Meditation on Transfiguration

II Kings 2:1-12
Mark 9:2-10

          There are two religious poles we regularly navigate between: the ordinary and the extraordinary.  The women of Open Table will have a chance to visit the ordinary pole this Saturday in a half-day retreat focusing on experiencing God in the everydayness of life.  Words of songwriter Carrie Newcomer come to mind when I think of ordinary sacredness.  She sings:

               

                Holy is the dish and drain

                The soap and sink, the cup and plate

                Warm wool socks, and cold white tile

                Showerheads and good dry towels

                . . . 

                Holy is the place I stand

                to give whatever small good I can. 

                The empty page, the open book,

                Redemption everywhere I look. . . .  (from Holy as a Day is Spent)

          Ah, redemption—God’s gracious and ongoing enterprise—everywhere I look!  In warm wool sock and frying eggs? I first experienced God in the ordinary as a child on a swing set pointing toes beyond green treetops toward the clouds as the summer air shimmered.  In my backyard sanctuary, I would sing and sing, pumping my swing higher and higher. I’d sing “Oh what a beautiful morning” from the musical Oklahoma because my heart was so full of—of what I didn’t know—of some limitless joy for the shade tree and the blue sky and the smell of freshly cut grass—of everyday holiness.

          But there is the other religious pole: the extraordinary.  It is, by definition, rarer.  Some special events and times and places and people are lightning rods of God’s grace. They seem to conduct the sacred right to us in especially intense ways.  I hope that—when you enter this space or sit amongst these friends or hear holy words or sing and sing—it is easier for you to point your soul toward the treetops, to put aside all that distracts you from God’s beauty and loving kindness.  I hope it is easier in this setting to tune your ear to some sacred whisper that you need to hear in the core of your being, that speaks directly and declares YOU to be God’s beloved child.  We declare this day and hour and place and people to be holy.  But even holiness of the extraordinary kind is not always perceived, and what is a holy moment for you might not be for me.

          Even before the Transfiguration, Jesus was himself a lightning rod for the Holy—just as, for the Jews, the Temple in Jerusalem had been the epicenter of God’s presence on earth.  In fact, the Gospel of Mark compares the two, presenting Jesus as the new Temple, a new site of God’s holiness.  Little wonder this comparison developed, since the Temple was destroyed in the year 70 CE, about the same time Jesus’ followers started writing down the oral stories circulating about his luminous life.  After the foundation of their religious life, the Temple, was demolished, Jesus’s followers claimed he was a replacement for the Temple—and a fulfillment of Jewish scriptures.  So when stories of Jesus became crafted into the literary work we now call the Gospel of Mark, details were carefully chosen to make this very point, to intertwine the story of Jesus with the stories of the Hebrew holy scriptures.  As John Shelby Spong writes, “Stories about events in the lives of Jewish heroes like Moses and Elijah . . .  show up [in Mark’s gospel] vaguely disguised as stories about Jesus.” (Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World).  In writing the story of the Transfiguration, for instance, Jews who’d been transformed by the life and ministry of Jesus—and who were beginning, after a couple of generations, to distinguish themselves from others Jews who were not Jesus followers—cast Jesus as the successor to Moses and Elijah. 

          The Transfiguration Story and other stories in Mark developed to show that Jesus was connected to the Jewish tradition that included Elijah and Moses.  In Mark 9 both Elijah and Moses essentially pass the mantle on to Jesus, and the voice of God approves.  Jesus is part of this religious trajectory, and the Jews following Jesus and developing an increasingly distinctive form of Judaism after the destruction of Jerusalem were saying they thought of Jesus as the prophesied Messiah who was continuous with their traditions but who ushered in a new era of hope and a new path toward God.  That is how they had experienced him: an extraordinary religious figure whose very self (like sacred scripture, like the holy Temple) revealed God.  Their encounters with Jesus were extraordinary, unparalleled, mountaintop experiences that changed THEM.

          But Jesus was not only the site of the extraordinary; he was also the image of the ordinary.  The Jesus Story of Incarnation tells us that the Sacred One was born in a manger and lived among the poor and died on the ignoble cross—even though the Spirit of God was in him in a special way.  Christian teachings interpret this story to mean that Jesus is, for Christians, the mediator between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between earth and heaven.  Jesus is, in fact, the way Christians navigate back and forth between the poles of transcendence and immanence, between the God “out there” who is totally Other and unknowable and beyond us,  and the God “in here” who dwells within us and walks with us and with whom we have a loving relationship.

          What you and I may need to guard against is staying too long at one pole or the other.  If we steer too far toward the religion of the ordinary, we create God in our own image and presume to be buddies with the Source of All and pretend to know the unknowable and fool ourselves into thinking we’re God.  However, if we steer too far toward the religious pole of extraordinariness, we keep God so very far away that the sacred has little effect upon us, or we breathe in such a rarefied atmosphere that our spirituality prevents us from putting our faith into practice and doing God’s work in the real world and we never come down that mountain to heal and love and serve.

          Let us look to Jesus. Jesus moves us from pole to pole.  As he did with the disciples of old, Jesus walks us up the mountain to rare and lofty moments of transfiguration, and then he guides us back down again to real life.  And God can be experienced in all of that.   Thanks be to God!

Instructions for Guided Prayer

          We’re now going to try to practice this spiritual movement up the Mount of Transfiguration.  Spiritual mountain climbing sounds difficult, even dangerous. But it really requires discipline, which is an effort of a different sort.  As Henri Nouwen said, “In the spiritual life, the word 'discipline' means 'the effort to create some space in which God can act'. Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied… to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on."   We’re setting aside some time right now to make space.  Get comfortable.  Get up and move around quietly if you wish to let your body mimic the movement of images we’ll use within this prayer.  We’re going to figuratively and prayerfully climb a mountain to gain a more-than-ordinary perspective with this guided meditation.

1.    Image what little you can see of your world from the “ground level” of your immediate time, location, and experience.  Call to mind recent joys.  Hold onto one of those images with a feeling of delight. . . .  Call to mind immediate needs that are in the forefront of your daily vision; people and situations close to you in terms of relationship or physical proximity.  Hold onto one or more these images with a sense of tenderness and care. . . .

2.    Imagine yourself next moving to a higher vantage point.  Image the world as you gain a “higher” perspective: look down and “see” from your store of memories the more distant joys of your past. Or imagine some future happiness and just smile inwardly. . . .That appreciation or anticipation welling up is a prayer of thanksgiving.  From this same vantage, glimpse the needs of people you know about but with whom you’re not in close relationship. From this vantage you can take in whole groups of people with a single glance, so focus on a group of people who live different lives than you do. Now, with expanded compassion, hold onto that image. . . .

3.    We move a third time.  Now image the world from the peak of a mountain.  See the world’s beauty and connectedness.  Look down and find yourself, your own life, if you can. Do you feel differently about your own self from this vantage point?  If you were really on the top of this mountain, would you feel less attached to things and schedules and other priorities that now dictate your movements?  And look at the world below. What movements or patterns are you seeing in the overall social landscape, in the ecosystems below?  Are you praying for different things in different ways from this distance where national boundaries disappear and even distinctions among species fade?  . . . .

4.    Image earth finally from a great distance in time and space.  Rather than seeing yourself as small and insignificant, see yourself as part of something vast, ongoing, eternal. Can you feel love for that tiny planet and its creatures—and all beyond its gravitational pull?  Can you imagine a Sacred Compassion embracing all that is throughout all Time?  At this pinnacle of perspective, you might even glimpse--as did Peter, James and John--the Cosmic Christ, the Christ who is our all in all, the Spirit that pervades all things, the human Jesus united with Divine Love, the Light of Lights.  To attain this perspective in a real and lasting way is what some call “enlightenment.”  Of course Jesus shone on the Mount of Transfiguration!  Of course the disciples noticed his change.  Of course he was then ready to set his face toward Jerusalem and the requirements of pure LOVE.

As we move prayerfully back down the mountain with Jesus, we sing the "Kyrie Eleison" for each place along the way —our final prayer.

Waking, Waiting, Watching

GOSPEL READING                              Mark 13: 31-37                      

³¹Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.  ³²“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. ³⁵Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, ³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. ³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

 

            Waking, waiting, and watching are the tasks and gifts of Advent.  This patient alertness, however, runs counter to the frenetic spending and socializing our culture prescribes.  More than at any other time of year, the way of Jesus is especially counter-cultural during Advent.  More than at any other time of year, I am grateful now for scriptural reminders to watch patiently, alertly, for signs of God.  I need practice in these Advent attitudes.

            As a young girl, I loved reading the old Nancy Drew mystery series.  I admired how that girl detective could see what the average person overlooked:  the telltale footprints in the garden that led her to the jewel thief, or the single thread of fabric at the crime scene that unraveled the whole case.  I admired her because I was not observant. 

            To this day, I have no eye for detail.  I don’t know what kind of car you drive.  I have never noticed the shoes you’re wearing. I kind of hope you haven’t noticed what I'm driving or wearing.  But I admire people who do notice, especially those whose observations lead to some deeper mystery. People like nature writer Annie Dillard.

            Dillard once declared: “I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.”[i]  That could be our Advent motto.  Did you wake up this morning hoping to see a new thing?  Did you ask God to show you something new and marvelous?  Or did you walk into this day settling for the same old same old, assuming that what you saw yesterday is what you will see today, shutting your eyes to the possibility of freshness and change and revelation?  Dare we expect that God might reveal something to us?  After all, revelation might be just around the corner.  I want to wake expectant.  I pray God will show me a new thing.  That is the Advent Attitude I want to cultivate. 

            Because Annie Dillard is alert, she does see the unexpected.  She once caught sight of a mockingbird in a rare and spectacular free fall.  This is her description of that everyday marvel:

            “About five years ago I saw a mocking bird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a 4-story building.  It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.  The mocking bird took a single step into the air and dropped.  His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating 32 feet per second per second, through empty air.  Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass.  I had just rounded a corner when his heedless step caught my eye.  There was no one else in sight” (pp. 7-8).  Annie Dillard lives her life looking for the extraordinary, so she finds it. 

            But wakefulness and watchfulness will not always yield something as beautiful and breathtaking as a mockingbird’s graceful landing.  If you and I ask God to show us something new, the vision may not be pretty.  Just dip into the book of Revelation, and you’ll see glorious images of the New Jerusalem, and horrifying images of a beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads.  Just read the pages of the newspaper prayerfully, empathetically.  Annie Dillard describes both the beautiful and the horrifying in the world.  Here’s another sight she recorded:

            “I was walking along the edge of the creek to see what I could see in the water, and mainly to scare frogs.  Frogs have an inelegant way of taking off from invisible positions on the bank just ahead of your feet, in dire panic, emitting a froggy “Yike!” and splashing into the water.  As I walked along the grassy edge of the creek, I got better and better at seeing frogs both in and out of the water.  I learned to recognize, slowing down, the difference in texture of the light reflected from mudbank, water, grass, or frog.  Frogs were all around me.  Then I noticed a small green frog.  He was exactly half in and half out of the water, and he did not jump.  He did not jump; I crept closer.  At last I knelt on the island’s winterkilled grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away” (p. 5).

            Before I finish describing what Annie Dillard saw, I want to pause long enough for us to see—to pay attention to—her method for seeing.  Dillard is able to see something rare because, first of all, she slowed down.  As we enter the bustle of the Christmas season, Mobilians may not be dashing through the snow this December, but many of us will be dashing along Airport Blvd.  We need a season for slowing down.

            And that’s what writer Annie Dillard models for us:  she slowed down and she studied her surroundings.  And she came very close to the thing she wanted to observe.  She did not attempt to examine all the frogs beside the creek.  She did not generalize about frogginess.  No, she looked at an individual frog, face to face.  Maybe it is helpful for us to put a face on abstractions like poverty, war, immigration.  To know the world’s delights and woes, we may have to see closely one human being as she truly is, and through her eyes know the whole world a bit better. 

            Next Annie Dillard says she knelt at that creek bank.  That sounds like a good method for seeing.  Being eye-to-eye in creaturely mutuality is a way for connecting and understanding.  Humbly kneeling by that little frog in something like a posture of prayer nicely pictures our best means of revelation.

            And what does she see next?  Another image of grace and beauty?  Hardly.  Instead, she catches the rare sighting of a giant water beetle just as its forelegs hook its victim, just as the beetle shoots a poisonous enzyme into the little frog to dissolves all its muscles, bones, and organs, and then sucks the life juices from the frog until it’s nothing but a crumpled sack of skin, floating like scum on the water’s surface.  It’s a description so gruesome I’ll spare you the worst details.  But the point is that revelations of this world are sometimes horrifying.  Yet we cannot turn our heads and pretend not to see the homeless on our city’s streets.  We cannot look the other way when disrespect and prejudice rear their ugly heads in our places of work.  We cannot be blind to domestic violence.  We cannot close our eyes to the planet’s environmental crisis.  Because if we do not see the needs of the world, we cannot cooperate with God’s activity in the world. 

            Another favorite writer, Anne Lamott, says that the two most basic and sincere prayers we ever pray are these:  “Thank you, thank you, thank you” and “Help, help, help.”[ii]  But how can we pray those prayers if we are not awake and alert?  To pray that basic prayer of thanks, we must attend to the glory around us.  And to pray the second prayer of help, we must see the suffering that exists in the very same universe.  Yes, tradition teaches us to close our eyes in prayer.  But maybe we need opened eyes to pray and, afterward, to follow Jesus.

Progressive Christians have a chance to hear the Advent call afresh.  We THINK we know the story.  But what if there are dimensions yet to plumb? What if we slow down and pay attention and expect some new revelation this year?  What if there’s a grown-up version of the Jesus Story we have yet to hear?

The children’s story called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever how some people were able to do that.  It’s the story of the Herdmans, a family of six badly behaved children who lie and steal and set things on fire and hit littler kids and smoke cigars.  They are having to practically raise themselves and have never set foot in a church before and have never even heard the Christmas story, but one year these 6 destructive little devils somehow grab the main roles in the church play and take over the entire pageant.  Every other year, the church pageant had been predictable and orderly if boring.  But the year the Herdmans participated, the rehearsals were a nightmare and everyone just knows the final production will be a disaster.  And then the miraculous happens.  In the middle of the performance, it is as if the Herdman children finally start to catch on and the story begins to work its way into their little hearts.  Soon they are visibly overcome with awe as they grasp the meaning of Christmas: God is with us!  Love has come down! And the congregation--which had seen for umpteen times the angels with glittered, cardboard wings--starts to notice that the Herdmans are deeply affected by it all, and they ALL see the story for the first time.

Revelation can happen for us this Advent.  But we must watch for a new thing.  If the Christmas star doesn’t shine as brightly for us anymore, let us search the night sky with eyes of wonder.  Rather than skimming over words like “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy,” let us expect the angels’ message to leap off the pages of our Bibles.  And when we see “the little baby, lying in a manger, on Christmas morning,” let also take in the fact that his family is homeless, he’s in a cow stall nursed by an unwed mother, and his family will save his life by illegally sneaking into another country.  Have we really seen God in that way?  Because if we can do that, it might change how we see others in similar circumstances.

           A priest once cancelled his subscription to the New York Times. He explained the disturbing stories of war and crime and politics prevented him from praying.  Henri Nouwen was saddened by his fellow priest’s response because, Nouwen said, it falsely assumes that “only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself by an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live a spiritual life.” Nouwen disagreed.  He argued that “a real spiritual life does exactly the opposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response.”  Real spiritual alertness deepens our prayers AND strengthens our actions in the world.

          In some ways, new church, Advent is OUR season.  Let us as individuals make use of this period of awakening.  And let us as a brand new congregation wait and watch expectantly for the unique role we can play in God’s Pageant. There are fresh ways of being church.  There are new visions for enacting God’s love.  There are gifts you may be called to share with us as we grow into our fuller potential.  When asked why he keeps coming to church, someone once answered, “It’s strange, but I get this feeling here, like nowhere else, that something is about to happen.”[iii] Collectively, communally, we will follow the Spirit, wakefully, watchfully.  God is still speaking and moving among us. 

      

PRAYER:  God of Vision, Wake us from sleepwalking through this life in lock step with culture. Help us to pay more attention to our relationships than the sale tables at Dillards.  Let us watch for signs of your coming again and again into this world, that we may greet you afresh, that we may follow Jesus aright. Amen. 

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[i] Dillard, Annie.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. NY: Harper & Row, 1974. P. 2.

[ii] Lamott, Anne.  Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.  NY: Pantheon  Books, 1999.

[iii] Copenhaver, Martin.  “Christmas is a Surprise Party”   Online Stillspeaking Devotional.  United Church of Christ.  November 27, 2011.