God’s path for our spiritual lives and our heavenly bodies, In the words of Will Rogers…
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’re going to get run over if you sit there.”
Wherever our journeys go, today’s gospel makes the point that we’re part of God’s changes, even if we don’t quite know what to make of them like Peter, James, or John.
This week we begin a pivotal time in our worship calendar as well; this week we will begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, the evening worship where we re-imagine our strange journey with the words, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. And next Sunday, we will begin recounting Jesus’ journey to the cross of Good Friday, beginning not with the mountain top but at sea level- as Jesus is being baptized by John in the Jordan; where, like today’s story, it is also heard declared from a cloud, that Jesus- is God’s son, the beloved, a person to pay attention to among all our ups and downs…, a person, as God says, to listen to.
If you’ve watched the weather channel or checked weather.com. Like a prediction, the transfiguration shows a glimpse into the future of what’s coming even before it’s arrived. It shows Jesus transformed; yet Jesus also alerts us that before the peace, there is the storm; there’s a 100% chance that the Messiah must suffer, but he says, wait it out.,
Amidst the uncertainties of waiting for our own death storm to arrive, this news report of the transfiguration has sights and sounds that suggests that our spiritual selves- our transformed selves as Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are transformed- are clearly more than the mere ashes spread in a cross on Ash Wednesday. There is something quite unique that goes beyond the usual end of a life journey in death.
Not everyone is simply afraid of death, often it is the fear of losing capabilities that creates the most anxiety about living. The fear of losing something or positions or status can create a desperate resistance to God’s transformation.
Peter is afraid of losing Jesus to suffering and so tries to stop him before the transfiguration, but then, even as he sees Jesus transfigured, he makes the mistake of wanting to make an experience into a religious monument, not something that Jesus wants either…
Meaningful rituals and monuments are one thing, when they alert us to the fact that change is part of life; but ritual for the sake of not changing what we experience- is meaningless, Jesus expects change. It’s as if a person were to say, “I want to be baptized but not changed,” this makes no sense to God.
This is why the literary context of the transfiguration story is also helpful for us to experience the world a new. Baptism connects us to this change going on through Jesus’ death and life. Just before the transfiguration Jesus says, the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Even certain religious people were willing to stop God’s change with outrage, violence, and trying to take legal and religious actions to take Jesus away from his church.
What good is a spiritual body if it is simply destroyed by the bad, by the violent, by the poison?
What’s good about having a transfiguration spiritual body?
Do we even realize this is what we have been given through Baptism?
Frankly, We don’t. And we don’t really know how to use this ability- this transfiguration mechanism accurately, or else we might often see people become dazzling white. But the transfiguration of minds- the changing of spiritual bodies towards one good or another, we do see this, and so we encounter this experience on some level or another throughout life.
Suffering and pain are usually difficult to manage- and while some people have had drastic transfigurations from cancer to healed and whole for example; more often life changing experiences are more subdued, more about insight, than about drastic healings from blindness to sight.
Perhaps it is the stagnation or the rut of a daily routine or habits that have broken our connection to our source of inspiration in God.
Interestingly, Jesus is always changing his day to day routines, indeed geographical changes match with every teaching and parable and healing and story of Jesus in the gospel of Mark; he’s always on the move.
Diane Ackerman in “A Natural History of the Senses” writes, ‘What draws our attention, in many cases, is change. Our senses are finely attuned to change. Stationary or unchanging objects become part of the scenery and are mostly unseen. Customary sounds become background noise, mostly unheard. The feel of a sweater against our skin is soon ignored. Our touch receptors, “so alert at first, so hungry for novelty, after a while say the electrical equivalent of ‘Oh, that again,’ and begin to doze…”
Well then, perhaps Jesus is transfigured in order to signal and stimulate change in his disciples? Had they gotten too used to him? Had they gotten too used to themselves and their expectations of life? Had their brilliant faith been bogged down.
Again, I wonder, is Jesus transfigured in order to signal and stimulate change within the hard wiring of his disciples? Had they gotten too used to their memories of him? God says listen, listen to the Son in a new way, like you’ve never listened before.
Today’s text ought to remind us that not only is Jesus always on the move, but that God has given us great gifts in our senses to always explore again the amazing possibilities of where God is active and working in creation.
As Christians transfigured by Christ, we are not called out of the world, rather we are called deeper into the world, on earth as it is in heaven, to experience God’s creation in ever new ways with more and more amazement. Our spiritual bodies are made for earth first, before we ever make it to heaven.
From the mountain top to the river bottom we are invited to uses our senses to follow Jesus’ path; next week we will jump back in time back to Jesus’ baptism. Baptisms involve all of our senses, from the splash of the water, to the bright white drying towels, to the touching peace and celebration that is passed, to perhaps the smell of olive oil or light from the candles.
Experiencing Jesus fully as spiritual bodies in our worship includes the Holy communion when we might taste perhaps: bitter, or bland, or sweet; to remind us of God’s continued faithfulness to us in all our experiences.
Amen
