Sunday, February 26, 2017
Transfiguration Sunday, St. John’s Episcopal, Royal Oak
The Rev. Beth Taylor
Exodus 24, Matthew 17
Scripture - Exodus 24:12-18
The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone,
with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant
Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to
you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.”
Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount
Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the
appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of
Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty
nights.
Gospel - Matthew 17:1-9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by
themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling
white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is
good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for
Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said,
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to
the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of
Man has been raised from the dead.”
Hebrew
God is sometimes revealed to us in something as faint as a breath, in a sliver of a moment, and,
for whatever reason, we see or perhaps feel something that confirms for us that we ARE in the presence
of the Holy One. That WE too are holy. This weighty, yet fragile realization is too much to sustain for
very long. And so it passes. If you’ve ever had such an experience, you know that it is so hard, maybe
impossible, to explain. So we can only use symbols and metaphors or figurative language to describe it.
Some people call these moments miracles. Some people call them visions. Mystical events. Others call
them mountain top experiences.
In today’s Hebrew Scripture – in the book of Exodus – Moses climbs a mountain. Why? – because in
the symbolic motif of Holy scripture, mountain tops are where you go to meet God. Over and over again, we
will find the people of God climbing mountains, because in biblical culture, God was thought to dwell ‘UP’ in the heavens, ‘on high.’ So the people who climba mountain (like Abraham and Isaac, or Elijah), or build a
tall tower (like in Babel), or ascend a ladder - “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder” - were thought to be
moving closer to God.
Moses had once met God on a mountain top in a burning bush. That one experience started
everything for him. Today Moses climbs a mountain - to meet God again. And this time - on the mountaintop,
God gives Moses the law, the commandments. The scripture says, the ‘appearance of the glory of the Lord was
like a devouring fire” – yet another recurring symbol when one meets God: Dazzling light. Radiance!
Later in the story, the scripture says that after being in the presence of God, Moses’ own face shines
with the glory of God – it shines so brightly that Moses has to cover his face with a veil! You see, Light
produces light. Light transmits light. The radiance of God actually illumines Moses! who then also shines.
In today’s Gospel story, known as “The Transfiguration.” we will climb another mountain – and see another
dazzling light! If we were to look back a few verses, we would see that Jesus has just finished delivering some
shocking news to his disciples – that he is very shortly going to Jerusalem, where he will be killed. And then he will
be raised from the dead.
Can you imagine hearing this news? The disciples are understandably dazed and confused. Three of them
follow Jesus – where? - up to a mountain top –Why? To meet God. To pray. It must have been some prayer.
According to the story, they get to the top of the mountain and Jesus’ skin starts glowing, - “his face shone
like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white!” And the great prophets – from centuries past - Moses and
Elijah miraculously stand right there with Jesus.
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This story is loaded with metaphor and symbolic imagery, and - mountaintop experience or not - it is so
outside of our realm of our everyday experience, that it’s really difficult to try to find in it any meaning for our own
lives. Except. Sometimes, - even now - we do get a glimpse of that radiance. A momentary flash . . . a revealing. . .
of the Holy. When we long to meet God, to make sense of things in our own confusion, as we pray, sometimes we
may sense a voice maybe not an auditory voice, - but a prompting perhaps, like the one that came to Peter and
James and John in a “cloud,” (another recurring symbol in scripture, which is always a sign of confusion and chaos) –
and it says something like:,
‘You do not have to have words for what you just experienced. In fact,. . . you don’t have to have words for
them. Just listen.’ “This is my Son, my Beloved,” the voice says. “Listen to him!”
Listen for what he will reveal to you. Just receive it. Maybe that’s too metaphorical. So let’s get real.
In the middle of an ordinary day, in 1958, a man, a Trappist monk, named Thomas Merton was running
ordinary errands for the monastery in Louisville, Kentucky. Merton was standing on a corner, just an average
corner in a city, not unlike the intersection out here at 11 Mile and Woodward, cars whizzing past, people waiting
for the bus. Merton himself was just standing there waiting for the traffic light to turn so he could go about his
business, and then something almost inexplicable happened.
In a now famous section of his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Merton writes,
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly
overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not
be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.
It was like waking from a dream of separateness, … This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a
relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…”
THIS is a transfiguration moment! a mountain top experience - a miracle, right?!, to have all that revealed, to
see all of THAT – in a instant! When we have a moment even remotely like that in our own lives, we may be
tempted to explain it away, or rationalize it, or to make ourselves believe that we didn’t really see it. But you see,
Merton DID see it! And fortunately for us, he continues trying to attach words to this flash of brilliance that
changed everything for him. He writes,
“I have the immense joy of being (hu)man, a member of a race in which God Himself became
incarnate. . . and now I realize what we all are.
And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be
explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
You see, we are all walking around shining like the sun! If we could only see it!
This was Merton’s mountain top epiphany. A brush, just a brush with the Spirit, a split second in which he
saw the living God in everything, in US!, and in that moment everything made holy sense to him. I think this is what
Jesus means when he says, “You are the light of the world! God illumines . . . you! You are all walking around
shining like the sun. So shine!
This weighty, fragile realization is too much to sustain for very long. And so we come down
from the mountain top. And live our ordinary lives. And when we are at our most dazed or confused or
cynical or broken, we may wonder if we can ever really meet God at all. Even here. In this place. Even
in the church. After all, it’s just ordinary bricks and mortar. A consecrated space, yes, set aside for worship,
filled with holy things, but an ordinary building, nonetheless. Except there’s this:
Every time we come in those doors, we begin – again - a holy pilgrimage – it’s a long path, sometimes a
reluctant one, and right here, we start to climb. We ascend a ‘mountain.’ And we may not be acutely, spiritually
aware of it every time we approach it, but sometimes, right here, in some unexplainable way, we meet God.
Sometimes when the Holy Spirit breathes into this place and into us, and we ascend this mountain - and
right here) a miracle unfolds:
– and as the bread is pressed into our hands and we take and eat,
– the Divine is transfigured right before us
– God becomes one with us.
And I can’t pretend to really understand it. Or explain, and so let me say only this, and say it humbly, - “Just
receive it” And somehow God’s light becomes our light, and we are all walking around shining like the sun. So
shine.
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