Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. (Luke 9.28-31)
Today the evangelist Luke offers us his telling of the story of the transfiguration of Rabbi Jesus atop a mountain, a highly personal experience witnessed by three of his most trusted followers, although they fall asleep during a part of it, always sluggish at the start, always slow to learn. Elements of the story call our attention to the past and other parts of it focus us on the future.
Keywords in the story alert us to the past history of the chosen people, words such as a mountain, a cloud, Moses, and exodus. Even with an inkling of Hebrew history, we hear in these words an echo of the story of Hebrew slaves who, freed from slavery through the grace of God, make their exodus from the land of Egypt, wander through the desert for forty years, and enter finally into the Promised Land.
Leading them in the desert was Moses, the great prophet who, at one point, ascends a mountain, where he converses with the Most High God, whose voice is heard coming from a cloud that encircles the top of the mountain, a voice that offers guidance and assurance to Moses as he seeks to lead the people to the land of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The evangelist expects us to see this ancient story as a template for the story that he tells here. And though Moses appears in this story as well, he is not the central figure, but a representative of the divine law that was given on Mount Sinai, directives meant to point the wandering people on the right path to righteousness and holiness, the twin virtues of those who hear the voice of the Most High God.
The central figure is Rabbi Jesus, who is the one who ascends this mountain and who converses with the Most High God in this instance, whose voice comes to him, as it did to Moses of old, in the midst of a cloud, offering him assurance of his call, summoning others to follow his lead because he has been chosen to show them the way out of the desert of this world to a new promised land, one also flowing with milk and honey.
But the story does not only reach into the past to highlight the importance of the current event. It also looks to the future, anticipating an even greater event, one that inaugurates a new age for a people once enslaved to the ways of the world, but who now experience the freedom of the children of God, and who walk in this world with their eyes on the ways of God, a straight and narrow path that will lead to life eternal in a new Jerusalem.
That event, of course, is the resurrection from the dead of the Galilean Teacher, whose exodus from death to life is anticipated in his conversation with Moses and Elijah, the wickedness of the world crushed by the victory of the Risen One, who walks out of his tomb in a white garment and in a blast of light, already portrayed here in this foreshadowing of the resurrection.
And as Peter and his companions, who slept away the night outside Jerusalem as the Rabbi prepared for his execution and who slumber here again, will be among the first to see the glory of the Resurrected Lord on Easter morning as they race to the empty tomb, so now they also get a tiny glimpse of that glory as they find themselves fully awake.
The thing left for us to ponder is not so much the past history of the Hebrew slaves and it is not the future glory of the Resurrected Lord, but the present moment in which we, like those companions, slumber, overcome by sleep. If the story is to become our story, as it is intended to be, then it is how we move through this world, no longer overcome by sleep, but fully awake, transfigured from sluggish and slumbering followers into fully awake and fully committed followers of the way.
Like the Hebrew slaves, we also are enchained, but the chains that hold us back are not physical chains, but the chains of weakness, weariness, and waywardness. Our journey, then, is a journey through the desert of this world, each step freeing us more and more from those things that hold us to the ways of the world, opening to us a way of life that is the way of God.
All this is accomplished in the present, where our choices are made, where our decisions are decided. The present becomes for us either another step towards our transfiguration, a gradual transformation of our persons from slaves to freedmen, or it is a step backwards, a return to Egypt, where we live in chains under Pharaoh’s rule.
Obviously, we can gain inspiration from the lessons of the past, walking with the Hebrews as they make their exodus from Egypt, and we can find motivation in the promise of the future, where we, like the Risen Lord, will find a new and eternal life, freed finally from the chains of this world and released from the stranglehold of sin. But neither the past nor the future are ours–only the present is. We live in this moment, not in the past, not in the future.
And our exodus will be determined in the present, either stepping across or stepping away from the Red Sea, choosing one side or the other in which we will live, embracing a self on the way to transformation, or denying ourselves that path to transfiguration. As Moses said to the Hebrew slaves, “I set before you today life and goodness, as well as death and disaster. Choose the right path.”
In his book, Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner reminds us of a story written by the English essayist Max Beerbohm called “The Happy Hypocrite.” In the story, there is a rakish, no-good young man named Lord George who falls in love with a good and kind girl. In order to win her love, he covers his own bloated face with the mask of a saint. The girl, no wiser, becomes his bride and they live together happily.
Then a wicked woman from Lord George’s past turns up, wanting to expose him for the scoundrel that she knew him to be. She challenges him to take off his mask so that his real self can be shown to the world. Sadly, but without a choice, he removes his mask, ready to see his wife abandon him when she sees who he really is. But when the mask is taken off, the very face of the saint is revealed.
By wearing the mask of a saint for the love of his wife, he has–over time–become transformed. He is transfigured, “his face changed in appearance,” as the gospel says today. Choosing over the years to become less the person he was and more the person he wants to be, he–in that moment–finds that his journey through the desert has brought him to the Promised Land.
That, of course, is the promise and the possibility for each of us, the gospel summoning us to take on the ways of Rabbi Jesus, following in his footsteps, approximating his selfless love, moving steadily towards his way of life. And, should we persevere, then we will find one day, much to our surprise, that our own face has changed in appearance, no longer the person we were, but now the person we prayed to become.
How is it possible? The simple answer is found in the story that Luke tells us today. As those first followers of the Galilean Teacher are taken by the change in him that they see, they suddenly hear a voice coming from the cloud overhead, casting a shadow over them. Frightened at first, knowing that the cloud and the voice can only mean the presence of the Most High God, they hear him speak these words to them, “This is my chosen Son. Listen to him.”
There is the answer to our gradual transformation from slaves to freedmen, from sinner to saint, from hopeless to hopeful. We listen to Rabbi Jesus, taking to heart his words and living our lives his way, not once, not occasionally, but with steady steps, moving towards the Promised Land, away from the desert sands of this world, until one day we stand on the other shores, free at last, free at last.
In the 1970s, the African nation of Uganda experienced an upheaval under the tyrant leader Idi Amin, with civil war, oppression, and famine spreading throughout the country. Shortly before his own arrest and execution at the hands of Amin, the Archbishop of the region was challenged because of his supposed friendship with the dictator. The archbishop answered, “The best way to show a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it.”
In so many words, that is the same thing that the Most High God is offering us–a straight stick to lay alongside the crooked ways of this world; and that stick is his son, called the Carpenter of Nazareth, whose ways remind us of the right way, a way of generosity, humility, and compassion, a stark contrast with the ways of the world, a way of hedonism, egotism, and bloodshed.
When in doubt about the choice we should make in the present moment–if our desire is for our personal transfiguration–then we take the stick which is the life of Rabbi Jesus and we lay it against the stick that is not the life of the Rabbi and our choice should be clear. Again, the answer is put before us in the voice from the cloud, “Listen to him.”
The gifted writer Anne Lamott once told of her moment of transformation, the time in her life when she crossed the Red Sea, leaving her old life behind, looking for a new life. In her book Traveling Mercies she describes her mountaintop experience in this way, “As I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner. . . The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there. . .”
“But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled. . . I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, I would rather die.”
“I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with. Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning he was gone. . .” Soon, she found her way into a little Presbyterian church. She writes, “I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling–and it washing over me.”
“I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels . . . and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, ‘I quit. . . Alright. You can come in.’ So”, she said, “this was my beautiful moment of conversion.”
If we find ourselves overcome by sleep, as Peter and his companions were, then it is time for us to wake up. A beautiful moment of conversion stands in front of us, waiting for us to take the first step.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 