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Sunday Reflection: The Catalyst of Transfiguration
Second Sunday of Lent
March 8 2020
Gn 12:1-4a
The LORD said to Abram:
“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk
and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.
“I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
and curse those who curse you.
All the communities of the earth
shall find blessing in you.”
Abram went as the LORD directed him.
2 Tm 1:8b-10
Beloved:
Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.
He saved us and called us to a holy life,
not according to our works
but according to his own design
and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but now made manifest
through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus,
who destroyed death and brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel.
Mt 17:1-9
Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with him.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Lord, it is good that we are here.
If you wish, I will make three tents here,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, behold,
a bright cloud cast a shadow over them,
then from the cloud came a voice that said,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him.”
When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate
and were very much afraid.
But Jesus came and touched them, saying,
“Rise, and do not be afraid.”
And when the disciples raised their eyes,
they saw no one else but Jesus alone.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
Jesus charged them,
“Do not tell the vision to anyone
until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
As the stream of life flows round me I am reflecting on this unique moment Jeshua experienced, with his three witnesses, on a hill-top in Galilee. It quickly becomes obvious that no simple rejoicing with Peter, that “it is good for us to be here; let's make it permanent” will be adequate for today. In this year of grace 2020, this eleventh hour when our world is chilled by the revelation of a most prestigious school riddled with a network of child sex abuse and cover up, what does transfiguration mean? How can we have it as a realistic hope that humankind is to be transfigured? What are the chances of us advancing from here to there, from this darkness to that light?
For a while I thought we should call it an experience of transformation, but then the account as we have it is not about Jeshua being transformed into something other than he was. Neither is any one of us, when we are anointed by the grace of his Spirit, actually transformed into something else. Rather in Jeshua the shining was the hidden reality made visible for a moment. His face, his real physical face, and the clothes that are our necessary covering since we lost our fur, all shone like the sun. The 'light' coming from within transfigured the appearance of the man.
This was not just an experience that he shared with a few special friends. It was a demonstration staged for their education. Its meaning is that the divine within the human is destined to shine forth - in every one of us. The details of the account tell us this. It is Jeshua in the flesh, the real man, whose face shines with divine radiance from within. He remains in his human condition, dressed the same as any man his age in Galilee, and it is these clothes - the "clothes that make the man" as an old proverb had it - that shine with divine glory. All that is human about us is the site of Yahweh's glory.
Under the theory of evolution we are slowly reformulating our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it. We are talking about intelligent life leading the whole creation towards its fullness. We see ourselves working with God in willing partnership. In saying that every human thing about us is the site of the divine, we include our human drives, our curiosity, our enterprise, and our experience of setback and failure. Especially, I think, that we are doers. Almost compulsively we have to make our mark on our world, from furnishing the house to carving a home out of the forest or carving up the landscape because we can - and flying to the moon. Often our mark ends up as an ugly and unfortunate scar upon the earth. Ideally it would be, and often is, not just an embellishment but a wonderful contribution towards the transfiguration of all things in the Christos, the One anointed with divinity.
Moses and Elijah were there with him, talking about the path to transfiguration. Moses the lawman, the doer, who had led the people in a daring escape, trekking across a boggy swamp blindly in the dark, the thunder of horses and chariots theatening through the stillness of the night. Flight or fight, they say - or keep stumbling on in trust that the One who had brought them safe thus far would not desert them now.
Moses knew about risk and trust, and the flood of gratitude that fills the heart after a 'miraculous' escape. Most of all he knew the transfiguration that shows we are like God, for he too had an experience on a mountain top.
But Moses is himself only a messenger. God's promises were made to Abraham, and Moses recognised that his role was to take part in the achievement of what the Lord had promised. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” the voice from the burning bush had proclaimed, and every hope in Israel and in Christianity hinges on this that the Lord Creator is committed to bringing this cosmos to completion. In ancient times this was earth-shattering for Abraham, and he imagined it would be enough to have his own land to call home. The first reading today [see above] anchors the transfiguration promise to that historical foundation.
On the other side is Elijah the Seer, the Troubler of Israel who dared to speak about the Spirit perceived in moments of mystic awareness, who dared to speak the truth to power, and who risked his all to challenge the prophets of foreign cults on Mt Carmel, one man's faith against close on a thousand prophets of Baal and Asherah, with the people watching on! (1Kg 18:17-40)
Jeshua could identify with that as he stood before the Sanhedrin assembled illegally in the dark of night for a show-trial to find him guilty.
Luke adds that they talked together 'about his exodus which was going to be fulfilled in Jerusalem' (Lk 9:31). What else would those three find to talk about? The trial that challenges your integrity, your readiness to stand for the truth; your life-long surrender to the good in respecting laws and customs and ancient traditions; the hope-filled trust that will risk everything to find even in defeat the victory of truth. All this was in the mind of Jeshua as he said to Pilate: I stand here in witness to the truth. That's all.
'To bear witness'. Elijah and all those in the great prophetic tradition are witnesses who speak the truth. In the second reading we have Paul writing that "he saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works
but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us..., now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus..."
'To bear witness'. I was struck by finding this in The Sunday Age article about the new TV series Stateless, which tells the story of what happened to Cornelia Rau when she got caught up in Australia's anti-refugee regime. Her sister, Chris Rau, writes:
One phrase all the experts I have talked to, who specialise in law, medicine and human rights, used was this: it was necessary for all of us to "bear witness".
There are atrocities being committed in our names. We are not stupid as a society. So when we elect governments, we must – by our indifference – be complicit in the bullying and ill-treatment of others...
'To bear witness': when the bureaucrats and government refused to listen to reason, all they could do was speak out - and speak they must.
Here is the explosive energy of good confronting evil, of love transfiguring our blind pride into respect and care, of the Glory of God shining in the witness of those who take a stand and of people who support them speaking out.
In this way, and by no other, are our times being transfigured.
How does this work? First, it is not by a secret power some possess. It is all God's work, God's doing. The ingredients are all set in place: divine goodness inserted into the mass of muddy humanity in the person of Jeshua, the Spirit continuously seeping from him to reach into the shadowy darkness, the power of divine love that transfigures base metal to shine with golden light.
But because it takes a bit of hope and vision there are many who don't see it, or at most grant grudging skeptical acknowledgement of society's slow crawl of progress through eons of time.
When these stories about Jeshua were first told, the early communities were under pressure from all sides. People treated them as a foolish minority, but their transformed thinking [metanoia] had been confirmed by the experience of the Spirit in their lives. So they stood up and spoke the truth when they were ridiculed and actively opposed by the men of reason, the cynics, the sceptics and the pragmatic rulers who didn't give a fig for truth as long as they held power.
But the truth undermines that fake power, the truth of the dignity of each person, the rights of each and all, the freedom to choose in good conscience, the freedom to be - the truth that all the world is good and all the good is destined for glory by the Creator God who is good. These truths through our witness are seeping into the awareness of humankind and displacing the lies of darkness, by the power of the Spirit of Love.
We are the catalyst for the Light to overcome the Dark, for Good to win out over Evil, for Love without envy or jealously or lust or anger or hate to be what moves and directs us in our relationships.
*****