Sermon
– Transfiguration Sunday – year b
“both
sides now”
mark
9:2-9
february 15, 2015
Let us pray: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to
you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
I read a story about a passenger on an airplane.
The plane landed for a 45 minute stopover and the pilot invited
passengers to use the time to get out and stretch their legs. As this passenger rose to disembark, he
noticed a guide dog sitting quietly at his blind master’s feet. Obviously, the man was a regular on this
flight, because the pilot came out and spoke to the man by name, saying, “Keith, do you want to stretch your
legs?” “No, thanks, I’m fine”, he
replied. “But my dog might like
to.” Now, imagine the scene. The pilot, wearing his uniform and dark
glasses, emerges from the plane into a lobby filled with passengers, with the
blind man’s guide dog in tow. As the
story goes, people scattered in panic.
Not only were they trying to switch flights, they were trying to switch
airlines!
Living in these times can make us feel like those airplane
passengers. We arrived at this point in
our lives with one set of expectations, values, and traditions.
But, while the pilot has brought us this far, we may wonder if we want
to get back on the plane. All our
assumptions have been challenged. We
wonder if we can trust that this same airplane can get us to where we need to
go. It’s kind of like faith. Is the faith that has carried us along this
far have a relevance for us today, does it connect with our rapidly changing
world?
Can a 2,000 year old story still get us to where we need to go?
At first glance, it would seem that the story of the transfiguration of
Jesus has little to say to our changing world.
Jesus appears on a mountain before three of his disciples. Light radiates from him, a brightness that
nothing on earth can match. The great
prophet, Elijah and the great Hebrew leader,
Moses, suddenly appear. A cloud
appears and god speaks: “This is my
beloved son. Listen to him!” How might this story, we call the transfiguration
of Christ, that has the disciples glimpse the divine in their encounter with
Jesus on the mountain, speak to us today.
Some of us who are older will remember Joni Mitchell’s song that seemed
to catch the essence of the 1960’s visionary expectation and ironic cynicism
cycling into disillusion and hope, all at the same time.
Recall these lyrics: Rows and
flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons
everywhere. I’ve looked at clouds that
way....but now they only block the sun.
They rain and they snow on everyone....I’ve looked at clouds from both
sides now.” This is a time of year when
as we leave the liturgical season of epiphany, in the afterglow of Christmas,
we look ahead to the season of lent, with its tradition of spiritual struggle,
of contemplation, penitence, confession before Easter’s dawn. “Both sides now.”
And as the season of lent moves along the days will lengthen, the
temperature will begin to rise, springtime will draw closer and closer, - a
time of “both sides now” – dark and light,
snow and melting, penitential and hope filled. Perhaps this strange, other-worldly, story
of Jesus’ transfiguration does have a message for us. I would suggest that it invites us to see
the world differently. Some ponder how the church can move into the
future, pointing out that people in a post-modern world have little interest in
a god who can only provide a future kingdom.
They long, rather, for a God who can be known in the here and now. That brings us back to transfiguration, to
“both sides now,” to the ancient and never-ending story of how earth and heaven
intersect.
“Both sides now” are essential to spiritual growth.
the Lenten times through which my life and yours have passed and will
inevitably pass again are easier to negotiate if we have taken the time to open
ourselves to the glory, the transcendence, of the mountain top, to cultivate a
sense of the presence of God, to experience the source of our strength, God’s
radiant grace in close proximity. What
is transfiguration? It is where cloud
and light collide, until we see the here and now in a different way. It is where sacred and secular bump against
one another, until each permeates the other.
It is where life in the valley meets life on the peak.
Transfiguration, ultimately, is cross and resurrection; Good Friday and
Easter; the glory of God found in mountaintop experiences shining even in the
darkest valleys of life; glimpses of
glory to see us through the scenes of suffering. Perhaps this experience of the transfiguration
sustained and nurtured Peter, James, and John during the difficult days ahead
until the reality of Christ’s resurrection lifted them to new heights. Perhaps such transfiguration experiences
in your own life might do the same.
A young man dies in hospital after a long battle with cancer; close
members of his family have spent days at his bedside keeping vigil.
The weather has been dull and cloud covered for days, sunshine is not
expected for some time to come.
But just then, a few short moments after the nurse had left confirming
what they already knew, that he had died, a break in the clouds, a few bright
rays of sunshine come bursting through the window filling it with a wondrous
glow. His aunt, a member of the church
I served at the time, told me she knew, she knew at that moment she had
experienced the divine, the presence of God, and in the midst of intense grief
she found a joy and a sure hope that would never let her go.
Another death, an older person, again dies after a long illness. A friend of that person is owner of an
ancient cactus – it had bloomed for many years at Christmas time, but this
particular year, it did not. It was beyond
its time of blooming. But the day
after his passing, the friend phones the spouse of the one who had died and
exclaims – “my cactus is blooming”.
Co-incidences. I suppose. Maybe.
But, I think that is how God works sometimes, some call it serendipity;
it’s all in the timing of the co-incidence.
glimpses of the divine.
Transfiguration moments that buoy us up, that uplift us, strengthen and
encourage and even delight us.
A favourite writer of mine, Frederick Buechner, wrote of transfiguration
this way: “even with us something like
that happens once in a while.
the face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas
in the garden, of even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or
standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in....every once and so
often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human
face that it’s almost beyond bearing.”
I had a transfiguration moment at
the congregational gathering yesterday. The person leading the event was
speaking. Behind him was a screen with a
representation of Jesus projected onto it.
A very young child, Adeline, began to walk toward the screen, hesitantly
at first, then with growing confidence she walked right up to it and reached up
her hand toward Jesus smiling down on her.
In light of the day’s theme, of wanting to discern God’s will for us
going forward, in trusting that God has good intentions for our future as a
congregation; in our wanting to journey with God in our development plans, this
to me was a significant moment, a transfiguration moment, a God moment in which
one could catch a glimpse of the divine in the actions of a little girl.
What are the times in your life when sacred and secular bump together,
when you see the world from “both sides now?”
Those “God-moments,” can we describe them that way to others? It’s not easy. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to
tell anyone what they had seen.
Why might we keep silent? Why do
we? Perhaps we feel our words can’t
express such an experience. “I have
seen things,” Aquinas wrote, “that make all my writings seem like straw.” Perhaps we fear rejection: “no one will
believe me....what would they think if I told them that for an instant, in
worship, in a circle of prayer, sitting in traffic or at a concert, talking
with a friend, for just a simple fleeting moment, I felt a sense of that peace
for which I long, of the cloud of God’s presence enveloping me, saturating the
world?” Can you tell stories of your
‘mountain top experiences.? The
disciples told no one. But later, they
could, after the resurrection, when that extraordinary experience of their
lives inspired them to a different understanding of the mountain top.
It was as if they read the story
backwards, and the resurrection revealed what transfiguration was about: glimpsing the glory of Christ, the power of God’s
love.
Then the disciples could move beyond fear, and the desire to build
shrines. Transfiguration recognizes the spiritual power of ‘both sides
now.’
It asks us to turn, firmly, even if reluctantly, from epiphany’s light
to Lent’s cloudy shadows, for if we want to experience the power of Christ in
the radiant, transforming power of the light, we need also to be open to the
presence of God’s love in the shadows.
As we enter Lent’s darkness, let us hold on to that vision of the
light. Let us sustain ourselves with
songs and praise and prayer, with worship, discipline and self-giving, knowing God
goes with us down from the mountain even into the darkest valleys.
The transfiguration isn’t just some sort of mystical experience for the
disciples that we inherited. It was for
the disciples, but it is also for us and for anybody who is in danger of losing
their way. It’s a landmark when the
horizon is spinning around you, even when it seems as if we are in a plane with
a pilot who can’t see where she is going.
Thanks be to God for transfiguration in our own lives, for the abiding
strength and endless joy it offers us, emboldening us for living and serving in
Christ-like ways. Amen.
Major
Resources:
“The
Sermon – An Approach” by The Rev. Dr Lillian Perigoe in Preaching – Word
& Witness, Vol. 03:2
(Year
B), pp. 67-68. Editor: Paul Scott
Wilson. Liturgical Publications
Inc. 2003.
“The
Sermon – An Approach” by Christine Erskine Boileau in Preaching – Word And
Witness, Vol. 00:2
(Year
B), pp. 71-72. Editors: Paul Scott Wilson and John M. Rottman.
Liturgical Publications 2000.
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