Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Transfiguration Sunday - February 22, 2009
Mark 9: 2-9
Well, what do you suppose happened on that mountain? Sometimes I think we should just break into small groups and talk about it. I have been struggling with the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus for 30 years, and it still seems that no matter what I try to say about it, I can never quite seem to explain it. At times I wonder if the phrase - "I suppose you had to be there" - might have originated on the mountain. "Peter, what happened up there?" "I really can't find the words. I suppose you just had to be there." Like Peter, we struggle to come to terms with this event, and he was right there. I want to explain it, and yet, kind of like the healing stories we have been looking at for the last three weeks, I want to be careful. I want to be careful about reducing Jesus to easily manageable proportions, scaling down his good news so that it fits all sizes, shrinking down majesty and mystery into something I can contain and control. I am reminded of what the French writer, George Sand, said of a friend: "He was a man who always longed for the pearl of great price during an age when people contented themselves with fake jewelry." But what happened on that mountain was more than fake jewelry.
You have heard me talk before about thin places - the phrase I learned from Barbara Brown Taylor. Thin places - places where the veil between this world and the next is very thin, when for a moment the light shines through and we see - we know - as we have never seen or known before.
A minister writes, "I go to a lot of museums, but one California Sunday afternoon, something happened to me in an art museum that does not happen very often. I was in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Upon entering, my eyes fell on a van Gogh. It was an olive tree, or perhaps a sycamore, a painting by the master that I had never seen. The tree was all aflame, with rich, thick colors. It seemed to lean toward me; it seemed to kind of shout a great glorious hymn of praise. I stood there, utterly transfixed. It was as if van Gogh had seen that tree for me, as if he had peeled away the outer layer that covers the natural world in order to expose the essential innermost reality of the world. Or had he set aflame the natural so that I could see the supernatural. I found it completely amazing."
He concludes, "It was just a painting. It was just an ordinary day. I had seen something that was beyond seeing. I had learned something beyond knowing. It was not the sort of seeing that I usually do, not the sort of knowing that usually passes for knowledge." And so - "Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves..."
Like that pastor standing before the van Gogh, the disciples on the mountain found themselves in a thin place - seeing that which was beyond seeing, learning something beyond knowing. As Patrick Wilson, a Presbyterian minister says, "On the mountaintop, time evaporates like mist before the dawning of a great glory. This is not just one more story among many. This is not just another moment following in the sequence of events. Here on the mountaintop, time is abandoned for a moment of eternity." Boy, did you see that? Nothing in our experience prepares us for this. No where among the notions by which we live our lives is there a category in which the Transfiguration of Jesus might fit. As I said, I want to explain it all to you - tell you all about it - justify all those years I spent in seminary. But maybe that's the wrong approach. Perhaps this is a text - a story - that we need to allow simply to wash over us, a text for us to relish, to enjoy and to wonder at the mystery and glory of it all.
Now make no mistake about it. This is a text about Jesus and Mark wants us to know something here - wants us to see something. The white garments, the blinding light, the wonder and worship of the disciples, the voice from heaven: the veil between worlds, between present and future, heaven and earth, human and divine, is pulled back, and we see Christ in his full glory - God's chosen, The Lord of Life. Mark wants us to see Jesus, not only as the one who ushers in God's new order, but also as the one who, in fact, embodies that new order. There on the mountain we see a new world rising from the old.
Sounds great - a glorious scene. Wish we could have been there. But as wondrous as it is, we have to ask, are we ready for this? Are we ready for this glory, for this new world? Are we ready for a glimpse of the eternal in our lives? Are we open to the hints of transcendence all around us? You might say that this story is a call to us, a call to a new awareness. I haven't mentioned Frederick Buechner for a while. But reflecting on this text and his life, he writes, "It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it that they were almost blinded. Even with us, something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden...Every so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing."
Transcendence, glimpses of the eternal, of the sacred, all around us. Buechner invites an interesting question. Does this text describe a vision of something supernatural, or could we have here, in this thin place, a vision of the world, of reality, as God actually intends it to be? Reality filled with God, with God's presence shining forth, not only in the face of Christ, but in all human faces. Perhaps what we have here is an uncontainable holy fire breaking through the anesthetizing routine of the everyday.
And then, one final thought about this text. And for that, let's turn again to the world of art. The final painting of the artist, Raphael, was his painting of the Transfiguration. He painted it in Rome in 1520. He was 37 years old and not far from death. In fact, he died before he finished. In the background of the painting you can see the village of Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus first startled his disciples with the prediction of his suffering and death. In the upper center of the painting you see a flat, rocky mountain. The three disciples are there shielding their eyes from the glory all around them. Just above them are Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Jesus is shimmering in white and everything in the painting seems drawn toward him. But down at the bottom, at the bottom of the mountain, you see a crowd of disciples. They are trying, but unable, to heal a young boy who suffers from the seizures of epilepsy. Raphael knew his scripture, because in Mark, right after the Transfiguration, Jesus comes down and encounters that boy.
But when you look closely at the child in the painting, you see that his eyes are wide and white, and focused on Jesus, and in fact, his right hand is stretched out as far as it will go. You realize that from the depths of this suffering and pain he’s trying to reach out and somehow touch the transfigured Jesus.
In this painting, the artist wondrously captures the other truth of this text: namely, that just below the wondrous Mount of Transfiguration lies a broken and suffering world that reaches out, cries out, and cannot be ignored. As wonderful as it is, as tempting as it is, neither Jesus nor any of us can remain on the mountain. Listen to the disciples: "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings. Let's stay for a while. It's not going to get any better than this!" But Jesus knows they can't stay. The mountain is no escape. It is really only the beginning. He knows that spirituality - that mystery - cannot be separated from ministry. Even as the shadow of the cross now looms on the horizon, he will not turn from his chosen path, nor will he allow those who follow him to turn aside. Like it or not, we cannot stay on the mountain. In one brief, mysterious, shining moment we see Jesus revealed as the Son of God, the embodiment of God with us. And then we discover he has work for us to do.
A college chaplain shares this story: "During the first war in Iraq, I was visiting with a secretary at the university. She asked me, 'Got any yard work that needs to be done? Any chores around the house?’ She then told me how she had befriended an Iraqi student in the graduate school. Then the war started and he was cut off, totally without funds. Couldn't go home, couldn't continue as a student. She and her husband had taken him into their home and she was trying to find him odd jobs so that he could earn a little money. "'What does he think about the war?' I asked.
"'Oh, he thinks we're terrible and Saddam is just wonderful,' she replied."
"I said, 'Well, I find it interesting that you took him into your house and wanted to care for him.'
"With some indignation she replied, 'I decided? I wanted?' She slammed her fist down on her desk and said, 'I'm a Christian, darn it! You think it's easy?'”
On the mountaintop we meet Jesus. It's wonderful, spiritual, mysterious, and we are filled with awe as the veil is pulled back and we really see. But the disciples discover, as that secretary discovered, that this encounter can also be life-changing, inconvenient, and challenging. For if it is about seeing Jesus - really seeing Jesus - it is also about seeing in Jesus, God's will and way in our world, a way in a world so often different from our own, and then having to say "yes" or "no" to walking in that way. Words of the poet, Brian Andreas come to mind:
Most people don't know there are
Angels whose only job is to make sure
You don't get too comfortable and fall
Asleep and miss your life.
It can be difficult to go up on the mountain. It can be even more difficult to come down. But again, mystery cannot be separated from ministry. A world is waiting. And who knows, as Buechner reminds us, it just might be that transfiguration is not limited to mountains and mists and other-worldly experiences. In the most unexpected time and place, an angel might peal back a corner of reality and give us a glimpse of eternity - the mystery around us and deep inside us. Our challenge is to stay awake, to be present to each precious moment given to us.