The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
There are a lot of words used to describe and explain the process of change.
Transfiguration is the one that is usually attached to today's Gospel. But there
are also other words: transformation...modification...renovation...remodeling...
renewal...development...refreshing...repurposing...reformation...liberation...
purification...restoration...and
the mouth-filling transmogrification, which you are likely to encounter maybe
three times in your lifetime. All of them speak of changing, not the change of
simple growth and development, not the change of evolution, but the deliberate
and wholesale changing of a person, a situation, a place or a group. This will
be the theme of Lent, which begins on Wednesday. The change we are preparing for
is the change God wants to make in us. Today's readings prepare us for change,
prepare us for a new way of thinking, feeling and understanding, and prepare us
for the fact that it's going to be painful, it's going to hurt, but it is very
much worthwhile and necessary.
Look at our first reading, from the book of Exodus. A lot of change has
already been going on. God had sent Moses to lead the Jewish people out of
Egypt, where they had been held as slaves. Moses, with God's guidance, had led
the people through the desert, through times of hunger and thirst and
almost-mutiny, and done his best to teach them to depend on God and to believe
that God loved them, cared about them, and was not going to leave them to starve
or suffer. God would always give them what they needed, although not necessarily
what they wanted.
God had led them to Mount Sinai, and summoned Moses to the top of that high,
double-peaked mountain, to receive from God's own hand the laws that were to
govern the people and help them live peacefully and profitably together. Moses
had come down the mountain, with his head and his heart full of God's loving
providence and great dreams for the land of Israel, and found that the people
had lost their faith in God and in Moses, created an idol, and were worshipping
it. In great wrath and despair, he had hurled down the tablets of the Law, and
had struggled with God, asking him not to kill the people. God had given them
another punishment, but let them live; and he called Moses back to the mountain
to receive another set of tablets of the Law. And then God and Moses had spent
days in intimate discussion and planning. And now, Moses had come down the
mountain again. He was transformed. His face glowed with an unearthly, in fact
with a heavenly, light. It was so bright that it terrified the people, and so
Moses took to wearing a veil over his face so the people would not be afraid.
Point one: getting close to God in all his love, glory and justice changes
people. Noticably.
Perhaps you have seen this happen with a new convert, or with a newly
baptized, newly confirmed or newly ordained person. They're different, somehow.
You may have seen it happen with a person who somehow or the other has found out
what ministry God had planned for him or her. They have a new sense of purpose,
a new toughness to follow it up, a new certainity of what they should do and how
they should do it. You may have even noticed the change in yourself, when you've
been close to God and let God take charge of your life.
The psalm for today gives us some understanding of how this happens. All that
glory, all that love, all that awe and wonder, have the capacity to change a
person's point of view and understanding of the world around them...and of other
people, too. You can't help but be changed by it, when you get close and start
to take it all in.
Paul tries to explain, in words that we can understand. Here, he's trying to
explain to the Jews the difference in seeing God through God's Law and seeing
God in the person of Jesus the Christ. I really think Paul would have done
better to simply tell what had happened to him when he first met Jesus, on that
road to Damascus. It seems to me that the story of that meeting, and how it
changed Paul, would have made it clearer than this discussion of Law and faith.
But that's Paul...trained as a Rabbi, an expert in the Law, he had to talk about
the Law. That's Paul for you. Don't, however, overlook the fact that Paul had
been changed, right down to the soles of his bare feet in the dust. He knew. He
just didn't know how to describe it to someone who hadn't experienced it
themselves.
And so we come to the Gospel of the Transfiguration.
In Jewish tradition, going up on a mountain doesn't just bring you closer to
heaven. It makes it much more likely that you will actually meet God. It
practically prepares you (oh, that climb!) to feel small and helpless and weak
in the presence of great power, beauty and love.
Also in Jewish tradition, a person who sees God becomes sort of
luminous...like Moses. Once you have met God face-to-face, you either die, or
you carry away a reflection of him. It marks you, from then on. You can't, just
cannot, meet God and not have it make an impression on you, or leave you
unchanged. Moses, again...
And so Jesus took his three closest friends among the apostles with him, and
climbed a high mountain. Tired out and gasping, the three threw themselves down
on the ground to rest.
When they looked up, Moses and Elijah were there, talking with Jesus. Moses
and Elijah were the two in the Old Testament who had gone to meet God, face to
face. And, the Bible tells us, they were helping Jesus prepare for his exodus,
his going out of this life, his going home to heaven. Of course we
know, now, that it involved the crucifixion and death and resurrection. But,
again of course, the disciples didn't know that...yet. They did know that the
exodus of their ancestors from Egypt had led to the establishment of a part of
the Kingdom of God in Israel. Jesus had been talking about God's Kingdom. Maybe
they thought that Jesus was talking to these two saints about establishing God's
Kingdom on earth, as Israel had been established to begin that Kingdom, long
ago.
And then a cloud came over all of them. In the Bible, a cloud is one of the
ways God comes to people. Remember the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire
that led the people through the Exodus? Fire is the other way God comes...as he
would at Pentecost, in a few weeks. Of course, they didn't know that, not yet.
Remember the cloud that came over Jesus at his baptism? The same words that were
spoken from heaven then, resounded again, now. There could be no doubt that God
was here with them.
Jesus, Moses and Elijah were white and glowing. They had seen God. And now
the disciples saw Jesus as he was in his role as God the Son: whiter than white,
glistening and glowing, as he looks on his throne in heaven. Just for a moment,
they saw.
The disciples didn't seem to have looked at each other. Maybe they couldn't
see each other, with that cloud around them. If they had, they might have seen
an unearthly glow surround their companions, too. It seems likely.
And then, faster than it takes to tell it, the cloud was gone. Moses and
Elijah were gone. And Jesus was telling them...the same everyday Jesus they
knew...that it was time to go down the mountain.
On the way down, he told them what his exodus would include: suffering, death
and resurrection. They did not seem able to take it in, but Jesus left no doubt:
walking with God includes suffering, and God's Kingdom cannot be built only on
joy and laughter. It's hard work, and it costs. It costs...hunger and thirst,
pain, death, the giving up of everything you hold dear. But the worth of
it...the glory! The goodness it brings to everyone! How could it not be worth
the cost? Freedom is not free, you know. Freedom from sin, least of all.
And so they went down the mountain. As Jesus warned them, they did not talk
about what they had seen, not until after the Resurrection. If they had, who
would have believed them? It took the Resurrection, Easter Day, to give their
story credibility. After that first Easter, how could anyone doubt it?
Amen.
