Thoughts on Transfiguration

Several Episcopalians have admitted to me this week that they have trouble with the Transfiguration. For us, the Glory of God might come in the form of an empty Cross or by way of a striking piece of art or music, but Jesus glowing in white garments on a mountain, with Moses and Elijah by his side, makes many of us think of an old, overwrought Hollywood movie. For first-century Jewish Christians, though, the dazzling, white-robed figure on the mountain was clearly the Heavenly Presence of God, familiar from Jewish apocalyptic literature. Since Moses and Elijah were both believed to have been taken straight up to heaven by God, by-passing death, their presence here with Jesus confirms his appearance as a heavenly vision, as a direct experience of God. 

Rather than worry about what is for us unfamiliar symbolism, I am drawn to what is indeed all too familiar for me in this passage: Peter's naive suggestion that they build three "dwellings" on the mountain, that they erect three tents, like the tent that carried the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, during the ancient Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness. Confronted with the Holy One, Peter does what we all do--he tries to put the Holy in a box, to confine and tame it and make it fit his understanding. Like Peter, I want to hold onto what I love. I want to know God fully, to hold God's image within my mind and heart, to understand God, even to attempt to possess God. It is difficult to have a relationship with a God who constantly eludes my grasp. I can hold the faces of my friends within my memory; I can describe my human relationships to others; I can share my own self-images in words that make me known. It is disconcerting to love and to worship One whom we cannot see, cannot touch, cannot even fully imagine. How good it feels to build a tent for God, to put God in a proper holy place where we feel that we have some control over all of that Power, or to create a nice, safe haven for our love. Our liturgy and our Scriptures, even our most carefully-wrought theology, can all become lovingly-built dwellings for God. The problem is, of course, that God will not fit in the spiritual dwellings that we create and will eventually seep out of the walls that we have built, silently surrounding us like the cloud surrounded the disciples on the mountain, ordering us to come outside of the walls as well. The voice of the Living God, who calls us "beloved," must be more than the echo of our own voices, coming from the pieces of God that we have managed to box away.

There is a village high in the Swiss Alps called Derborence. At first glance, the pastoral tranquility of the scene is cozy and heart-warming. Goats butt against wooden fences and cowbells ring out from the alpine slopes. Chalets, worn down by wind, sun, and snow, doze on the hillside. In the village cafe, a comfortable odor of hot chocolate and melted Gruyere escapes from the window, along with the homey sound of dishes being placed on shelves. In the serenity of this village, surrounded by the majestic glory of beautiful mountains, I could imagine snuggling up in a comfortable dwelling with my God, a Bible in one hand and a Prayer Book in another, quite pleased with the peace of my soul. That is, of course, until one looks a bit farther out into the distance. Right outside the village, sharp-sided boulders as big as palaces have been thrown down one on top of the other, as far as the eye can see. Pine trees are enmeshed in the boulders and grow crookedly out of the rock, bent every which way like toothpicks thrown into clay. All the way up the mountain, towering overhead, rocks cast sinister shadows on the slopes beneath them, as one looks brokenness straight in the face. As locals and tourists all know, the top of the mountain suddenly fell in one tragic day in the eighteenth century, crushing whole villages in its wake, and the boulders stand today as a memorial to the terrifying and shifting powers of change in the midst of bucolic village life. 

In the icon of the Transfiguration described by Rowan Williams in The Dwelling of the Light, we see Jesus in his bright white robes, standing with Moses and Elijah on either side, but Peter, James, and John are not standing with them. They are instead lying sprawled on their backs quite a ways down the mountain. Like the boulders at Derborence, the disciples look as if they have been physically thrown down from the higher slopes. Peter is covering his face; John crouches on his knees; and James is sliding down the hillside on his face. Of course, the disciples were brought up the mountain in the first place in order to see the power of God plainly manifested in their Teacher, so that when he was later crucified, they would have hope, so that in the dark days to come, they would remember the blinding and miraculous power of God. Freed from the walls with which we enclose it, God's Light, God's Energy, does knock us off of our wobbly feet and shakes our carefully laid foundations like the mountains shook the village of Derborence. Yet God's free and loving whispers also lift us back up again with the strength and wholeness to go on through whatever life brings to us.


Holy God, I have spent my life hastily building dwellings for you. I want to know where to find you, yet I don't want you roaming dangerously free. I don't want to be sent sprawling down the mountain, dignity and control lost forever. Lord, send me the courage to stand unprotected on the mountain, basking in the Light of Grace, hands free of hammer and nails. Amen.