Sermons

Feb 18 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

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The Transfiguration
The Last Sunday after Epiphany
February 18, 2007
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Most families have sayings that they use as a kind of shorthand. These sayings originated from some event a long time ago, and with continual use over the years they carry weight, humor, or annoyance.

When something expensive or dear to us breaks, I like to say cheerfully Well, it’s all dross that God will someday burn in the unquenchable fire. That always helps. When Susanna really wants one of our sons to hear what she is saying, she starts off with This is your mother speaking. And when one of us is perplexed about something, we reach way back 20 years to when we all watched Sesame Street together, and one of us sings If you got a problem, figure it out!

This is what we usually do when we have a problem, right? Figure it out! God has given us this wonderful capacity to figure things out. And so we look carefully at a lawnmower and try to analyze why it isn’t starting. We go to a therapist who helps us understand the roots of our depression. We seek out expert medical treatment so that we can be healed. Committees talk about why their work isn’t effective and change their strategy.

In fact, this is what so much of religion is understood to be about. We experience something that in our hearts or in society that is distressing or harmful, and we try to discern a better way. We look to the scriptures, books, spiritual leaders, we look to God in prayer, and often, an answer seems to come. So we head off with a new spiritual insight, a method of prayer, a spirituality group to join, a plan for the church finances, or an organization to feed the hungry and advocate for justice. That’s what we do with religion.

Usually this works. If you got a problem, figure it out. But there are times when it doesn’t work. Some answers just don’t come. We’re left with our illness, world poverty and violence, a nagging sense of emptiness, a difficult relative, an inability to raise enough money or influence people in power, and we just can’t figure it out. And so we wonder Well what good is God now? Or What’s wrong with me? Am I spiritually deaf and blind?

What we overlook is that our faith has a whole other purpose that has nothing to do with problem-solving, a dimension that is not logical or practical. Our faith sometimes leads us into mystery, not solutions. Our faith is supposed to puzzle and astound us at times. It is supposed to take us into a foggy and disorienting landscape instead of along a paved pathway in a manicured park.

This is what happened to three of Jesus’ friends one day on a mountaintop. I imagine that the disciples had their problems. They were married, with children, homes, and demanding jobs – what Zorba the Greek called The Full Catastrophe. In their time, they were plagued by crime, extortion and violence, a brutal Roman occupying force, and a repressive religious system. And then there was Jesus, a big problem in himself.

He kept making annoying suggestions: Love your enemies. Give away all that you own. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Deny yourself. He told these confusing stories about tax collectors and prostitutes going into heaven before the righteous, and laborers all being paid the same amount, no matter how long they worked in the day. But worst of all, he insisted on bringing up a really disturbing idea: something about rejection, suffering, death, and glory, all in the same breath.

I can imagine that, along with everyone else, like his eventual interrogators in Jerusalem, his friends wondered Who is this guy? What is he talking about? What does he want us to do? Help us figure out how to be happy, how to heal others, how to make this world more peaceful and good. Just tell us plainly.

Instead, Jesus took Peter, James and John up on a mountaintop one day. He settled down there and they looked out over the landscape below, and they prayed in silence for awhile. The disciples got very sleepy in the afternoon sun. Then Jesus’ face began to change; he began to look radiant. An unmistakable electricity filled the air, and everything got very quiet. Moses and Elijah, those ancient heroes of Israel, appeared in a vision alongside the glorified Jesus, a dark cloud swept over everything, and a voice boomed from the heavens: This is my son. Listen to him. Peter, James, and John were terrified; they kept their mouths shut about this and told nobody of what they had seen.

Those poor guys. All they wanted was a little clarity, a little direction in their lives, a little healing and comfort. And what did they get? A confusing, cloudy, glorious glimpse of something beautiful and fearsome that they couldn’t possibly understand or communicate to others, but which would change their lives forever. Now that’s religion for you.

God knows that sometimes what we need is not clear direction and practical solutions to our problems. Sometimes we need mystery, glory, even fear; we need something that will change our outlook, something that will shut us up and transfigure us from within. How does this happen?

It doesn’t happen completely out of the blue. Remember that the disciples were seeking; otherwise they wouldn’t have been following Jesus. They spent time with him, they accompanied him up to the top of the mountain. And they prayed.

You seek; you come in here some Sundays with a question. You are in companionship with Jesus, inviting him to be with you in his Body and Blood. You go to God in prayer and look to the scriptures for wisdom.

If we are seekers like the disciples were, God will sometimes surprise us with mystery. In those moments, the cloudy and glorious glimpse we are given will not necessarily provide us with an answer. But the encounter will change us. Our perspective will change. We will see ourselves, our life, other people, everything differently.

Sometimes we are made humble, vividly aware of our relative insignificance in the face of it all. Sometimes we look up and see the sky again for the first time in months. Sometimes we regain our gratitude, our patience and trust. Sometimes we are newly able to see others as they really are, as precious, beloved children of God, no matter how confused and misdirected they may be. Sometimes our all-consuming problem just melts away and ceases to matter. Sometimes we are just given that peace that truly does pass all understanding. And when we are, we might just want to keep our mouth shut about it and not tell anyone for awhile, for it is too precious, too inexplicable to be uttered.

These are life-changing moments of transfiguration. They don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. They don’t give us logical answers or solutions to anything. But they change us forever. As people of faith, we learn to trust these experiences.

Because as we keep seeking, as we remain in companionship with Jesus, as we pray over time, we keep having these moments, and they add up. They build inside us like a sacred landscape, a wild, beautiful, foggy place we can be taken to in order to be bewildered now and then, a place where suffering and glory dwell together, a familiar and accessible place of encounter with the holy.

We may resist going to that place because we’re not in control there. We may be blind to it because instead of mystery we’re only looking for mere practical solutions. But when we do allow ourselves to go there, we find a God whom we needn’t fear, and who gives us something far more precious than answers. God gives us a new life.