Transfiguration Experiences
August 6, 2023, Luke 9:28-36 St. Mark’s
My husband’s father is experiencing excruciating back pain and can barely walk. My husband and daughter are in Greece. I go with Bob to a specialist who says that my father-in-law has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. The medical team starts Bob on a trial protocol. Two days later, after leaving church, the hospital is paging me. My father-in-law reacted to the new drug and is in intensive care. My husband and daughter rush home from Greece. Bob now receives more standard treatment for his cancer. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school and moves home to help care for his grandfather. Six months later, Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through all the nursing home and assisted living decisions that many of you have faced. Each day presents a new, unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of how to minister to someone we dearly love.//
The disciples in our story today also faced one new challenge after another and are exhausted by the nonstop demands of the crowds. Jesus sends them off to heal the sick, and they have amazing success, and return to tell Jesus. But more crowds interrupt them when Jesus takes them for a well-earned respite. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but we know what happens next—“fish sandwiches” for 5000, or probably 15,000, adding women and children.
The next day doesn’t feel like a vacation either, when Jesus tells them about his upcoming suffering and death,/ which they may also experience. Who can blame the disciples for missing that resurrection part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “When you think you are heading for the dungeon,/ anxiety, and panic tend to block out everything else.” 1
Eight days later, the disciples are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even if it is to pray. But there go Jesus, Peter, James, and John ascending up a winding, steep mountain. //
If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. The world’s insistent demands challenge finding a spiritual focus. Like Barbara Crafton, I keep thinking of a million silly things while praying. Did I send out that last email? What’s for dinner?2// If I make it,/ it is only thanks to many faithful companions beside me in community here at St. Mark’s,/, as well as the communion of saints, past and present, who constantly support and pray with us and for us.//
On top of this mountain, Jesus does all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, connecting the disciples’ humanness on this mountain to their inability to stay awake later at Mount of Olives. Suddenly, an indescribable brightness startles them. Jesus, standing at the summit, now shines with the brightness of the sun, leaking light everywhere, says Matthew, and his clothes, Mark says, become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them.” The three disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ Moses and Elijah also appear, speaking to Jesus about his imminent departure in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence reminds us of the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea, suggesting that Jesus will now accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection./
But Jesus’ brief dramatic change in appearance from man to God/ is lost momentarily on the three disciples. They are mystified, dumbfounded. Peter expresses the confusion of his shocked companions and their lack of awareness of Jesus’ true divinity by suggesting they stay on the mountaintop to make similar dwellings or monuments to all three.1///
Like the disciples, we all have had brief mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even when we barely comprehend them, especially at Camp Mitchell in the Chapel of Transfiguration./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play,/ where theological bones take on flesh. Flesh becomes divinity. / This is where we most often see the transfigured face of God, in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearances change as they return to life from near-fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who do not accept how God created us to be, where we see Jesus, the Christ, in the face of a homeless man at the traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/. In these times, for a brief moment/ we see someone as a real person. We see Christ in each other.
A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that in reality, transfiguration occurs all the time, but only at certain moments can we see the likeness of God in each other,/ perhaps most often when we live in the present moment/or in stressful times where we are experiencing “altitude sickness.” We, humans, seem unable to bear much reality, writes T. S Eliot. It is too incomprehensible to look God in the face/ for any length of time.2 //////
We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments.
At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our older son, who looks similar to his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the older men hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender,/ the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They are each transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountain. / “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it is almost beyond bearing.3”
We observe Transfiguration again the night Bob dies, as his two grandsons care for him in his last hours. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/, but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain/ and he begins his ascent. ////
So, what are we going to take home from our transfiguration stories?/ The transfiguration is one more story reminding us that the Bible is less a book about certainties, but instead a long, continuous parade of stories of encounters with God where people run into God and are changed forever. Faith has more to do with staying present to what happens right now in front of us than knowing for certain what it all means. 4We soon learn that shrines on a mountain are not what Jesus’ ministry is all about.5
The answer may be in God’s voice that interrupts Peter and lifts the hairs on the back of his neck.4 “Listen to him.” Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of hope and paradise, words we will soon hear from the cross. We heard this voice before at Jesus’ baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Listen on this hill today, but also listen again on another hill when darkness closes in, and all hope seems lost.1////
“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put ourselves inside this story. Listen for the voice that urges us to stop, look, and listen for his Voice, his Face./ That voice,/ that face/ may be from a friend, a patient, a minister, a nurse, a doctor, a stranger.
When we are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured face of God that is always present./ Our scripture reminds us God was there in the past. We ourselves have seen it in our own lives today. Remember. Remember. The Beloved, the Son of God, the Chosen One, will always, always be there/ beside us/ and shine in the darkness, again, and again, and again,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”
1Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment” in Christian Century, February 6, 2007, p. 16.
2Barbara Crafton “Last Epiphany” in The Geranium Farm, February 1, 2008.
3Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark.
4Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest (Westminster John Knox Press 2020)
5Rt Rev. Dr. Bonnie Anne Perry, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, sermon, 2022.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com