Scriptures for today are Here
In her book, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard shares stories of doctors who performed early cataract surgery in Europe. When a doctor removed bandages from one girl’s eyes, she saw “the tree with the lights in it.”
Dillard wrote about her own response to those words. “It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all, and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost, charged and transfigured…I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance…The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it.”
The sudden Transfiguration of an ordinary day, when the world glows with God’s presence – such holy moments have been described by novelists like Dillard; by poets; by saints – Moses at the burning bush, Elisha watching the chariot of fire. They are moments of vision, moments that open our minds to the wonder and glory that surround us at all times and places, less like seeing than like being for the first time seen: moments of mystical connection to the divine that give us strength and courage, for all the ordinary times, when we walk along thinking of nothing at all.
And every now and then in life, God might give a few of us ordinary folks such moments of transcendent glory. It happened to me one day. I went to a worship service at a Greek Orthodox cathedral. If you’ve ever been to an Orthodox service, you know what they are like: a vast gold dome overhead, beautiful gold icons lining the front, clouds of incense billowing so that you could hardly see. And above us in the back somewhere was a choir balcony, with the choir singing heavenly chants, all in Greek so you couldn’t understand a word, their voices soaring like the song of angels. And I stood there, an ordinary person leafing through the prayer book and trying to figure out what was going on. And I looked up at the people in front of me, and suddenly, unexpectedly, they glowed like fire. I looked at them and knew they were just like me – they had eaten breakfast, brushed their teeth, rushed the kids into the car, gotten to church late – and they were blazing with God’s glory. I felt that for just a moment, I got to see them as God sees them – and then it was gone, and they faded back into ordinary people again. But I never forgot what I had seen.
It makes sense that I should catch a glimpse of transcendent glory in a Eucharist. The Orthodox believe that the Eucharist, what they call the Divine Liturgy, is going on all around us, at all times and all places. Angels and archangels are always celebrating Eucharist, constantly singing Holy, Holy, Holy. And when we step into liturgy ourselves, we simply … join in with the angels – whether we see it or not.
Maybe once or twice in a lifetime, we are granted a gift of vision – the ability to catch a glimpse of the world as God sees it.
But here’s my question: which time is holier? The times when we become aware, have a sudden insight of God’s dazzling presence on the mountaintop, or the times when God is walking along beside us, unseen, in the valley? Were those people who were glowing with uncreated light at the Greek Orthodox church – were they holier at that moment, or were they holier as the rushed around to get the kids ready for church that morning, or as they scrambled into the car afterwards, making plans for the afternoon? Were they holier as they listened to choirs of angels singing, or are they holier as they move out into the difficult times of life, sicknesses and work problems, addictions and difficult relationships and sorrow?
Are we holier here, now, in this mountaintop experience we bring ourselves to each Sunday to gain strength for the coming week, or are we holier as we go out into the world to answer God’s call for each one of us? What is the holier time, the time on the mountain or the time in the valley?
Well, maybe looking at Mark’s gospel can give us an idea. This story of Transfiguration stands at the center of Mark’s gospel. Everything has been working its way up to this point, and everything will go downhill from here on out. Just before this story, Peter has declared that he believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus has turned around and astonished the disciples by telling them that he is not the kind of Messiah who will rule in glory; he is the kind of Messiah that must suffer and die.
They go up to the mountaintop and see what must seem to Peter like the vindication of Peter’s faith that Jesus is a Messiah of glory. Jesus is talking with Moses and Elijah, symbolizing the law and prophets. All of Jewish salvation history seems to have led to this moment of glory. Surely God is about to act! Surely this glory will shine forever! Peter offers to create dwellings, in Hebrew “booths,” for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, because there is an ancient Jewish prophecy, where the messianic age will begin during the Festival of Booths. Peter wants to be ready for God. Peter believes the messianic age is dawning, and he’s right. What he doesn’t understand is what messianic age involves: suffering and death.
We can broaden our perspective on Mark’s gospel to understand this a little better. There are three “mountaintop” experiences in Mark’s gospel. This Transfiguration mountain stands at the center, but it points backwards to the first and forward to the third, and all three are similar. The first is the baptism of Jesus, when the heavens open and Jesus hears a voice saying, “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased.”
Today’s Transfiguration story is second, Jesus glowing with uncreated light and the same voice saying the same thing: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Both are times of glory, mountaintop experiences, times when Jesus must have been alive in every nerve, tingling with presence of God coursing through him.
But Mark wants us to understand that Jesus will plunge down off this mountain and immediately begin to make his way to the third mountaintop. That third mountain is the hill at Calvary, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. Here on the mount of Transfiguration, his clothes shine dazzling white; there they are stripped off. Here a cloud descends on the mountain; there the world will be shrouded in darkness. Here God’s presence shines all around; there he will cry out “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” Here God’s voice will pronounce him the Beloved Son; there a centurion will look on as he dies and say in wonder, “truly this man was God’s Son.”
Mark wants us to see that the place of glory and transcendence shines with God’s uncreated light, and so does the place of shame and suffering. Jesus is God’s anointed Messiah on the mountaintop, and on the cross. You can’t understand Messiahship by looking only at this mountain of glory. You have to look also at the mountain of shame – and vice versa. One explains the other.
And which is holier? The place of glory, or the place of shame? They are both holy; they are both glowing with the dazzling presence of God; they both reveal to us the truth of who God is. God is the one who loves us, and who is present with us, whose glory shines on the mountaintop, and on the cross too.
It’s my belief that Jesus and the disciples were given this gift of vision in order to strengthen them for the holy time to come – that this vision of God’s transcendent glory gave Jesus what he needed to go to Jerusalem to die. Jesus too, human as he was, needed God’s strength and comfort.
As we ordinary human beings do too. On the night before he was killed, 4/3/68, Martin Luther King, Jr. told of his own mountaintop experience: how God came to him in a time of fear and filled his heart with God’s presence. He sat in the kitchen of his house, afraid for his life and his family’s lives, and suddenly knew that God was all around him. He heard a voice: Martin, stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.
That stormy night in Memphis, April 3, 1968, Dr. King talked about that experience and about the valley he somehow knew he was entering: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop…And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land…Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
So where are you, today? On the mountaintop, or in the valley? In the church each week, God calls us to the mountaintop, joining with angels and archangels, shining with Jesus in the glory that is the destiny of all of us, whether we can see that glory or not. But this is not the only holy place: this is merely the place we come to get strength for the rest of our lives ahead.
And those lives are holy too: the everyday ins and outs of relating to our spouses and children and friends and neighbors; the work we do, whether we enjoy it or not; the casual conversations with people we meet in the grocery store. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
And the real valley times, the real desert times, when we are suffering through illnesses or difficult relationships or grief – those are the most holy times of all. The mountain is given to us as God’s glorious gift of vision, which strengthens us for whatever will come. That light is God’s gift to us – the gift of glory, of veils being lifted, of new hope being granted. It’s a gift that lets us know that wherever we go as Christians, Christ will be there with us. God’s light is shining all around, at all times and all places – and the Messiah is here with us, whether we feel his presence or not.
And which is holier? The mountain is holy, and the valley is holy. So, as we celebrate Eucharist together today – come up the mountainside. Let God nourish you and give you strength. Whether you see it or not, your life is holy, and God’s light shines in you.
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