Sermon, Transfiguring It Out

Transfiguration Sunday year C 0210
Luke 9:28-36
Transfiguring It Out
By Rich Gamble

So much of my preaching and teaching is aimed at making the Gospel of Jesus Christ something that we can understand. Yes it is challenging to understand a call to live our lives outside the hold of greed and violence. Yes it is hard to incorporate the upside down vision of the realm of God into our everyday lives. But if we buy into the basic supposition that God’s realm can be experienced in the here and now, and that God’s realm is the complete inversion of system of domination that currently rules the minds and actions of humanity, then there is coherent logic to things that Jesus says and does.

But this story isn’t about understanding the Realm of God. This story of the transfiguration is about Wonder and Awe. This story has a glowing Jesus, a talking cloud and dead guys walking around. Frankly the story would have made more sense if it had begun with Jesus serving the disciples some questionable mushrooms.

The story tells us that Jesus takes Peter James and John to the top of the hill and there they have this otherworldly experience of seeing Jesus glow bright white. If that were not strange enough, they then see Moses and Elijah having a conversation with Jesus. How did they know it was Moses and Elijah in the days before photography or even portrait painting? The story does not say.

And if things were not strange enough the disoriented disciples hear the very word of God. Well it says that the voice came out of cloud but we are inclined to believe that if clouds start talking to us that it is the voice of God. God says: "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

Simple direct statement and instruction. I like that about the cloud here. It doesn’t use a bunch of flowery language.

Glowing leader, long dead prophets having conversations, and talking clouds, it is quite an afternoon. If someone today were to report such goings on we might be inclined to say that they were delusional.

What are we to make of it?

When I was in the last year of college, I lived by myself in a small apartment in a rat and roach infested neighborhood of Kansas City MO. I went to class and I worked to pay for class and I walked. I was graduating with an English Literature major and had no job prospects and no clear idea of direction in my life. My girlfriend was in the process of discovering that she was lesbian and my close friends and family were in other towns. In other words I had a lot of time to myself.

To fill this time I would walk for hours. Being burly and naïve I did not worry about where or when I walked. I walked and I thought and at times I prayed.

I prayed for guidance, for direction, for companionship, I prayed that somehow the world would make sense to me.

One night as I walked I was overcome by a sense of wonder. I didn’t see any glowing apparitions. No long dead prophets walked with me. No clouds spoke. And yet, something filled me. I was caught up in the wonder of moment. Concerns about the future, about companionship, about meaning left me. All such things were crowded out by a sense of overflowing peace.

I remember that I stopped and reached out and touched the trunk of a tree, and I could feel the life flowing beneath my hand. I stopped at a dark alley and perceived something in the darkness and so stopped and waited. In a couple of minutes an opossum walked out and we stared at each other and I felt a bond between the two of us. During that night my concerns were replaced by joy and sense of peacefulness. I was in the moment and the moment was filled with wonder. As a whole when people start to talk about the mystical I get impatient because such talk usually seems to be a distraction from the social, political and economic ramifications of our faith. But in my life, I’ve occasionally experienced the peace that passes all understanding.

That, I think, is what this story is all about. Between dealing with the needs of the afflicted, the hostility of the leadership and the incomprehension of the disciples, Jesus takes a break to experience the wonder of Creation and the disciples get a peak. Even though they didn’t know what it meant or how to respond, still they remembered that moment when reality opened up to reveal so much more than they had expected.

Immediately after this story, Jesus and the disciples go down from the mountain to find a child afflicted by a demon, and the disciples unable to do anything to help. Jesus is once again thrust into the world of suffering, struggle and ignorance.

It should be noted that he doesn’t turn his back and go back up the mountain. He plunges into the work of healing and teaching. He returns to the path that will lead him to the cross.

As adults we sometimes have to work to take seriously the concerns of children. We know that in time the trauma of lost toys, bad hair, and homework will be seen to be insignificant but to the child at the time, it is all.

Elders can sometimes see the concerns of younger adults as small. Worries about status, style, career and possessions will grow small as we turn to face the implications of the end of our existence.

Our faith guides us to take seriously such things as human suffering and injustice. Because of our faith we find ourselves called to places we would rather not go, and into struggles we would rather avoid. But in the midst of anger and trauma, beyond the fear and anxiety there is always present the peace and serenity of knowing that the world as we know it is just a small part of wonder of existence. This peace we rarely if ever experience and if so, often forget but it is there.

The voice of God may thunder from a cloud, the wonder of existence may be felt through the bark of a tree, or in the clasp of a newborn on our finger.

We are invited to awaken to the wonder of existence which transcends the span of our lives linking us with those long gone and those yet to be. We are invited to awaken to see that in the midst of war and famine, suffering and death beyond the seemingly unstoppable forces of ignorance and greed, beyond the sadness of loss and the alienation of existence, that there is something …more. Something… wondrous.

Many try to sell us the peace we seek. If only we do what they say, buy what they sell, read their book, join their club, take their drug we will get there.

Our story of faith says that wondrous experience comes only as part of a life of faithful struggle to share the love of God. As we seek justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, truth for those mired in lies, and peace for those brutalized by violence; so we may just stumble into a moment where the doors of perception are opened up to reveal the peace that passes all understanding.

We may live our whole lives and not have a mountain top experience but our faith says that it is there. We can’t manufacture it. We can only be open to it when it comes. But whether we ever personally experience it, we proclaim that the love of God is there, and it is broader than our ability to perceive, longer than our years, and more filled with wonder than we can comprehend.

And that is good news.