Readings: Matthew 17:1-9, Exodus 24:12-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21
Let us pray:
Open
our hearts and minds, our ears and our eyes to your word for each of us this
day O God. May our speaking, our listening
and our responding be held in the presence of your Spirit, in Jesus name. Amen.
In the midst of the mundane we are startled
by the unexpected, the mystical, the breathtaking presence of God.
In our ordinary life, in the routine and
the boring, there are moments when we encounter, quite unexpectedly, the
transforming glory of God.
You could say that Moses was in the midst
of the mundane when God called him to the mountain. It was a rather elevated
mundane in that he was in conversation with God, but it was all business you
could say. In the chapters preceding today’s reading we find a long and rather
detailed description of how the laws given to Moses are to be applied to the
daily life of the people. And in the chapters following we find equally
detailed and somewhat long directions for the building of the tabernacle,
offerings and rules for the conduct of worship.
Moses had already been up and down the mountain a few times when God
called him yet again – he must have been a very fit man! So he went again – obedient to the call – to
climb the mountain, to meet with God.
But this time was different – this was not about rules and instructions,
laws and statutes, this was a moment of absolute and pure mystery, where the transforming
glory of God was somehow made known to Moses. There were more encounters with
God, more trips up and down the mountain, but this was special, an epiphany if
you like, a moment that fuelled his faith and had him shining with the glory of
God.
You could actually say that he didn’t
‘need’ this experience, for he had been in continuing conversation with God
since the moment of his call, he was obedient and prayerful and effective in
his ministry and leadership. But for him
and for the people he led, this moment made crystal clear to them nothing less
than the glory, the power, the immensity of God, in fact, that God is!
Likewise, Jesus called to the mountaintop
was not about somehow bolstering his own surety of faith, his relationship with
God but rather revealing to the others with him the transforming power of God
through his Son, showing us all that Jesus is the Beloved, that God is with and
in him. There were no clouds to hide
what happened this time - God shines forth in the Son, in the person of the
Christ.
In this moment the human man that was Jesus
became joined with the divine; the Jesus of history became one with the Christ
of our faith experience.
For all Jesus obvious humanity – in this
moment something radiated from him that spoke of ineffable and eternal truth
and it was the light of the divine in him and with him.
And what was the response of Peter James and
John to this unexplicable, stunning moment of being in the presence of the
living God? They wanted to stop it, hold
time in limbo, scared that this clarity of understanding would become a faded
memory, that the journey to come, the journey to the cross, would wipe out the
joy of this moment. But in fact it was
just the opposite – they slowly began to realise that they weren’t to leave the
light up there on the mountain, but rather that it was to accompany them
through the chaos and suffering and heartache that was inevitably to come. The story of the transfiguration reminds us
that we cannot separate the light that is the love of God from the daily rounds
of life, from the joys and the sorrows that are our reality. In fact it is in
the difficult times that the light of Christ shows most strongly. In the
hospital room with two people who have just heard the worst news of their lives
and you see the sick one reach out to assure their companion, the healthy one,
that all will be well. There the light shines brightly
The transfiguration also serves to remind
us that even without Jesus bodily presence, we can live in the light of the
knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The challenge for
the disciples, and for us, is for the light to continue to shine on with us,
etched on our hearts and lived out in our lives. To not forget, to not try to confine to a
moment in history or to a particular place in the scriptures but to continue to
experience the transcendent in the midst of our ordinary lives.
C S Lewis puts it beautifully in his book ‘The
Silver Chair’ -in Aslan’s final words:
“Here on the mountain I have spoken to you
clearly. I will not often do so down in
Narnia. Here on the mountain the air is
clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your
mind... Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters”[1]
Remember the signs.
We all have transcendent moments I am sure, moments
where we encounter the presence of God, where faith becomes clear, where the
light of Christ just plain shines – sometimes almost too brightly for us to
comprehend and in ways that we do not expect. And we hold those moments close
to our hearts. For some it may be a mountain top experience – a mind blowing
moment of understanding, for others, I hope for all, these moments of ‘God with
us’ happen in the midst of our everyday life – in the classroom or office or
kitchen or on the street, in the hospital room, playing sport, gardening
together. They are the butterfly that
alights on the branch in front of you as you are standing at the grave of your
best friend, the piece of music that is just a moment of absolute beauty in the
midst or turmoil, the absolutely contagious laughter of a child outside the
rest home window, the word of comfort and understanding spoken by a stranger, the
act of giving when you weren’t expecting or needing it, the offer of help when
you are feeling overwhelmed, the bliss of the familiar and the excitement of
the new – all these moments are the signs of Christ with us – the breathtaking
presence of God with us in the mundane, in the suffering.
There is no way we can hide ourselves from the
rigours of life, no way that Jesus could stay up there on that mountain, not
come down and continue the journey to the cross, but and this is a brilliant
and life changing ‘but’, there is also no way that we can shield ourselves from
the light of God that sheds hope into the darkest moments. As we enter the season of Lent, as we sit
around the communion table as Jesus did with his disciples at that last supper,
let us remember the presence of God with us in the ordinary and the everyday.
I want to finish with a quote from Maryetta
Anschutz:[2]
“The moment of the transfiguration is that
point at which God says to the world and to each of us that there is nothing we
can do to prepare for or stand in the way of joy or sorrow. We cannot build God a monument, and we cannot
keep God safe. We also cannot escape the
light that God will shine on our path,
We cannot escape God, Immanuel among us.
God will find us in our homes and in our work-places. God will find us when our hearts are broken
and when we discover joy. God will find
us when we run away from God and when we are sitting in the middle of what
seems like hell. So ‘get up and do not
be afraid’.”[3]
Margaret Garland
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