Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9
Transfiguration Sunday: March 6, 2011
Have you ever had one of those days? A day where, by the time you put your head on the pillow at night, it feels like about three days have passed since you woke up that morning? When I was in my last year of college, I went on a number of interview trips. One interview was in South Bend, Indiana. I honestly can’t remember the company, but I remember it was winter. I had a full day of interviewing, spent the night in a hotel, then woke up the next morning to face a couple more hours answering questions and trying to impress people. After I was finished talking to what seemed like the last person in the company, I got in a shuttle van to go to the airport. I was running a little late, it was icy, and about a ½ mile from the terminal, the van slid off the road. I knew I didn’t have time to wait for someone to come, so I grabbed my suitcase and walked/ran to the terminal in my suit and pumps.
When I got to the Cedar Rapids airport I picked up my bags and walked out to my car, which had been parked over night on one of the coldest nights of the year. When I turned the key, the car announced its displeasure, and then went quiet. I’m not sure what the actual temperature was, but I know with the wind chill it was well below zero. I had to call AAA, and this was before the days of ubiquitous cell phones. I went back into the airport, made the call, then went back to the car to wait. After what seemed like hours of waiting, I could feel my toes numbing up. Finally, they came, and got my car started.
It was about 2 p.m., and I had class in Iowa City at 3. And it wasn’t just a class I was supposed to attend, I was teaching a section of intro to religious studies. By the time I ran breathless into the classroom, the numbness in my toes had become a sharp pain. The students were a bit baffled by the suit and pumps. I taught the class, went home and changed, then ate dinner.
I had organized a campus ministry program for that evening, so I went after dinner to set up, greet people as they came in, and get things ready for the speaker. That night, I heard one of the best talks I had ever heard from a most surprising source – a gym teacher at the university. I couldn’t stop thinking about it the whole time I was studying that evening for a test the next day, until I put my head on the pillow at about 1 a.m. It was a day I would not forget, but one I have yet to make much sense of because so much happened that day that affected so many parts of my life.
It wasn’t 24 hours for the three disciples who went up the mountain with Jesus that day. The whole thing probably took minutes, not hours. So many amazing things happened, so many emotions, so much to take in and make sense of. It was like having a lifetime of experiences in one, brief encounter. In fact, it was such a loaded experience, the authors of our gospels were still trying to make sense of it 50 years after it happened, and we are still trying to make sense of it today.
It probably began as an ordinary Sabbath day – as ordinary as things could be when you hung out with Jesus. They went up on the mountain to pray. When they got up there, boom! Jesus is transfigured – he begins to shine like the sun. We know, and the author of Matthew knows, this was a bit of a foreshadowing of the future event that would become the foundation of our faith – the resurrection. This is not an everyday occurrence.
But they get absolutely no time to take this in. “Immediately,” Matthew says - just as they are being shown a picture from the future – their entire past arrives on the scene…not theirs as individuals, but theirs as Jewish people. The whole past: the law and the prophets, the story of their scriptures. It’s laid out before them in the form of Moses and Elijah.
Peter tries to get a word in edgewise, he tries to slow things down by giving the three prophets a place to hang out for a while, but he doesn’t get to finish. “While he was speaking,” we’re told, God interrupts with the next extraordinary thing. They are jarred out of the distant past into remembering an earlier scene from Jesus’ life…his baptism. The same voice, saying the same thing: This is my child, the beloved with whom I am well pleased. And as they were reminded of this moment in Jesus’ life, they hear something that affects them in the present: “Listen to him!” God says. God – their God, their awesome God – was asking something of them.
It was all too much. We’re told they were terrified. They fell to the ground – probably the only response they could muster. Then all of a sudden, Jesus reaches out of his transfigured state, and touches them. “Do not be afraid,” he says. They look up, it’s all over. Then, as they are still reeling from this experience, they are shushed; don’t tell anyone what you saw, they are told. That was some Sabbath day.
We tend to think of the Sabbath as a time to rest. But this experience was anything but restful. In fact, it took the people involved on a ride that was completely disorienting – or maybe more accurately re-orienting, and not in a gentle, still-small-voice kind of way. It’s the whole story of God crashing down on them in one instant.
Our Sabbaths do not look like this. Each week we dole the story out in bits and pieces; one or two passages each week telling a teeny, tiny bit of the story. We also tend to downplay or ignore the more fantastical parts of the story. Given what we know of science, we don’t lend much credibility to the miracles and supernatural events. In short, we don’t experience the entire story of our faith in one, incredible moment – past, present, and future coming together all at once. Events like the transfiguration obviously had a powerful impact on the disciples and early Christians – this we know from reading the accounts in our gospels. We may not buy the story itself, but we can’t deny the impact it had. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have the same effect on us today.
I wonder, given our lack of Sabbath day experiences like the one described in our passages this morning, do we miss opportunities to feel the awe they felt, or even the fear? Do we even have a chance to be impacted so dramatically by the story we claim as sacred? And if not, what effect does that have on our faith and relationship with the divine? Are we missing a significant piece of the puzzle?
I think in telling his fellow Christians the story of the transfiguration, the author of Matthew was hoping to connect Jesus’ followers to the experience of the three disciples up on the mountain that day. He wanted them to have a transfiguration moment too. He wanted them to connect emotionally as well as intellectually to who Jesus was and why it is important to follow him even though he died on the cross and was no longer among them. In Jesus, he believed, heaven and earth met. In Jesus, the God of the past, present and future come together to reveal the extraordinary story of divine presence in this world throughout history. And Matthew thought this was inspiring, transforming. So he brought the story close to people by recounting the transfiguration. But the transfiguration is so distant from us – in time and in context. It doesn’t tend to inspire awe, or even fear. It tends to evoke confusion, if not indifference.
We can practice the Sabbath every week by coming to worship, but we can’t hear the whole story every week – it’s not practical. And we can’t have mountain top experiences all the time. We can’t force an experience or an emotional response to what we hear … So, short of seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah transfigured in front of us, how do we break through our indifference? How do we open ourselves up to encounters like that, at least symbolically, give us a glimpse of the radiance of God, and connect us to our story in a way that inspires awe and fear?
It is no accident that both Moses’ and Jesus’ mountaintop transformation happens on the Sabbath. This was a removed time; Sabbath was set apart. Going up the mountain in the bible symbolized being totally removed from the world. Mountains were special – they were like sanctuaries. They were a meeting place with the divine. The disciples experienced something transformative that day – but they were removed, suspended in time for a moment, and they had a true mountain top experience. Jesus had just predicted his death, and they were about to start the journey to the cross. Choosing to follow Jesus was not the easiest decision in the world. But in this Sabbath moment, this removed time, they encountered a truth that allowed them to at least take the next step.
Following Jesus is no less difficult today – at least at times. So if those set apart moments are necessary to help us on our way, how can we remove ourselves? How can we symbolically ascend a mountain? Can was have these mountain top experiences?
I’m reading a book about vocation – about how to discern what the most is the most faithful thing in one’s life. The way I ask this is “How do I connect with the divine movement in the world in any given moment, with any given decision?” Pro and con lists, thinking through the options, talking to wise people – these things are good and should accompany at least the “big” decisions in life. But the author also argues we should seek a moment of “connection” where our heart and bodies know intuitively “this is the right thing.” That connection is more emotional than intellectual, more mystical than tangible – and it requires time away from the noise that often influences what we do. Noise like other people’s expectations, societal norms that sometimes confine us in our decision making, business, and our own self doubt and criticism.
In looking back on my life, I think I have had moments of connecting with the divine movement and knowing I was making a “right” decision. Coming here, to Grinnell and this church, is one example of this. I wouldn’t necessarily call them transfiguration moments – I had no visions of Jesus shining like the sun, I heard no voice – at least not clearly. But they were moments, I think, of the divine and the human meeting.
At the same time, I have to admit there is much that is scary about seeking out those moments. I often avoid intentionally taking time for discernment about what I should do with my life, because my goodness, what might I hear? Whenever I take even just a small, mini-moment for such things, I get a strong sense that if I want to live guided by the incredible, huge story of our faith tradition, my life might need to look very different than it does now. I am humbled by our story. I am humbled by what I think I see of God in the lives of my faith ancestors – both those found in the bible and people throughout history who I think did “listen to Jesus.” And I’m afraid of the implications of all of this. Falling on my knees in both awe and fear might very well be the appropriate response at times.
We are about to enter Lent. Maybe this whole season can be a Sabbath time for us – a time to seek transformative connections with the divine. Traditionally during Lent we are more intentional about reflecting on our lives and the needs of the world. Some of us give something up or add some spiritual discipline during this time in order to open up a little more space for such reflection. Lent sits between the transfiguration and the resurrection in our faith tradition. In each of those events, we see the whole story of God illuminated in the person of Jesus. Maybe those stories can call us to a time that is set apart from our ordinary time. The story of our faith calls us to something larger than ourselves. Our God calls us to transcend the things in our daily lives that hold us back from following Jesus.
To use Lent for this kind of reflection might, in fact, be a little scary. It is risky because we might hear something we aren’t sure we want to hear. But remember that the transfiguration and Easter book-end time. Remember that we are surrounded by a transcendent and inspiring story. Remember Jesus’ words to the disciples that Sabbath day: “Do not be afraid.” May this season of Lent be a transforming Sabbath time for us. Amen.
