Responding to Jesus’ offer of freedom and a new start takes vision – our ability to respond, actually starts with our eyes and how we see the world and the people around us. And in the story of Jesus’ transfiguration it also starts with bright lights, metamorphosis and an unbelievable trip up a mountain.
“Whenever we face the glory of God, it’s a living presence, we get the real thing. This is what Jesus was showing us. It’s not just a piece of chiseled stone that used to be the representation of God, now God is giving us the true spirit of himself which leads us to freedom. The old hidden way is now obsolete. We can humbly, but boldly enter his presence and let our lives shine brighter and brighter as we are made to be more and more like him.” [The Work of the People – “Transfiguration Video”]
The story of Jesus’ Transfiguration. It is other worldly. It has those echoes of Moses’ mountaintop experience – echoes of Jesus’ baptism with the voice coming from heaven.
But, the thing I like about this story and it always seems to catch my attention is not the bright cloud or the dazzling clothes or Peter trying to be helpful or the disciples’ fear at the sound of God’s voice. It is the change in the tempo of the story – it is the urgency with which they come off of that mountain – it is the focus of Jesus who now turns his eyes and his heart to the future. More on that focus in the weeks to come…
But here is the thing about this transition and transformation – we may think it is all about Jesus, but that’s just the half of it – it is about Peter and James and John – it is about you and me. If it wasn’t, Jesus would have just gone up there by himself – had the meeting with Moses, Elijah and God and that would have been that.
But that’s not the story and it’s not our story either. You see, I think we inherently understand this mountain and valley dichotomy. We have been both places. We have been on the mountain to celebrate the new relationship or the birth of a child or success in career or the joy of renewed health – but that’s not where we live.
We live in the valley – in the flat places. We live in the place where we are called to account for our work and our actions. We live in the place where our concern and worry over family and health and hopes are always right in front of us. We live in the place where our fear about what the future holds for our world is often bubbling just below the surface.
Yes, we understand the necessity of that mountain.
Because whether we know it or not – and whether we like it or not – we need that bright light, that metamorphosis – that transformation in our lives. We need to be enveloped in that cloud – to have the you know what scared out of us – to recognize that God is at work – that we are not alone – that we are more than the sum of our fears and failures – and that God is offering freedom and a new start today.
Responding to that offer of freedom and a new start takes vision – our ability to respond, actually starts with our eyes and how we see the world and the people around us.
In order to become a pastor in most denominations, a candidate for ministry must be examined and tested theologically. The church has an obligation to know if a person is theologically sound before approving them for ordination. In the ELCA, this takes the form of an extensive essay that candidates write and then defend before a committee.
However, I read recently about an old pastor who has his own way of vetting candidates – asking the same theological question of each one. He begins by asking the candidate to look out the window at a person passing by on the walk, saying: “Do you know that person?” The answer is invariable no.
“Good,” the pastor says, “Now, my question is this: Will you please describe that person theologically?”
In three decades of asking that question, he has found that the candidates tend to give one of two different answers. They will either say, “That person is a sinner in need of redemption.” Or they will respond, “Whether they know it or not, that person is a child of God…”
“I suppose,” the pastor reflected, “that, technically, both answers are correct. But it is my experience that those who give the second answer make the better pastors.”
It’s about our vision. We want to be able to see people in the present tense, in the middle of their circumstances, but also to recognize that they are more than just the present tense. We also need to recognize God at work in them in the future – at work in them as beloved children of God. [Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company]
This kind of vision is a real challenge for us today. It is a challenge to trust our eyes and our ears as we sort and sift through the truth and the alternate facts that seem to be all around us. It can be a challenge to look out on those who are different from us – different in appearance or in point-of-view – and see them as ones created by God.
But there is too much at stake not to.
Trusting in God’s presence and power to transform… “…doesn’t mean that we should expect all evil to be redeemed in a singular spectacular moment of divine intervention, writes Elizabeth Palmer.
It doesn’t mean we should wear rose-colored glasses to avoid the work of living ethically in a broken world. It doesn’t mean that we will get to glow like Jesus or float in a cloud of glory.
[But what] it does mean, [she continues, is] that there’s potential in the most ordinary places for transformation. It means that grace comes to us in mundane form: bread, a word, water, a stranger… The promise of transfiguration is that the glory of God transforms our world—and us—from the inside out. (Elizabeth Palmer, Christian Century, January 27, 2017).
I like the story of Transfiguration – the sheer power of the moment of God breaking into our world. The recognition that transformation and change manifests itself in the ordinary – in the day to day – in the way we see and treat the ones we love and the ones we do not know.
I also know that God is still at work in the world and at work in us – and why? Because there is still work to be done. And just as there is still work to be done, there are still mountains to climb and valleys to live into.
Theologian and author, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes about Jesus’ invitation to us to go up the mountain to pray, she writes:
No one can make you go, after all. But if you’ve been looking for some excuse to head to your own mountaintop and pray, this is it. If you’ve been looking for some way to trade in your old certainties for new movement in your life, look no further. This is your chance to enter the cloud of unknowing and listen for whatever it is that God has to say to you. Tent or no tent, this is your chance to encounter God’s contagious glory, so that a little of that shining rubs off on you.
Today, [she continues,] you have heard a story you can take with you when you go. It tells you that no one has to go up the mountain alone. It tells you that sometimes things get really scary before they get holy. Above all, it tells you that there is someone standing in the center of the cloud with you, shining so brightly that you may never be able to wrap your mind around him, but who is worth listening to all the same–because he is God’s beloved, and you are his, and whatever comes next, you are up to it… (Barbara Brown Taylor)
Peter and James and John likely had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they said yes to Jesus’ invitation to go up that high mountain. It is much the same for us – when we say YES to Jesus’ invitation – when we open ourselves to the possibilities – we truly have no idea what we are getting ourselves into either – and that is the beauty of it – to trust in the grace and freedom found in the one who calls us there.
The invitation is yours. Amen.
Rev. John Berg
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
Northbrook, IL
Resources:
- The Work of the People – “Transfiguration Video”
- “Describe That Person Theologically” – Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company.
- Elizabeth Palmer, Christian Century, January 27, 2017
- “The Bright Cloud of Unknowing” – Day1 – Barbara Brown Taylor, March 2, 2014