Transfiguration B

What does this mean?

If you happened to grow up in a Lutheran congregation, you may know this question well. It’s a question that is used as a teaching tool in Martin Luther’s Small Catechism — a small book originally intended to be used by parents to talk about the faith with their children at home. It’s also been used traditionally in Confirmation classes, with that same question ringing out through the years since it was written, “what does this mean?” My grandfather probably also heard the question in its original German language, “was ist das?” — a simpler English translation would be “what is this?” — or the modern version that I use when talking with teenagers: “wait, wha?”

It’s a question you might be asking after hearing the Gospel today, a recounting of a supernatural encounter between God, Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and three very confused disciples. There are strange lights, strange sounds, and then just Jesus saying, “let’s just keep this to ourselves for now.” It’s enough to make you say, “wait, wha?” … “what does this mean?”

It may be the most basic instinct that our mind has … to make meaning out of the many & various events of our lives. If everything that happens in life is a bunch of dots, our brain wants nothing more than to connect them. No sooner than we hear a story like today’s Gospel… or any story, really… we begin asking, what do these things mean? (And I think, whether we think it or not, we are always really asking, what do these things mean for me?)

When I was ordained into the ministry a few years ago, a group of people gathered into University Lutheran Church in Gainesville, FL on a hot summer afternoon to worship and mark the occasion. And during that worship service, there was a moment that I knelt down, and the congregation sat in silence and watched as the bishop laid his hands on me, uttered a final prayer and said Amen. And right then, a single lightning bolt came out of the clear sky, along with a loud clap of thunder.

Everyone — including me, including the bishop; everyone — had the same reaction, which was to open our eyes real wide as all of our brains in unison lit up with that same dot-connecting instinct, fueled by the fire of this same question… “what does this mean?”

What did it mean?

I know this is boring, but it could have simply meant this: In the summer, in Florida, there are afternoon thunderstorms at least every other day.

Or: it could have meant, as many there that day believed that the lightning strike was God’s confirmation and blessing on the event that had just happened the moment before. To those who connected those particular dots, it was God echoing in Amen.

But: imagine that the last three years of my life went very differently… that I struggled in ministry, made numerous missteps, and stressed myself out so much that my family had trouble recognizing me and even more trouble liking me. That’s not what happened… but if it had, those who were there that day at my ordination may have revised the meaning they made from that lightning strike. Looking back they may have realized it was not confirmation, but actually a warning. It was God saying:

“No! Don’t do it! Don’t be a pastor! You’d serve me better as a pharmacist, or an accountant, or whatever!” (I’d actually be terrible at those jobs, by the way.)

That would be a dramatic example of something that I think happens all the time, all throughout our lives — we make meaning, and sometimes that meaning changes. I’ve found that meaning can be fluid in life… that I am constantly refining what I think things mean as I grow and (hopefully) becoming older and wiser — as I keep connecting more and more dots.

Likewise, the story in the Gospel of this amazing encounter can sustain a whole bunch of different meanings. Perhaps you’ve pondered it before. Maybe you’ve heard a sermon on it before. You might wish it had one definitive meaning… but it’s just too mysterious for that.

As many times as I’ve heard it, I’ve wrestled with making sense of it. At times this Gospel account of what’s commonly known as the Transfiguration has meant different things to me: Sometimes it’s been a chance to laugh at Peter, but secretly identify with his possibly well-intentioned but ridiculous idea of building dwellings for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah right there on the spot.

Sometimes this story has been all about preparing for that difficult journey down the mountain and eventually to the cross.

I recently learned that in the Eastern Orthodox church, this dazzling vision of Jesus is not meant to reveal his divinity, but actually to reveal his full and glorious humanity; what it means to be fully human. Fascinating, right?

My point is that as I have gone through life returning to this story, its meaning has changed or refined over time … and that’s not bad. In fact, I think the Gospels have this living, breathing quality that allows them to speak to us at different times of our lives. They are constantly morphing in meaning for us… not on a whim, and not so we can make them be whatever we want them to be, but so that they can pull us out of ourselves wherever we are stuck.

Maybe that’s why the meaning of this event isn’t really spelled out in the Gospel. The ‘what does this mean’ question is left to us… Instead, the focus in the Gospel is on the encounter itself.

So, I want you to hear it again, this time from the perspective of one of the disciples. This version was composed by a well-known preacher named Barbara Brown Taylor, it’s imaginative, but well within the real of possibility… Listen as this disciple makes his way up the mountain with Jesus:

It starts with a long climb up a windy mountain in the fading light of day, hunting for a strong place to pray. No talking for once. No wall of words between you and the others. Just breathing for once, just hearing them breathe, until you can’t tell whether you are breathing or being breathed. Are you hyperventilating?

And there he is: someone you thought you knew really well, standing there pulsing with light, leaking light everywhere. Face like a flame. Clothes dazzling white. Then, as if that weren’t enough, two other people are there with him, all of them standing in that same bright light. Who are they? Can’t be. Moses. Elijah. Dead men come back to life. God’s own glory, lighting up the night. Now they’re leaving. Now Peter’s saying something.

Tents, he’s saying. We need tents. He thinks we’re on Sinai. Someone tell him we’re not on Sinai. Now there’s a cloud coming in fast that is way more than weather, a terrifying cloud that is also alive. Cutting Peter off. Covering everything up. Smells like a lightning strike. Can’t see a thing.

Then a voice from the cloud lifts the hairs on the back of your neck. Fear so fast and primitive, you’re bristling like a dog. What’s the voice saying? Not “listen to me” but “listen to him.” The Son, the Beloved. But listen to what? He’s not saying anything. He’s shining. Or at least he was. Now he’s not. Now it’s over. Now what?

What does this mean? What does it mean when you’ve had some kind of experience that surprises you … some kind of experience that leaves you convinced that you have been in the presence of the almighty God? What does it mean when you don’t have that experience? (Remember that nine of the twelve disciples weren’t there on the mountaintop at all!) What does it mean that all you can see is … ordinary?

The Transfiguration encounter matches my own experience of faith which is that although there is so much that is mysterious… so much that changes through time… so much that I do not know, yet there is this: there is God’s clear voice telling me that Jesus is right here with me. That his beloved son is present — in the mysterious and in the ordinary.

Whatever meaning we are able to make of the disconnected dots that make up our lives — and what a journey that can sometimes be — through all of it, in every encounter, God is there. And in the end, even when we have no more answers, even when all meaning fades away, we are left with nothing but the presence of God.