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...and his face shone like the sun... "Transfiguration" by William Blake, c, 1800 |
Transfiguration Sunday
Mark 9:2-9
Last week, the church’s Mariners fellowship groups had a dinner where they had asked people to bring a copy of their wedding picture. All the pictures were posted, and people had to guess which couple they were looking at. It was fairly easy for those married recently, but there were some that were harder to guess, going back a long while, the groom with a crew cut and horn rimmed glasses, the bride with long curls, long since shorn.
Looking at a wedding picture, you see through the misty lens of all the intervening years the glow and the promise of a couple very much in love. You sense the day of celebration.
Then imagine visiting a friend in her apartment in assisted living, where she moved some years ago, taking with her only the most important keepsakes and mementoes. Her wedding photo is one of them, the groom smiling through horn-rimmed glasses, his youthful smile so full, not knowing all the years would hold.
Your friend looks at that picture from day to day, remembering a time when they had some rocky sledding together, when things weren’t going so well. That picture used to hang in the hallway of their home, and she remembered seeing it as she walked by,
seeing the love in her husband’s eyes, that somehow gave her strength at the time to muddle through, to believe they would find a way to go on together. And even when illness struck and left her at last with an empty place at table and in her heart, somehow a glimpse of that wedding picture brings it all back for just a moment, the joy that is so young it doesn’t know how to be shielded, a love that is stronger even than death.
Sometimes, the vision of a joyful day, the memory of a shining moment (like that wedding photo) can sustain you through the years. This is the kind of moment we find in our New Testament reading for today. It is the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, a shining moment early in his time with the disciples that gave them a sustaining vision for all that would lie ahead on the road they would travel with their Lord. It happened on a mountaintop, a place where we find our souls are lifted.
When I read this story, one of the mountain experiences that comes to mind for me is travelling in New Zealand, on the south island where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed, amid the shining ice of glaciers. My husband and I were having our anniversary, and had a helicopter ride that set us down on a glacier. The pilot took our picture, and our smiles were a particular mixture of exhilaration and apprehension from the helicopter flight, hearts racing, the ice gleaming so brightly you can hardly look at it.
We are drawn to the top of mountains for the wide perspective they offer, to get away from the usual pattern of daily life. In our Scripture reading, Jesus took three of the disciples, Peter, James, and John, to the top of a mountain to show them a new reality. As he led them up, the gospel tells us, “he was transfigured [transformed] before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” He was bathed in shining light, a glimpse of the resurrection light that would one day enfold him in the light that conquers death.
The disciples were blinded by the light of Jesus’ presence. Like Moses looking on God in the burning bush, they had to turn their faces from the shining glory of Jesus. We see this moment depicted in the beautiful painting by William Blake. As if this weren’t enough, next there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, who were talking with Jesus. They wondered what they were seeing. At such times, when we see something so far out of our usual frame of reference, our minds don’t know what to think.
Moses and Elijah--what were they doing there? Moses was the great law-giver. He had received the ten commandments on Mt. Sinai, and led God’s people out of slavery in Egypt the exodus to the brink of the promised land. Moses was a crucial figure for the people of Israel, one who saw God face to face.
The law and the prophets were the two main streams in the Hebrew people’s life, and Elijah was a great prophet. It was Elijah we heard about in the Old Testament reading today. He and one other prophet, Enoch, were singled out for a very great miracle of God. Of them alone in the Bible it is said they went directly to heaven without having to die first. In our story, Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire, an image from which the famous British hymn is taken that speaks of chariots of fire. His going to heaven without having to die is hard to take in; our mortality being so much a part of our understanding of what it means to be human. But Elijah was given a special release from death.
So Moses and Elijah were there together with Jesus. Through them, God was saying to the disciples, “this Jesus whom you follow is more than a good teacher. He is the fulfilment of both the law and the prophets. He is a new revelation of God’s person and kingdom more complete than any that came before.”
It was too much for the disciples to take in. Peter says to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let’s build three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Peter found himself at a loss for words; the experience was overwhelming.
And sometimes we find ourselves there as well, at a loss for words. A friend tells us they’ve had a worrying diagnosis, something that leaves no real hope, and we don’t know quite what to say, only to wish it were not happening to them. Or a friend has had a loved one die, and we’re left wondering what we can possibly say that can make a difference. Sometimes we do what Peter did; we offer to do something; to help in some tangible way. Not knowing how to respond to the glory all around them, Peter suggests a building three tents for the transcendent beings there on the mountain.
Part of what was going on with Peter was a desire we all have at times. We want to stay up on the mountain, we want to capture the moment, we want to hold onto times when the light shines brightly.
Perhaps this is behind our love of taking photos, that we can capture the moment and hold it still forever. I remember a favorite photo of a friend’s children, two little girls curled up asleep side by side.
There was that rare angelic quality you sometimes see in young children--especially when they’re asleep! That picture captured a moment in time that has sustained their mother through the years, as the girls are now in their teens, and she sometimes has to revert to memory to recall their more angelic qualities.
Peter wanted to build the tents for Jesus and Moses and Elijah as a way of capturing the moment, making the glory stay. But such moments don’t last; that is part of their beauty.
Our poets know this fleeting quality of life. “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold,” writes one, “nothing gold can stay.” Yet the memory of gold, of light, is one that stays in the mind, a memory we can draw on for peace and strength. The mother who worries over her teenage daughter can recall the memory of her sleeping face from years before, and draw hope for the future. One who spends the days alone can find comfort in a wedding photo, now faded with the passing of the years.
Jesus gave that kind of sustaining memory to Peter and the disciples. In the days ahead, they would follow him though many challenges and hardships, to the foot of the cross. Yet they would remember this day on the mountain, with its light of glory, and would know God’s glory was with them still, shining beyond the clouds that were all they could see at present. The disciples were amazed to hear a voice from the cloud that said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Shaking with fear, when they looked around, they were alone again with Jesus.
Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone about what they had seen--they were so frightened, he hardly needed to say this! Only after his death and resurrection would they understand the significance of what they had seen that day on the mountain.
It’s a pleasure to be able to cite a commentator who is part of our church, Larry McKaughan, in his new commentary on the gospel of Mark notes how “the three disciples kept these matters to themselves for now…. The seed is in good soil, even while the disciples fail to understand. [There is some comfort in knowing that] one can follow Jesus without understanding [every]thing.”[i] In God’s own time, things that were once a mystery become clear in the light of the cross and the resurrection.
As we struggle with so many things in our lives, with worries over our children, and health challenges for ourselves and family members, as we wonder how we will finish our studies or where we will find work…we can take a moment to focus on the sustaining vision of Christ’s glory. We can come away a while up the mountain, away from the cares we carry, to find Christ’s glory shining, a light by which we can see our way into an unknown future. Whatever that future holds, know that it is transformed by the light of God’s glory and grace.
Gracious Lord, we thank you for love that is stronger than death, for glory that holds aloft a light that shines in every darkness. Sustain us by the memory and the vision of your glory, that we may stand fast in every challenge and be steadfast in all adversity. In your name we pray. Amen.