Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 24:12-18, Psalm 2 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9
BE TRANSFIGURED. On Transfiguration Sunday, the mandate is to be transfigured and transformed! To let the mountaintop radiance of Christ flood your cells and soul, transfiguring and transmogrifying your whole being. Today’s scriptures suggest that transformation is possible for us, anytime and anywhere. The world abounds in divine glory, and so do you. Everyday life is a window into Infinity. Every moment is a thin place, revealing God’s glory. On any given day we can wake up with Jacob and stammer, “God was in this place – and I did not know it,” recognizing that this place is here, right where you are in your place and in your body, mind, spirit, and relationships. Though we may close our senses to God’ presence, the wonders of creation flow through every moment of experience. Transfiguration Sunday invites us to cleanse the doors of perception, so that we might experience Infinity in passing time. (William Blake and Aldous Huxley) For, as Emily Dickinson rhapsodizes, we are finite infinities.
Epiphany bursts forth into theophany and concludes with creative transformation. The quest for the revealing God leads to a dramatic manifestation of the divine. Moses and Jesus are transfigured and those who witness are filled with awe and, dare we say, terror. Such mystical experiences and divine encounters partake in what German Lutheran theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto describes in “The Idea of the Holy” as the mysterious, tremendous, and fascinating, and for at least a moment we are all mystics. We are ushered into a world in which anything is possible, in which God is alive, and we share somehow in this divinity. Radical amazement characterizes our daily life.
Transfiguration can happen anywhere or anytime. Unsought and unbidden. We may also have to climb the mountain to put ourselves in the place of transfiguring light.
Jesus is transformed on the mountaintop. The full spiritual energy of the universe flows in and through him. In seeing him transformed and in companionship with sages of the past, his followers are transfigured as well.
ECSTASY ABOUNDS. Some have suggested that the problem of our times is ecstasy deficit. We have become so busy about our own affairs that we have lost the vision of beauty. We have tamped down wonder to consume, prophesy to profit, beauty to buy, and awe to acquire. Without ecstasy or the remembrance of moments of wonder and delight, awe and amazement, the world becomes flat. We focus on the literal word of scripture and deny its wonder; we settle, as the apostle Peter notes, for the letter and not the life-giving Spirit. The Bible becomes on dimensional. In the process, our beauty deficiency has led to making the Earth a garbage dump, as Pope Francis asserts. “Father/Mother, forgive us, we don’t know what we see.” The ecstatic person rejoices in the goodness of the earth and the wonder of all existence in its tragic beauty. Transfiguration throw opens the doors of perception and infinity blasts open our senses. And, ecstasy can happen anywhere – gazing at your young children at play, penning a sermon, walking in the predawn morning, or seeing God reflected in the face of a beloved companion. We can taste and see, and also touch, smell, and hear the glory of God and the wonder of our being.
AWAKENING TO WONDER. Most of the time we are oblivious to the wonder of our being and all being, and see the world in terms of consumption, filling our deficiency with things, market share, and product placement. We don’t have time to marvel at a baby’s birth, a child’s laugh, a photo of a far off galaxy, a bird in flight, a whale breaching, or a couple walking hand in hand. We become objects to ourselves – we are what we tweet or post or how much wealth or power we claim – and not beloved children, mysterious, wonderful, and a little wild. “Father/Mother, forgive us, for we don’t know who we are or where we are.” We need to confess our failure to experience the fullness of reality and the immediacy of grace.
THE AIM OF THE UNIVERSE IS TOWARD BEAUTY. Alfred North Whitehead affirms that aim of the universe, the aim of God, is toward the production of beauty. Beauty, for Whitehead, is not just a nice feeling; beauty is a deeply religious emotion that issues in ethical action.
Today we need an ethic of beauty, seeing beauty and being beauty, to paraphrase Amanda Gorman. Morality involves bringing forth beauty wherever we find it. Defacing beauty is immoral, whether it involves our complacency at allowing millions of children to die, killing citizens on the streets of Minneapolis, or choosing to prefer short term financial gain over protecting the planet. The experience of beauty, at best, leads to gratitude and an ethic of beauty-making and beauty-preserving. We feel, with Albert Schweitzer, a kinship and reverence for all life.
THIN PLACES EVERYWHERE. The Celtic Christians and pagans speak of “thin places” that are translucent to the divine, places where “heaven and earth meet” and God’s grandeur bursts forth in a craggy rock or grove of trees. Today’s scriptures describe such “thin places” of the Spirit: a fire on the mountain as Moses receives divine guidance and the illumination of Jesus as he talks with saints of old.
Light bursts forth from our cells and souls at such moments, and we along with Moses and Jesus are transformed. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, as Hopkins says, and so are we.
We need as we look toward Lent, a transfigured perception and way of life. The simplicity of Lent is related to the bounty of Epiphany. The season of Epiphany is about abundance and illumination. Lent turns us toward simplicity and the recognition of the fragility of life. Out of that experience of fragility comes gratitude for life. Yet, abundance and simplicity complement and inspire each other. Those who live by God’s abundance can live simply, so the planet might flourish. Their abundance precludes them from settling for the faux abundance of consumerism and power brokering.
The experience of abundance inspires us to generosity rather than greed or hoarding of resources. Our gratitude for abundance drives us toward interdependence and not individualism. Individual creativity, personal artistry, is not a result of isolated creation but the interplay of divine call and human response, creation’s bounty and human imagination.
THE ETHIC OF TRANSFIGURATION. The ethic of epiphany is about transfiguration. It is about transforming the world, reclaiming the garbage dump and creating a garden, reviving dying ecosystems and bringing new life to decimated environments, restoring broken communities and rejoicing in new forms of sustainable employment for those displaced by corporate greed and technological advancement.
When Jesus and the followers go down the mountaintop, they are confronted by a desperate father. Jesus responds with healing power, the power of the universe, flowing through him. The fruit of the mountaintop is service to the planet, not self-interest.
This morning as I walked briskly in subfreezing temperature through my Potomac, Maryland, neighborhood, my senses were filled with wonder and my mind was inspired. I didn’t race home, but rejoiced in the sunrise moment, knowing that I would eventually return home to write this commentary and prepare for my bible study. It was an unrepeatable moment – just to be in the chill, to feel cold air on my face, and saunter homeward anticipating hot coffee and the familiar face of my waking wife.
In the words of singer-song writer Carrie Newcomer, life abounds for preacher and congregant alike.
The empty page
The open book
Redemption everywhere I look.
The mountaintop transfiguration of Moses, Jesus, the disciples, and us, leads to redemption, not redemption from the world to a far off heaven or a destructive Second Coming or abandonment of our nation to state sponsored violence and institutional greed and racism, but redemption of the world, healing the good Earth. This is our calling today, to be transfigured. To see the light, be the light, and share the light – our Great Work of Grace, to be bright souled God’s companions in healing the World.
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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over eighty books, including Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; Messy Incarnation: Meditations on Christ in Process; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. His latest books are Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-human World and Three Wise Wisdom: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna (volume seven in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” series along with the recently released Lenten devotional, Just a Little Walk with Jesus: A Spiritual Saunter with Mark’s Gospel and Whitehead and Jesus:An Adventure in Spiritual Transformation. He is married to Rev. Kate Epperly, D.Min. and lives in Potomac, Maryland.
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