Most hikers dread the uphill climbs, but I dread the downhill slides. I don’t mind struggling up a mountain, testing the strength of my legs against the grade, even when the climb is difficult, and I have to stop every few steps to catch my breath. I might ache and pant, but I feel in control of my movements and in charge of my ascent. Going back down the slopes, though, especially steep ones, scares me to death. My children, whose Swiss blood seems to allow them to climb like mountain goats, can testify to my annoying hesitation. “Somebody’s going to have to hold my hand!” I call out in a panicky voice, as soon as the gravel or mud starts to slide around under my feet. I grasp for trees, even for thorn bushes, for anything to keep me upright, as soon as I feel like I might start slipping. I’ve even been known to sit down, bottom in the dirt, dignity abandoned, and scoot my way down a steep slope like a baby learning to crawl.
So you can imagine my discomfort at the classic icon depicting Jesus’ Transfiguration. The icon shows Jesus standing glorious and powerful in his bright white robes, with Moses and Elijah on either side—but James, Peter, and John are not standing with them on the heights. Oh, no—they are instead lying sprawled out on the ground quite a way back down the mountain. They look as if they have been physically thrown down from the higher slopes. Peter is covering his face; John crouches on his knees, holding up a hand as if to shield himself; and James is sliding down the slope on his back, feet in the air.[1] The Glory of God, revealed in splendor on the mountaintop, has driven the dazed disciples from their perch and sent them sliding back down the slope, dignity and control clearly abandoned.
What is it about the Transfiguration that robs us of our balance and destroys our sense of control? If it is just a sign that Jesus is the Son of God, shouldn’t we just nod and keep going?
First of all, our Gospel lesson makes clear that the Transfiguration brings us close to nothing less than the Glory of Almighty God, that same Glory that Moses was not allowed to see, for fear that he could not see it and live. Just as we 21st century Christians recognize God’s presence in the Cross or in the figure of an angel, Mark and the disciples knew, as good first-century Jews, that a figure clothed in dazzling white garments is the personification of God’s Glory, the bright, shining, powerful manifestation of God’s presence that goes before Him into the world. Since the disciples also knew that, according to tradition, Moses and Elijah did not die but were instead both taken straight up to heaven by God, they knew that the appearance of these two men with Jesus on the mountain confirmed that they were witnessing a vision of heaven itself, a vision as powerful and glorious and otherworldly as the flaming chariot and horsemen in today’s Old Testament lesson. In the Transfiguration, the rabbi Jesus became the Glory of God, and for a brief moment, heaven and earth were one. No wonder the disciples were bowled over.
But why should we be bowled over today? We don’t seem to be watching for God’s Glory much in the world these days. I’m not sure that we even feel strong enough to climb up the mountain in the first place. I recently read a very bleak version of the Lord’s Prayer, written by a pastor in war-torn Syria, that laments our sinful state and the instability of our lives, and ends with a self-accusing sigh: “Don’t abandon us, God. We will perhaps then be able to see the shadow of your kingdom, of your power and of your glory. Amen.”[2] The Shadow of God’s Glory?—that seems like a vague dimness compared to the shining figure or the flaming chariot that we read about today. It was not a shadow that surrounded Jesus on the mountain; it was light itself pouring through him, the light that chases away all shadows. Do our sins and our shortcomings really wall us off from that transforming Light?
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins doesn’t seem to think so: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God./ It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;” he writes. Despite the brokenness of the world around us—despite greed and toil, pollution and corruption, he continues, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things,” because “the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” The world is irradiated with a divine Glory that seeps out in transfigured moments … In an ocean sunset or in the marvelous patterns of flower petals, but also in a sunrise through the smog or in patterns of blood on snow. It shines in the tiny fingers of a newborn baby but also in the peace of death.
Indeed, according to Eastern Orthodox Christians, the light that poured through Jesus at the Transfiguration still pours into us, into all creation, now. They describe God’s Glory as a kind of Energy, a kind of Light that constantly streams forth from God’s hidden Essence, “as a limitless sea, flowing forth … from the unique Sun.”[3] This Light is a gift of the Spirit. It is found everywhere but can only be seen through matter, transforming even you and me into spiritual light. Orthodox Christians talk about this process as “deification,” the process of becoming God. Such language might make us uncomfortable. “Becoming God” is just for Jesus, we think. But for Orthodox theologians like Gregory Palamas, we too can “be illumined by the purest of lights, by becoming a son of that day which no darkness can dim… And once it has illumined us, [that sun] no longer hides itself in the West, but envelops all things with its powerful light … it transforms those who participate in this light into other suns.”[4] This deification, this transfiguration, is not something that we earn for ourselves by our good deeds, but it is merely something that we open ourselves up to, something that we allow to happen to us by opening up to God in prayer. Rowan Williams describes God’s Energy entering into us like the music that pours into a musician while they are performing. In making music, musicians are carried on the tide of an energy, by a great current of music that is becoming present and immediate in their actions.[5] When God’s energy fills us, it doesn’t change who we are, but it fills us with an energy that allows what we truly are to shine forth—beloved children of a loving God.
Indeed, according to Eastern Orthodox Christians, the light that poured through Jesus at the Transfiguration still pours into us, into all creation, now. They describe God’s Glory as a kind of Energy, a kind of Light that constantly streams forth from God’s hidden Essence, “as a limitless sea, flowing forth … from the unique Sun.”[3] This Light is a gift of the Spirit. It is found everywhere but can only be seen through matter, transforming even you and me into spiritual light. Orthodox Christians talk about this process as “deification,” the process of becoming God. Such language might make us uncomfortable. “Becoming God” is just for Jesus, we think. But for Orthodox theologians like Gregory Palamas, we too can “be illumined by the purest of lights, by becoming a son of that day which no darkness can dim… And once it has illumined us, [that sun] no longer hides itself in the West, but envelops all things with its powerful light … it transforms those who participate in this light into other suns.”[4] This deification, this transfiguration, is not something that we earn for ourselves by our good deeds, but it is merely something that we open ourselves up to, something that we allow to happen to us by opening up to God in prayer. Rowan Williams describes God’s Energy entering into us like the music that pours into a musician while they are performing. In making music, musicians are carried on the tide of an energy, by a great current of music that is becoming present and immediate in their actions.[5] When God’s energy fills us, it doesn’t change who we are, but it fills us with an energy that allows what we truly are to shine forth—beloved children of a loving God.
The trouble with seeing the world lit up by the Energy of God is that it means that we are not the ones in control of the world. As Williams says, it means that “the boundaries are unsettled… they are always vulnerable to God’s action … In relation to God, there is no finally closed door in creation, and the environment becomes charged with possibilities we don’t know about.”[6] For Jesus and the disciples, those possibilities include crucifixion and death. They mean lives uprooted, beliefs overturned. They mean sliding backwards down the mountain, arms held up in surrender. Transfiguration does indeed rob us of our balance and destroy our sense of control.
I was watching the contractors work on our organ chamber this week. They first took every precaution necessary to shore up the floor, according to minute physics calculations. Then they carefully framed the walls out of long, unwieldy pieces of wood, nailed them at precise right angles. Then they put up the big boards that will enclose the organ pipes, keeping the powerful sound from blowing us away. I thought to myself, “Ha, we are building booths on the Mountain! We are carefully keeping the Energy contained! God forbid that a powerful sound would fill our little church so completely that we couldn’t think straight, that our hearts would beat strange new rhythms, that we would no longer feel in control.” Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe in organ chambers, and I love careful way that we have planned our new one, and this analogy only goes so far. But in thinking about our reactions to being blown over by a roaring, powerful music that we can’t control, perhaps we can identify with those disciples sliding down the mountain on their backsides. Perhaps we can welcome God’s painfully powerful Energy in us, in our world, and in our parish, even when it opens doors that we would prefer to close and breaks down walls that we would prefer to build. Perhaps we can put down our hammers and nails and open our eyes and even ourselves, not just to change, but to divine transfiguration.
Hey, Anne! Good stuff. May we be blown away indeed.
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