February 7, 2016 - Transfiguration Sunday

This morning Open Our Eyes, Lord felt like a prayer set to music this morning as it was sung.  That reverence continued with Be Thou My Vision.

The Gospel reading is Luke 9:28-43 The Transfiguration.  Familiar story that today, once more, is surprisingly unfamiliar.  Here human nature meets God, a place where there is an indistinct line between temporal and the eternal.  Peter, James and John are our witnesses, described on the mountaintop as being weighed down by sleep, but they were awake.

This is reminiscent of the Gethsemane moment when the disciples are woken to see Jesus going to his death.  The humanity and something more of Christ is being fully revealed in both these accounts.  

How easy it is to feel weighed down by sleep in certain past encounters with the Transfiguration account.  How often I nodded taking in the details, as if there is no difficulty in comprehending the identity of Jesus.  Now I ask Martin Luther's Small Catechism question, "What does this mean?"

In the past I smiled, thinking affectionately about Peter trying to build structures to contain the experience.  Now I realize I also tried to "shelter" and circumscribe my experience and thought around the Transfiguration.  The following thoughts variously flow in and out of my mind.

• First - What happens in the Transfiguration is a one-time historical miracle that confirms Jesus is the one and only Son of God.  Moses and Elijah initially appear in glorious splendor, representing the law and the prophets to announce the fulfillment of the Old Covenant. After God's affirmative voice from the cloud there is only Jesus.  What is needed is to believe Jesus is the one and only Son of God.
• Second - The Transfiguration account uses metaphorical language to describe a spiritual truth.  Taken this way uncomfortable parts in the passage can be attributed to problems with the ability to understand the writer.  Perhaps there is a metaphor that is no longer used, or something important to the author that has been lost over time. 
• Third - The Transfiguration is a more ordinary meaningful that everyone experiences.  It is, in essence, hyperbolic language for the "glow" or "radiance" that many see on certain people at certain times.. 

Today Pastor Michelle's sermon and the worship suggested that Jesus, as  Son of Man, might have needed this affirmation and strength for the departure (the Greek word that is used is "exodus"), to follow the way of the cross and his impending death.  Simultaneously Jesus understands that staying in the mountaintop experience is not the way God works.

Pastor Michelle also brought to our attention what happened eight days before (how the Gospel verse opens. Jesus asked the disciples "Who do you say I am". This is interesting in that Matthew 16:23 Peter is also singled out from the other disciples, recognizing Jesus as the Messiah.  And Jesus' reaction? "But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou favourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

In the Transfiguration mountaintop experience there may be a temptation that is similar to Satan's temptation in the wilderness and also similar to Peter's recognition (an opportune moment). Pastor Michelle dramatized the Peter's Transfiguration response for the children during Children's Time.  She took out a sleeping bag and suggested we all sleep in the church building because of the God moments we feel in this place.  But, she went on, that is not what God calls us, Jesus or the three disciples to do.

When Jesus came down from the mountain he no longer "appeared in his glory".  He worked in the crowd, healed and did not evoke faith through his physical appearance.  That is Jesus our Lord.

Communion felt joyous this morning and the hymn You Are Holy echoed that joy and with the mood remaining until the closing notes of Shine, Jesus, Shine.