This Thursday, Christians remember the mysterious gospel accounts of Jesus’ Transfiguration. Before his friends’ eyes, he became shining white, speaking with other ghostly saints of their religion on a mountain top. And then? They all went back home quietly…..
What is in this story for us?
Thanks to Armando Alemdar Ara under Creative Commons.
The Transfiguration was miraculous. It was a moment when Jesus, visibly, existed in the realms of both mortal action and eternal mystery.
His friend, Peter, in the manner of a true churchman, tries to say something appropriate. To hold onto and manage the wonder despite not really understanding how to integrate these amazing, un-tellable events.
Have you had similarly inexplicable, emotional, spiritual experiences? Either ‘supernatural’ - like a sense of hearing from God. Or ‘natural’ - like the birth of a child? Spend some time remembering how that felt. How did you translate that experience into ‘everyday life’? Was it possible to gain a critical understanding about it, or articulate it to somebody else?
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Read the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration in Luke Chapter 9, verse 28, Mark Chapter 9, from the beginning, and Matthew Chapter 17, from the beginning.
Sometimes, we laugh at Peter’s gusto. But his honest confusion and enthusiasm are perfectly acceptable.
Only a few remarkable individuals, like Jesus, grasp their place at the intersection between the highest heavens (that we reach for) and the soil of earth (to which our feet are bound). Most of us, like Peter, are totally perplexed about how to hold together our Divine and mortal birthrights. If, indeed, we are even aware of them!
Often, we prefer to be one thing or the other. Some of us crave the time to be ‘spiritual’ and wrestle free of earthly concerns. Perhaps we need the demands of crying infants, needy relatives, inconvenient illnesses, irritating jobs, just as much as our days of retreat. Some of us claim to be rational, guided by our senses, cynical of anything that cannot be proven. Perhaps we need to give ourselves some time to hear that existential pull towards a higher power, to really sit and feel it when it raises its head in our darkest, or most ecstatic, moments.
Human life is an inbetween. A tension. A confusion. A paradox.
We can fight that inbetween nature, if we wish. It might be better to enjoy the wonder of the both / and. The uncertainty? It might be better to accept this great gift of not needing to completely understand?
Trying to codify the Transfiguration is frustrating. But can we, nonetheless, revel in it as a joyful moment of intimacy between the kingdom of heaven and our own earthly place in the cosmos? They are separated by only a thin veil, after all…..
Here is some poetry and a song that express something of the beautiful mystery of being a brother or sister of Jesus.
“The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the-apple tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick, now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity”
Click here to listen to How Can I Keep From Singing performed by Junior Gondwana.
(The full lyrics are here).