Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday March 3, 2019
Scripture: Luke 9:28-36
Today is the Sunday on
the church calendar that is known as Transfiguration Sunday. Now I suspect that the word “transfiguration”
is probably better recognized and understood today than it was 20 years ago,
due to the popularity of the Harry Potter books and movies.
In the Harry Potter
world, Transfiguration is one of the required courses at Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is taught by
Professor McGonagall (who, in my opinion, is one of the most awesome characters
in the Harry Potter books), and is “some of the most complex and dangerous
magic” that the students learn. In
Professor McGonagall’s classes, the students learn how to turn one thing in to
another – how to turn a matchstick into a needle, a hedgehog into a pincushion,
beetles into buttons. They are learning
how to change the shape of things – trans, to change; figure, or shape.
So Transfiguration
Sunday. This is the last Sunday of the
season of Epiphany; the Sunday before Lent begins. Every year, on the last Sunday before Lent,
we read the story about how Jesus and three of his disciples – Peter, James and
John – travel up a mountain, and there at the top Jesus is transfigured. His face is changed and he is glowing,
dazzling. Moses and Elijah, two of the
prominent figures from Jewish history in centuries past appear with Jesus, and
then they are enveloped in a cloud and the voice of God says, “This is my son,
my Chosen, my Beloved One; listen to him!”
And then maybe a second later, maybe hours later – time can play tricks
on us in moments like this – Jesus and the disciples are alone, and Jesus has
resumed his normal appearance.
It is a moment of deep
and profound holiness. It is a moment
where the veil that separates us from God is lifted, and the disciples catch a
glimpse of God, and hear God’s voice.
The disciples don’t quite know what to do with the moment. Peter seems to feel the need to say
something, to say anything to fill the space, and he stumbles over his words
offering to put up three tents – one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for the
transformed Jesus. And then when the
moment is over, the disciples keep an awed silence, unable to find the words to
speak of the holiness that they have encountered.
I always like to ask
the question “why?” Why do the students
at Hogwarts have to learn transfiguration?
Why is it important to be able to change a matchstick into a needle? Why did Jesus only invite 3 of his disciples
to come up the mountain with him? Why
were the others left out of this experience?
Why was Jesus transfigured? Why
was the veil lifted; why did those disciples encounter the Holy then and there?
I don’t know if we
ever get good answers to these “why” questions – except maybe it is useful to
be able to change a matchstick into a needle if you need to mend your clothes –
but I don’t know if we ever get a good answer to the God questions, at least
while we are on this side of the veil, but we can always speculate. We can wonder.
A couple of weeks ago
at our Wednesday morning bible study, our conversation shifted to those times
when we have been able to sense God’s presence more strongly than other
times. Times when we have heard words
spoken to us, times when we have felt tactile sensations, times when we have
had a compulsion to phone someone, times when we have felt ourselves embraced
by God’s love.
And as we shared these
stories, we asked the why questions. Why
do some people have these experiences and not others? Why do they happen when they happen?
And while I can’t know
for sure, I wonder if these moments when we have an acute sense of God’s
presence are given to us when we need them, at the moment when we need
them. I wonder if God lifts the veil
that separates us from the holiness of God when we need it – maybe for reasons
known only to God.
I don’t know why it
was only three disciples who went with Jesus, and I don’t know why it was those
three who were invited; but Peter, James, and John seem to be part of Jesus’
inner circle of disciples. They were his
closest friends, his most trusted disciples, and the disciples that would go on
to be leaders in the early church after Jesus’ death.
And so I wonder if
these disciples needed this encounter with the overwhelming holiness of God in
order to strengthen them and equip them for their ministry in the world. The road that they are going to travel isn’t
going to be easy, and they are going to mess up – remember that in a few short
weeks Peter is going to deny knowing Jesus – and yet I still wonder if this
encounter on the mountaintop was transformative for them. I wonder if it allowed them to do the
ministry that they would do in the years ahead.
Jesus was transfigured
– his physical appearance was changed there on the mountaintop – but I wonder
if the disciples were also transformed by the experience. I don’t think that we can encounter the Holy
without being changed.
I don’t have any
advice to hand out this morning – no three-step or five-step plan for
encountering God face-to-face. These
encounters seem to come when God takes the initiative, not us.
But what I can do is
encourage you to be open to the mystery that is God. Expect that the unexpected is possible. Be open to the possibility that God really is
closer to each one of us than our very breath.
Prepare yourself to experience the overwhelming love and peace and joy
that comes from being in the presence of God.
And most of all,
prepare yourself to be changed, to be transformed by that encounter; because
once you’ve had an experience, you can’t un-experience it. Prepare yourself to take the gifts of this
encounter with you even when you come back off the mountaintop and re-enter
every-day life, knowing that life will never be the same again.
Let us pray:
Holy, holy, holy God,
blow
through our lives by your Holy Spirit.
Let the veil that
separates us from you be lifted,
if only for a moment,
so that we can hear
your voice
and see your face,
and be embraced by your
love.
Fill us with the peace
that comes
from being in your presence;
and set our hearts on
fire
with your love.
I pray this in the
name of Jesus Christ,
the transfigured one,
and the one in whom
transformation is possible.
Amen.
JESUS MAFA. Transfiguration, from Art in the Christian Tradition,
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48307
[retrieved March 3, 2019]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr.
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