February 2, 2008

Transfiguration A

It's good to be home after three weeks in Central America, even with the cold. But I must tell you it was a wonderful trip. Just what I needed.

For the first two weeks, [0 - la union] I was immersed in Spanish language study in Antigua, Guatemala, hitting personal highs of fluency...[00 - Willy] [1 - Mario] and hitting the wall, too, at times oddly unable to summon a word I wanted in either Spanish or English.

When my husband, Gene, joined me in El Salvador, we intercepted the Habitat volunteers from Family of Christ [5 - FOC group] and Spirit of Joy in Buffalo and a church from St. Paul - bone-tired but smiling broadly - and shared in joy-filled worship with the Lutheran communities led by Pastors Matias and Martina. [commentary here from me on each slide through slide 13]

After the FOC group climbed onto their north-bound flight, Gene and I enjoyed almost a week of vacation, keeping company with Macauis and Mayan culture in both Guatemala and Honduras. [slides 2, 3, 4]

As I said, it was a wonderful trip; I left Minnesota feeling like I had been walking on Jupiter in moon boots, weighed down by the gravity of my never-ending lists of things to do. I returned feeling a good deal lighter - rejuvenated and re-energized, grateful for the time I had to invest in our ministry in El Salvador and some much-needed self-care.

It IS good to be home...but I also understand Peter's sentiment on the mountain that day with Jesus and the Zebedee brothers when he said, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let's pitch our tents and stay a while in this wild and beautiful place, high above the fray, playing cards with celebrities. Others can run the rat race back in town. We're on vacation...and it sure feels good!"

Peter's excitement is cut short by a cloud and a voice from above the mountain summit: "Stop talking, Peter, and listen for once. Listen to the One shimmering before you. He is my Son and he speaks for me. Listen to him...and follow."

By now Peter and his friends are face-down in the dirt, clinging by their fingernails to the mountainside, expecting their lives to end at any moment. For they know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are in the presence of God Almighty. And, as they learned in Jewish confirmation, no one can see the face of God and live. What they have seen in the glowing Jesus is a vision of God's glory, a foretaste of Jesus' resurrection and a glimpse of heaven. They think that the curtain is dropping on the final scene of their earthly lives, but they will learn what it really is - a prophetic vision that is for all God's people, a vision that will birth other visions. Here is Jesus in the company of the prophets of old, dressed not in the royal purple of the Herods or the reach textures of the Temple hierarchy, but in pure, simple white. Not the political leader they had hoped for, but an ambassador from heaven in the very human body of their teacher, Jesus. And what they have glimpsed is the power of Pentecost that will call God's people - young and old, men and women, the skilled and the simple - as God's prophets. They find that they can lift their eyes and look at the presence of God in Jesus. Moses and Elijah have vanished. Only Jesus is left to teach them what they need to know. He is the guide beyond fear and into love.

The story of the holy encounter on the high mountain says something important about who Jesus is. At its center is the transfigured, metamorphosed Jesus. It looks ahead to Holy Week, when Jesus trades clothes shining with the glory of God for ordinary garments that the soldiers gamble over at his crucifixion. When Jesus is attended on either side not by Moses and Elijah but by two thieves, and the voice of God affirming God's beloved son is swapped for the mocking of the authorities.

But when all is said and done, the story of the Transfiguration is as much about the transformation of the disciples as it is about the transfiguration of Jesus. It is about being a disciple - watching for God's surprises, listening for God's voice, living in hope, clinging to the side of a mountain, following where Jesus leads.

During my time away, I experienced several mountains, most of them volcanoes. Central America is part of the famous Ring of Fire that encircles the Pacific Rim. [14 - Agua and 15 - Lake Atitlan] There are 35 volcanoes in Guatemala, in fact, five of them active. They rise up dramatically from the plains, some emitting plumes of smoke.

Gene was keen to climb the one he photographed as it exploded some 35 years ago, [erupting here] so one afternoon we did...in a group of foreigners dubbed the Pumas, led by Hector, a cigarette-smoking veteran of the still-smoldering Vocan Pacaya. The climb was both easier and harder than we thought it would be. The altitude and our age slowed us down, but the path was wide and the scree underfoot wasn't as challenging as we had feared. We had packed water and sandwiches and sweatshirts for the windy mountaintop, and we knew it would be tricky once we started climbing on the solidified rivers of lava. But we weren't entirely prepared for the delicate footwork we had to do to get up to where it was really interesting - where the cavities pulsating with molten lava that pockmarked the mountainside glowed in the twilight [16 - Gene with lava] - where Hector was waiting marshmallows and sticks for roasting. I don't mind telling you we worked hard for these pictures! [17 - Kristie with marshmallows] The spouting of sulfuric gases at the summit kept us from peering into the crater, but the delicate stepping we had to do on the sharp lava to keep upright provided plenty of excitement.

Up at Marshmallow Point, the air was filled with the shouts of the guides, herding their groups like sheep, calling us by our group names so as not to lose anyone in the scramble.

There was the odor of rubber burning, too, as the soles of the shoes of all the climbers who had made it this far got hot and hotter. [18 - lava] At one point, when I felt it was safe to do so, I took my eyes off my feet to see where it was they had taken me...and there in the sky ahead of me [19 - sunset] were the remnants of a broken egg yolk sunset suspended across the purple mountains. It was a breathtaking moment - and very brief. [kill sunset slide]

For out of nowhere and everywhere, Hector appeared...urging the Pumas to turn around and start our descent, to get off the sharp, craggy lava while there was still some light to see by. Seeing the wisdom in this, I turned on my heels, put my head down again, and started downhill. Gene and I got separated somehow, so I was on my own - a little worried about getting left behind, glad for the flashlight I'd bought at a shop in town that morning. After maybe a half hour of walking alone, the young Canadian backpacking Pumas caught up to me and we walked together for a piece. They, too, were glad for my flashlight; all they had was a penlight and they were getting spooked as the darkness thickened. I didn't tell them till we got to our van at the bottom about the bats I saw criss-crossing the trail.

It was an adventure climbing Pacaya, to be sure, and I recommend it. But it was striking to me that most of us got only the briefest glimpse of the spectacular view at the top. To climb up or down safely, we cautious flatlanders had to keep our eyes on our feet and the obstacles along the path: stones, roots, horse apples, holes. Our flashlights cast only enough light for the next half a dozen steps. But that was always enough. I had wanted to spend more time at the top, exulting in my success at making it, meditating on the beauty of that sunset. A brief glimpse was all I got.

But maybe, looking back, it was all I really needed. Or maybe it was all the raw beauty I could really take in at the time.

In our lives as disciples, we're called where we're needed most and where we need to be for our own growth. For a lot of us, that's not on the mountaintops but on the plains, where, as Scott Peck famously penned on page one of The Road Less Traveled, "Life is difficult."

And so it is: Just one darn thing after another...Another bad day on the stock market. More people using the "R" word as if it is a fait de complit. Job insecurity, cancer, tax returns, defiant children, elderly relatives becoming more and more dependent, slick roads, rude drivers, distracted teenage drivers. Broken hearts. Overfilled schedules, undernourished spirits, wounds that won't heal, a war that never ends. Greed. Suffering.

Life is difficult and we need one another to get through it sometimes. Maybe I don't have much faith today, but someone else has enough for the both of us...warmth and light sufficient for this day. It's life in community, disciples following a sure-footed leader, working our way together through the wilderness, offering the light of our flashlights, picking one another up when we stumble.

As Brian Stoffregen puts it, "Those who have been transformed and "enlightened" by Jesus know the need to come down from the hill, to be the human presence of Jesus to fearful people - offering the touch of new life to help the cowering stand tall."

During my three weeks of continuing education, ministry meetings, and R & R, I experienced challenge, adventure, refreshment and renewal. AND I am delighted to be back home, swept back into the warm busyness of this Family of faith. But I wonder, did I experience - as Peter, James and John did - transformation?

Have I integrated what I learned about myself and my limits? Have I let the glimpse I got of the power and limitlessness of God - the Creator who cherishes me - seep deep into the core of me, that I might glow with her warmth and light?

A couple of nights after we returned this past week, I had a familiar dream - some might call it a vision. In it there's a bony kitten mewing plaintively, and looking to me for help. In my dream, I don't seem to know what to do, and I keep losing track of her. When the dream awakens me, I am possessed of a great fear that the poor thing has died because of my negligence.

Life is difficult for us kittens. That path through it is rocky and hot and batty and there's not nearly enough time to take in the sights, even on the holy mountains we climb. But even a glimpse of the glory at the top of the next hill helps light the way.

Thanks be to God!
Amen.

Kristie Hennig
Chanhassen, Minnesota

1. Sarah Dylan's lectionary blog.
2. John Shea, 99.
Brian Stoffregen, Crossmarks preaching website.