Transfiguration on the Plains

 

On the kind of gray, frozen days we’ve had lately—days filled with chores and worries—I tend to drive around and grumble at the glory of the mountains around me. I look at their majestic beauty, so near and yet so far, and I long to touch the light shining on their snowy peaks. My heart cries out within me: “What good is it to live so close to such grandeur when I can’t ever get up there!?” On these cold winter days, I get tired of trudging around in the ordinary world of our now ash-filled plain. “If I could only get up there in that light, then my soul could really soar,” I dream. On Transfiguration Sunday, we hear so many sermons on “mountaintop experiences,” don’t we? We hear about how we long for these highs. We hear about how they never last. What we often forget to mention is what comes before our Transfiguration readings. Transfiguration can also speak to us here where we are right now, trapped in the tedious plains of everyday life.

Yes, today we read about Moses being filled with the all-powerful light of God’s Glory on Mt. Sinai. We don’t hear, though, that when Moses goes up the mountain and comes back down glowing, he’s returning to a people who have abandoned the God who brought them out of Egypt. He’s approaching a people who are happily worshiping a Golden Calf in God’s place. Moses is returning to the grim plains, where disobedience, impatience, and human orneriness prevail.

And yes, in our second reading, we have Paul’s beautiful references to the light of God’s Glory. What we don’t know, is that when Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth about Glory, he is writing in response to the false claims of rival apostles who are leading God’s people astray. These “super-apostles” are misusing their spiritual power, throwing around their own authority, and convincing Christians that God’s grace is not enough.[1] As he writes these verses, Paul’s feet are set firmly on the disappointing plains, where authoritarian power reigns, even in the churches.

And yes, in our Gospel reading, Peter, James, and John see Jesus transfigured in glorious Light on the mountain. What we don’t hear is that, right before our passage, Jesus has just told the disciples that he’s going to face suffering and death. They are now turning toward Jerusalem, where Jesus will be crucified. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me,” Jesus warns them all. The Glory on the mountain is only a brief respite, a short moment of encouragement, in the disciples’ long path through the plains of suffering and persecution.

          Here on our own world’s troubled plains, I find the most encouragement in Paul’s words today. Today’s passage in 2 Corinthians is about hope: the hope that the resurrected and glorified Jesus offers us. Paul says here that hope comes to us when we act with “boldness.” The ancient Greek word that we translate as boldness actually has to do with free and open truth-speaking. It’s used in the Greek Old Testament to refer to the people of Israel walking into the truth of their freedom with heads held high after the Exodus. It also refers to personified Lady Wisdom, she who cries out God’s truth in the public square.[2] Filled with the Light of Christ, Paul tells us, we no longer need to hide behind any kind of authoritarian veil. Today, we might say that, in Christ, there is no reason to ban books from our school libraries; there is no reason to shun or shame of any of God’s light-filled children; there is no reason to live by cunning, worldly wealth, power-mongering, or manipulation. Because of God’s grace, we no longer need a veil to hide who we are. We no longer need to live in fear of God or of the powers and principalities of this world. Filled with the Spirit, we are set free. We are set free to see God’s Glory in one another and to reflect God’s glory for one another. Our hope comes from the reflection of God’s Light that shines from one face to another, here on the plains.

          I saw an interview last night with the anthropologist Jane Goodall. She was talking about her 2021 book, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times. The interviewer kept trying to get the 87-year-old scientist to pronounce doom and gloom over the earth, to prophesy against humanity for the growing ecological disaster we’ve created. But Goodall refused to be brought down. She kept pointing to her hopeful experiences with young people and with grass-roots communities in Africa. She kept telling stories in which people were empowered to learn and speak the truth, to take small steps together to bring about change in their communities. Despite our suffering Creation, Goodall and the young people she organizes walk boldly into the future that Paul describes. In Paul’s words, one could say that they “have renounced the shameful things that one hides; [they] refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth [they] commend [themselves] to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.” In caring for all of Creation, they reflect and spread the light of God’s Glory from unveiled face to unveiled face.

          Today, the plains of this world seem especially fraught and barren after the invasion of Ukraine. At first, I wondered how I could preach the good news of the Transfiguration in the midst of war. Faithful Facebook friends came through for me, though, when they posted a poem by W.H. Auden, with a commentary by Parker Palmer.[3] The poem, called “September 1, 1939” was written in response to Germany’s invasion of Poland, at the start of World War II. Auden writes of sitting in a dimly-lit bar, “Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire /Of a low dishonest decade.” He goes on to bemoan a world that seems filled with the same problems we see in our world today: waves of anger and fear; evil repaid with more evil; dangerous dictators; Imperialism; people shouting “militant trash;” our lack of understanding and love for one another; the busyness and overwork that crush our souls. In response, Auden confesses his need to speak truth with the boldness that Paul asks of us: “All I have is a voice,” Auden writes, “to undo the folded lie.” And what is the truth that we must speak, instead? The truth is that “no one exists alone…. We must love one another or die.”

          And there is more. Auden concludes his poem:

          “Defenceless under the night/ Our world in stupor lies;/ Yet, dotted everywhere,/ Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just/ Exchange their messages: / May I, composed like them / Of Eros and of dust,/ Beleaguered by the same/ Negation and despair,/ Show an affirming flame.” Here, too, it is in our truth-speaking that we are transfigured. It is in standing up for love, in standing up with unveiled faces, that we reflect the divine Glory that is our hope.

          The mountains are glorious, but here on the ashy, warring plains, there is also Light, if only we boldly say “no” to the shadows around us. The mercy and love of God, through Jesus Christ, can flicker as an “affirming flame” among us, in us, and through us, Christ’s Body.

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[1] Lois Malcolm, “Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2. Found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/transfiguration-of-our-lord-3/commentary-on-2-corinthians-312-42-5.

[2] Ibid.

[3] W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939.” Found at https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939.