I began with the
recognition that every single person in the room had, in some way, at some
time, tasted transcendence. And then I
invited people to share a story. When was
a time you felt God? A time you knew God was with you? An experience that
touched you that you can’t explain? A moment that shifted things for you?
And then the stories began
to come out. Mysterious, moving, some both ordinary and miraculous at the same
time, some downright astounding. Experiences that people couldn’t quite explain
were shared, and the most common and appropriate response was simply,
“Wow”.
And we long for these – as
human beings we crave these tastes of the beyond. Moments where the space
between what is and what will be thins out, when the gap between earth and
heaven becomes narrow - the thin places where God feels close. There is more to
reality than we can see or understand; and we long for these glimpses that life
is more fraught with splendor than it often feels.
The disciples, Peter James
and John, get one of those moments today.
But talk about juxtaposition. Six days earlier Jesus gives them a big
speech about how he will suffer and die, about how those who strive to save their
lives will lose them, and only those who surrender their lives to God will find
their true selves, and bewilderingly, about how they’ll have to take up a cross
and follow him.
And then he leads them up
a mountain.
This is the halfway point
of Matthew; it’s hump day, as it were. It’s all downhill from here. The first half
of the book and the season after Christmas that we’ve been in, Epiphany, has
been about revealing who Jesus is, what the kingdom of God is about, making it
all known. But now a shift is happening,
a turning point, and it pivots on the mountain.
Much of the first half has
been set on a mountain as well, like Moses going up to meet God and receive the
commandments, the description of life together with God, we’ve spent the first
part of Matthew on the mountain with Jesus, in the “sermon on the mount,”
direct teaching about the kingdom of God and what life looks like when it’s
lived in God’s way of love and trust and connection instead of in the way of
fear, self-protection, competition.
And now they’re heading
back up a mountain. But this time, they are distinctly not there for teaching
or explanation. They are not getting a round two of a sermon, some truth about
God, some challenge to chew on and apply to their lives. This time it’s an
experience they can’t quite believe and don’t really know what to do with.
Today they stand around
like awkward evesdroppers with all the senses alert, watching Jesus suddenly
take on glowing white robes and a face shining like the sun, convening with the
forefathers of faith, these representatives of relationship with God milling
around in conversation together like guests at some classy, celestial dinner
party, and Jesus right at home among them, chatting away, and ignoring the
three who’ve trudged up with him, like they aren’t even there, thunderstruck, watching
this scene unfold.
It’s a moment of
transcendence, of keen insight, a flash of recognition, things fitting together
somehow – Moses, Elijah, Jesus, God, future, past, cosmos, meaning – it’s some
kind of thrilling wakefulness and yet fantastic, removed and frightening.
And Peter does what anyone
might, (but perhaps a bit more brazenly than you or I), he tries to make sense
of it, to capture it, to bottle the mystery, to wrap it in logic and lesson, he
INTERUPTS MOSES AND MESSIAH MID-SENTENCE, to blurt out, Hey Jesus, sorry to, you know, intrude, but I’ve just had the most
perfect idea! I know just what we can do! Let’s build some tents right here,
and you and Elijah and Moses can stay here forever, and we will too, and...
But
before he’s even finished getting the breathless suggestion out, a paradoxical
“bright cloud overshadows them” and a loud voice announces, “This is my son,
the beloved, in whom I am well pleased! Listen to him!”
The three onlookers fall
to the ground in terror, arms over their heads like a tornado drill got real,
every nerve ending vigilant, feeling, I imagine, like they might just die from
the power and magnificent tremor of it all, and then, they lift their heads and
it is only Jesus, standing there, alone.
When the dust settles all
that is left is Jesus.
And He touches them, and
tells them not to be afraid.
And then, I suppose, they
stand up and head back down the mountain.
I picture them shaken,
subdued, not quite sure what to say, not knowing what to do with their hands,
their thoughts, stealing glances now and again at Jesus’s weathered brown face
and dusty, worn robes, and wondering if they’d imagined it all. On the way down
the mountain he tells them not to tell anyone what happened up there.
As if they would.
Who in the world would
believe them?
What would they even say?
But something has changed.
Something has irreversibly has shifted them, I bet. Magnetized them, in a way.
Oriented them, pivoted them to him in a new way. They’ve glimpsed beyond. They’ve
gotten a peek at something they can’t explain but which feels more true and
real than anything they’ve ever known, for which the appropriate response may
simply be, “Wow”.
Why, I wonder, has he asked them to
come along, Peter, James and John? His followers, his friends; why did he bring
them?
For their sake? For his own?
Come with me! He says, And
like kids tagging along with mom to an appointment, they came, and stood on the
sidelines watching the unfathomable, glowing Jesus chatting with Moses and
Elijah. About what? What were they saying to him? Giving him advice? Asking
questions? A pep talk?
Whatever it was
clearly not about the three of them,
not really even for the three of
them. They were onlookers to the scene, participant observers in Jesus’ reality
as he plugs in, as it were, to his source, the absolute affirmation of his
divine purpose and place, even if just for a moment.
The first half of Jesus’
ministry began with the voice of God, claiming Jesus as the beloved, the son,
in whom God is well pleased. It is the core, the thread that holds him to his
identity and purpose through the harsh wilderness and the miracles and
teachings that follow. And now he hears
it again, as he sets his face toward the cross and the deliberate journey into
suffering, misunderstanding, hatred and death, This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.
In a short while he will
invite them again, Come with me, and
he’ll go to the garden to pray; he’ll endure such anguish that he will sweat
blood, and wish desperately that he could skip out on the horror he’s about to
endure, and he’ll surrender himself to God, and to what is ahead of him. They will watch and wonder, will fall asleep alongside
him and wake up, and struggle to make sense of that experience as well.
Right after the disciples
witness Jesus’ strange and momentary transformation and head back down the
mountain, they are confronted immediately by the father of a tortured kid they
couldn’t heal – and it comes up this way, by the way, in this order- these two
parts of the story, back to back, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, like they belong
together, like you can’t have the one without the other.
In every telling of the
transfiguration the disciples go from this terrifying, exhilarating experience
of limitlessness immediately to this troubling, frustrating and humiliating
experience of helplessness. They swing
from great euphoric insight and conviction, to utter impotence and
impossibility, confronted by the ministry they could not do and tagging along
after a Messiah who is headed for a cross. And Jesus heals the boy, and blesses the
father, and calls the disciples again to follow.
But despite the fact that
the only command, the only concrete thing they can take away
from their moment of transcendence, their experience on the mountaintop is the
very direct order: LISTEN TO HIM, they struggle to hear him, they resist what
he has to say.
No matter how much he
tells them the cross is coming –and it is, the whole second half of Matthew is
heading there –no matter how much he says he is not here to take them out of
the world but to come into it, not here to prevent suffering but to share it,
and that we too must follow him there, they can’t quite wrap their heads around
this. It continues to elude them. Perhaps until that moment in the garden. Or
perhaps not until the cross itself. Or
maybe, they don’t ever really hear it until the resurrection.
Maybe it’s then that it
comes back to them, a flash of recognition, things fitting together somehow –
Moses, Elijah, Jesus, God, future, past, cosmos, meaning – the thrilling
wakefulness, the touch of Jesus, maybe it’s then
that they finally hear his words on the mountaintop, Do not be afraid.
As we walk into Lent, and
into Matthew’s collection of Jesus’ cryptic parables, we will seek to listen to
Jesus. Jesus, who faced all the temptations and struggles of being human from
the core of his belovedness in God. Jesus who says, Come with me, and Those
who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my
sake will find it, and Do not be afraid.
Lent invites us to go
deeper, to be open to God with us who both comes to us in mystery, and meets us
in our messiness. Who gives us the inexplicable gift of momentary glimpses
beyond, and ceaselessly stands with us in our impossibility and
helplessness.
This Lent, may we be
oriented to Jesus in a new way. May
something shift within us that draws us ever into deeper faithfulness and
trust.
Amen.
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