February 18 & 19, 2007
Transfiguration C
The Rev. Kristie Hennig
Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36
A star...a dove...a radiant face and dazzling clothes...
"The church season of Epiphany, which began with the visit of the Wise Men, concludes with the Transfiguration of our Lord. The Transfiguration and its companion story, the baptism of Jesus,
are the foundation for the Christian celebration of the revelation of the Son of God to the world.1" The season began and now ends with a voice from heaven.
You remember the story of Jesus' baptism. It comes in chapter 3 of Luke's gospel, beginning at verse 21. Let's read it together:
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
And here in Luke's story of the Transfiguration (which has its own intriguing parallels to the story of Moses coming down off the mountain, his face aglow), while Jesus is praying, out of the cloud that has enveloped him and his companions comes a voice with essentially the same message, addressed this time to Peter, John, and James and anyone they would tell the story to later, including us:
"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him."
Jesus' Baptism
Jesus is praying
heaven opens
a voice comes from heaven
"You are my Son, the Beloved..."
Jesus' Transfiguration
Jesus is praying
a cloud overshadows
a voice comes from the cloud
"This is my Son, the Chosen...Listen to him."
The transfiguration story is a vivid one and layered like filo dough with rich theological possibilities. But above all else, it is an event that points to what lies ahead, a foreshadowing of Jesus' resurrection and ascension.
What the three terrified, sleep-deprived disciples glimpse on the mountain is a vision of the heavenly glory awaiting Jesus at the end of the dark road he is about to walk. He is the Holy One and they are standing on holy ground. Witnesses to a rare kind of divine appearance,
they see Jesus (to borrow a poet's words) "charged with the grandeur of God...shining like shook foil...2" - that is, glowing with the radiance of heaven itself.
And he is not alone, but conversing with a couple of old dead guys:
Moses the lawgiver and the super-prophet, Elijah.
It is an intense experience that throws the trio of disciples for a loop. The next morning, still stumbling in the dark, rubbing sleep from their eyes, Peter, John, and James are both speechless and useless: a father begs them to rid his son of the spirit that is causing his seizures, and they throw up their hands in defeat.
There are a lot of people who, like Peter, John, and James, have religious experiences but don't tell anybody about them.
Those intense experiences may come in the form of a thin place we find waiting for us on our journey, or an instance of divine door-closing-and-window-opening, or a visit from a loved one who has died. The experience may have sensory aspects - a word heard, a vision seen, a scent, a touch - or it may not.
Initially, such experiences are exciting. Newly awakened Christians are thrilled that God is paying attention to them. At first, prayer comes easily. There is plenty to say to this new friend, and they feel heard and responded to. But then after a time, prayer goes dry and a believer may enter what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the senses."
Sleep and life overtakes him, as they did Peter, John, and James.
At about this time the believer starts to complain about not being fed at worship...and blames the sermons or the liturgy or the prayers or the music. He may go to his own church less often, or start shopping for a new worship experience that will help him regain the excitement that has been lost.
But the immediacy and intensity we all long for in our spirits is not to be found outside of ourselves, no matter where we "shop."
Our God, who craves our companionship, will stop at nothing to lead us through the dark night of the senses into the light of a refreshed and deepened relationship. But we must learn to listen rather than speak,
to wait for God in silence. To be still and know that God is God
and we are not.
We are accustomed to thinking of prayer as our time to talk to God...
and so it is. God is always ready to listen and cares about whatever we have on our hearts and minds. But when we limit our prayer to something verbal only, a one-way means of communication used to ask God for things, an activity we do to gain control) we miss the possibility of something much deeper: Contemplative prayer can lead us through a dark night of the soul and into communion with God.
It is more about trust and reflection than demanding and control. Contemplative prayer traverses the distance between "Make it happen!" and "Let it happen.3"
Look again at the word that came from the cloud on that mountaintop, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him."
Listen...
I don't mind telling you I have trouble with that. But I am committed to working on it during the upcoming season of Lent, which starts this week on Ash Wednesday. Instead of giving up something I really like for Lent (which just doesn't seem to work for me), I'm going to add a new spiritual practice - spending time each day in silence -- with the hope of forming a new habit, becoming more intentional about meeting God there.
I'm concerned about making time for silence in my already busy week, and I wonder if I'll be able to stay alert to what God wants me to hear.
Part of me is skeptical that silence will work for me. But I'm going to give it a 40-day trial. And I invite you to think about adding a spiritual practice of your own as you make your Lenten journey to the cross.
One of the take-aways from Luke's story of our Lord's Transfiguration is that God in Christ is always with us and for us. Listen to him, says the voice from heaven to our ears, too.
Find some silence.
Listen.
Then go and make a difference in this hurting world.
I want to end with a story. A story about silence and listening.
A story about transformation, resurrection...
It is about a village, a fishermen's village that is both nowhere and everywhere...
Boredom mixed with the salty air, each new day being like all the others:
the same empty words,
the same empty gestures,
the same empty faces,
the same empty bodies,
the excitement of love and life being something nobody remembered.
It happened that on a day like all others a boy saw a strange shape floating far away on the sea. He cried out and the whole village came:
in a place like that even a strange shape is an occasion for excitement. And there they stayed, on the beach, looking, waiting... till the sea slowly, in its own time, brought the thing and put it on the sand... to the disappointment of all.
It was a dead man.
All dead men are alike because there is one thing only to do with them: they must be buried. In that village the custom was that the women prepared the dead for burial. So they carried the body to a house;
the women sat inside and the men sat outside. And the silence was great as the women cleaned the body, gently washing from it the algae and other green things from the sea.
But suddenly a voice broke the silence..."Had he lived among us
he would have had to bend his head every time he entered our houses. He is too tall..."
And they all nodded in approval. They continued to gently wash the body. Again the silence was deep. But another voice was heard.
Another woman..."I wonder about his voice...Was it like the whisper of the breeze? Like the thunder of the waves?
Did he know that secret word that, when it is said, makes a woman pick up a flower and stick it in her hair?" And they all smiled. And they washed.
Silence again. And again, the voice of another woman: "These hands...How big they are! What did they do? Did they play with children? Did they sail through the seas? Did they fight many battles?
Did they build houses? Did they know how to caress and to embrace a woman? And they all laughed, and they were surprised as they realized that the funeral had become resurrection: A movement in their flesh,
dreams-long-believed-dead returning, ashes becoming fire, forbidden desires emerging to the surface of their skins, their bodies alive again...
Their husbands, outside, watched what was happening to their wives, and they were jealous of the drowned man, as they realize that he had a power which they themselves did not have. And they thought about the dreams they had never had, the poems they had never written, the seas they had never seen, the women they had never loved.
The story ends by telling that they finally buried the dead man.
But the village was never the same.4
God grant that as the cloud of God envelopes us and we begin our pilgrimage to the cross - in silence and in community - our village, too, will awaken to hear the in-breaking of the holy.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Fred Craddock et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year C, 125.
2. Lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "God's Grandeur".
3.The Rev. Dick Beckmen, in remarks presented at the First Call Theological Education retreat, Mount Olivet Retreat Center, Farmington, Minnesota, February 14, 2007.
4. Story adapted from The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet by Rubem A. Alves, p. 22-23. I first heard it told by the Rev. Dick Beckmen, who graciously led me to his source.
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