A Journey Like No Other

Maybe you’ve had those moments that take your breath away and make you stand in awe of what you have seen?  My most recent “take my breath away moment” happened last Monday on my drive north to Wooster.  Really, it happened on a Monday morning drive. The morning sun coming out every now and then in February makes me stand in awe! That day reminded me that there still is a sun! But this Monday I noticed something spectacular.  About twenty minutes north of Columbus, my eyes were quickly taken off the road (just quickly) and drawn to the tops of the trees that line the I-71 corridor. After the weekend snow and ice, the treetops glistened with the most dazzling layer of snow and ice. Not just on a patch of the treetops, but on every limb, every offshoot of the littlest branch, on both sides of the road, for miles and miles. It was the shimmering upward facing tentacles of the trees that kept drawing my imagination to them. (Of course, I assured my husband that I kept my eyes on the road and was paying close attention, but I really was amazed by the glorious presentation that was before me). When the sun peeked out, the snow capped trees sparkled like the heavens and the fresh snow on the field danced in the wind and sparkled like diamonds. 

Every once in a while, something like this captures my attention and makes me ponder the glory of God’s creation.  Not only did it make me ponder the glories of the lord, but the brightness was almost blinding. The bright morning sun bounding off of the crystal white snow-was blinding. It did not just grab my attention because the text for this week was the Transfiguration and I had been pondering Jesus’ dazzling white robe and Moses’ shining face.  But all these dazzling images were something to behold.

            Our texts this morning are also something to behold.  Both give wonderful images to ponder.  What must it be like to experience something like this? Both stories let us imagine what it would be like to be close to God. To be close enough to witness God’s glory. To experience the presence and the glory of God is what we contemplate in this transfiguration text. 

Transfiguration Sunday marks the transition from ordinary time to the beginning of Lent which begins this Wednesday. It marks the celebration of God’s remarkable embrace of Jesus on the mountaintop but also the symbolic shift from his ministry in Galilee to Jerusalem. It is in this Lucan text that we hear God once again, affirm the identity of Christ, saying “This is my son, whom I have chosen, listen to him” (Lk 9:35).  The story in Luke’s text today parallels the passage that Jim/Tessa read a few moments ago, of the encounter of Moses with God.  They reflect the glory of God that transforms both Moses and Jesus, as witnessed by the others. For Moses, it was the Israelites who did not recognize Moses’ face when we came into their presence. For Jesus, it was the transformation of the man, Peter, James and John had been traveling with, into robes of the dazzling white and the image flanked by representations of Moses and Elijah. It was a startling image for sure, even if they were groggy with sleep. The disciples witnessed Jesus’ glory, the holiness of the man they had been traveling with. And they heard the voice in the cloud call Jesus, “My Chosen.”  How could they not be terrified, uncertain of what had just happened to their friend and uncertain as to what would happen to them after seeing the vision of the prophets of old?

As Frederick Buechner writes of Transfiguration he says this,

It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they’d tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they’d seen as hungry, tired, footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. It was the holiness of the man shining through this humanness, his face so afire with it they were almost blinded.

Even with us something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking with his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.

For the Israelites, two of the most defining obligations were to do justice and to be in the presence of God (Nick Carter, Feasting on the Word). God calls the Israelites to be faithful, God calls them into a covenantal relationship and God entrusts all of creation into their care.  And God calls Israel into a special closeness. For Jesus, it was the very intimate walk as God’s only Son, human and divine.  As the Son of God, we perceive an intimate closeness and for the Disciples they weren’t quite sure what to do with what they had seen, needless to say what to say about it. What would the others think of them and this remarkable experience? 

Commentator Nick Carter says that the defining factor in the transfiguration is what we see as “the intimacy of faith” or the closeness to God.  He goes on to say that “our closeness to God molds who we are.” But being in the presence of God is hard for us. It might make us a little uncomfortable, we might not be able to quiet the internal noise in our heads long enough to experience God’s presence.  We would have a hard time in our closeness to God because, like in a movie theater, we are a “leave a seat in between” kind of culture.    We often choose not to sit right next to someone in the movie theater for fear of invading their space, or crunching our popcorn a little too loud. We couldn’t do that, let alone snuggle up to the presence of God.  We might even be the group that would rather keep its distance from the front the chapel/sanctuary and not sit so close to the chancel steps.  We keep our distance from the Word, or from that which we believe is holy.  But it is the intimacy of faith that these passages and the upcoming season of Lent offer. The Transfiguration and Lent both beckon us look inside, cozy up and get close to God. 

Lent is the season of introspection, and while many think of giving something up for Lent, I think the challenge for us is to take something on. Take on a spiritual discipline, a hour in prayer, a new opportunity to be more connected to ourselves and to God. But we sometimes do not want to face God with the reality of things we have done. We do not want to draw attention to those things we believe are less than what we want them to be. Maybe we would tremble with fear of our own self-admissions? Maybe our eyes would fill up with tears amidst the pain that we carry?  Maybe we are fearful of what happens when we speak the truth?

The challenge for us is to live in close proximity to God. When we do that we have the opportunity to embody and to radiate God’s love to the world. It is in the closeness that God calls us. And it is where God sustains us. We might know people by the way they walk into a room, that they have a close relationship with God. We might see it in their sparkling eyes, or in the laughter they share, or in the kindness in their actions. We do know who these people are….there are some among us!

For Peter and James and John, they experienced a journey like no other.  Even through his grogginess, he is so enthralled with the vision he sees of Jesus, Elijah and Moses that he wants to stay up there on the mountain, holding on to the glory he has just witnessed.  How nice it might be to stay, and linger, bask in the bright shining glory of the Lord? But this is not to be the case for the Disciples.  The text which precedes our passage is Peter’s confession of Christ as “the Messiah of God.”  Christ announces that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Christ also asks them if any want to become his followers, they need to deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow him.

            Maybe we all have a desire to build a home in the midst of the glorious shining vision of God’s glory? But we can’t. What happens before Jesus and his disciples go up the mountain foreshadows of next days and weeks of Jesus’ life.  We know that Jesus came down the mountain poised to turn his journey in Galilee toward Jerusalem.  On this Sunday we stand poised on the edge of Lent and the journey to Easter. It is a time of self-reflection, focused on Christ and his walk toward Jerusalem- his walk toward betrayal, persecution, and crucifixion on the cross.  Are we like the disciples who want to stay on the mountain….or are we willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus on a journey like no other? 

The journey for Jesus is like no other journey. We today we are invited to think about the invitation and join him. Do we take up our cross and follow?  But on this day, we cannot just revel in the dazzling white robe and the amazement of the mountaintop experience. Today, we are aware that Jesus comes down the mountain and went to serve a world that was hurting, a world where injustice and discrimination was pervasive.

We also have to acknowledge the difficulty and pain that is inherent in our lives.  We have lost loved ones. We live in a world riddled with mudslides, damaging storms and earthquakes. We live in a world of crime and addiction.  A world where wealth yields privilege. We have not lived up to our very best.  We have not honored all who God wants us to honor.  We do not take this journey to wallow in our tragedy, but to be reminded of the hard to believe reality that God’s glory is to be found in the very midst of our humanity.

            We can no longer stay on the mountain because the transfiguration of Jesus offers a glimpse of what is possible, not only for Jesus, but for all of humanity.  The mountaintop experience and witnessing God’s glory loses its power if we stay there.  Our retelling of the story has to include the journey like no other. The journey after experiencing God’s glory includes walking into the streets where we live to follow Jesus.  When we see Jesus differently, like James and Peter and John did, it means seeing ourselves and others differently too.  What makes the story of the transfiguration more than a pleasing fairy tale is that it brings us to the intersection of God’s glory with human suffering.

One commentator suggests that,

the transfiguration is living by vision: standing foursquare in the midst of a broken, tortured, oppressed, starving, dehumanizing reality, yet seeing the invisible, calling it to come, behaving as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it that have come already within and among us. In those moments when people are healed, transformed, freed from addictions, obsessions, destructiveness, self worship or when groups or communities or even, rarely, whole nations glimpse the light of the transcendent in their midst, there the New Creation has come upon us. The world for one brief moment is transfigured. The beyond shines in our midst-on the way to the cross.  (Walter Wink, Interpretation. Imaging the Word, vol.1)

I wonder about the possibilities we might see, here at ground level, if we bring the vision of God’s redeeming love down from the mountain top.  Would the way we see ourselves change? Would the way we see others change? Would we stop and say hello to the parent who walks their child to Wee Care? Or would we welcome them in? Or would we offer to carry one of the DrugMart grocery bags for the lady who walks through our parking lot every day, so she doesn’t have to balance too many things through the snow?  What does the vision from the mountain top say to those who walk up and down Bealle Avenue on their way to the free clinic? The transfiguration brings us into full awareness of the intersection of God’s glory and humanity.

If God, by God’s very nature reshapes those who are touched by God’s glory, like Moses and Jesus, then maybe we have the opportunity to stand in that very place and be changed. We have encounters each and every day that can bring a dramatic change to ourselves and to those with whom we come in contact. So in this Lenten season, may you experience a journey of self-examination, of reflection and listening for God.  May you find the intersection of God’s glory and our humanity a place to explore. May the season of Lent lead you on a journey like no other. We stand poised as followers to believe the Good News that we are forever changed, enriched, renewed and restored by the power of Christ in our lives. And we can prove that each and every time we walk out of these doors and into the world.