Reflections on the Gospel for the Last Sunday after Epiphany
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high
mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes
became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared
to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus,
“Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for
Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a
cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the
Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them
any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to
tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the
dead. -Mark 9:2-9
It’s only fairly recently that the Anglican Church of Canada has been reading the accounts of
Jesus’ transfiguration just before Lent. We’ve always kept the Feast of the Transfiguration on
August 6 (since the nuclear bomb drop on Hiroshima, a day with starkly different senses of
transfiguration). To hear the story of Jesus’s transfiguration just before we enter into Lent sets
the Lenten season between two different but parallel stories. The first is the story of Jesus
going with his closest friends – Peter, James, and John – to a lonely place on a mountain to
pray. In the course of his prayer, Jesus enters a mystery so holy, so other, that his friends draw
back in alarm. They simply cannot comprehend it. At the end of Lent, on Maundy Thursday,
Jesus goes with the same three friends to a garden to pray – Gethsemane. In both stories there
is a revelation of the One Jesus called Father. In both, the three friends are overcome by fear.
The Christian life is always lived between these two stories. It too is marked by these poles of
revelation and prayer. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this event – the Transfiguration
– is the most unambiguous revelation of Jesus as the Messiah prior to the Resurrection. The
disciples see Jesus, the very human Jesus, man of flesh and blood like themselves, as utterly
shot through with the glory of God. It is a scene of dazzling light. And the light! Orthodox
Christians call it “Tabor Light.” This is the kind of light that transfigured Moses so that he had to
wear a veil. It is this kind of light which blinded Paul on his way to Damascus. At the end of Lent,
the disciples – and we – discover that this divine glory is made real in accepting the cross out of
love for all our human race. The glory of God does not coerce, manipulate, or control us. St.
John, in his gospel, tells us over and again that the glory of God is made known in Jesus being
lifted up on the cross. God, utterly free and utterly vulnerable, revealed entirely in the person
of Jesus Christ.
We live in a world that is often dark and terrible. Violence and calamity are all around. We live
in a Church that is often terrible, too, though as much because of its timidity and torpor as of
anything else. The Transfiguration and the Cross tell us not to panic. Even in the midst of the
worst failure and loss God is present in love and freedom, to bring life and love. And when
things are going well, when we seem to have our act together, when our life in the Church
seems safe and happy, the Transfiguration and the Cross remind us that glory and sacrifice
must always go together.
The poet expresses well the paradox:
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere?
-Edwin Muir 1887-1957
The Transfiguration (excerpt)
Reflecting on the Transfiguration, St. Augustine says,
Life Himself came down to be slain; Bread came down to suffer hunger; the Way came
down to endure weariness on His journey; the Fountain came down to experience thirst.
Do you, then, refuse to work and to suffer?
Kevin+
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