Radiant Silence [Transfiguration Sunday]

Psalm 2

Matthew 17:1-7

In the middle of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus takes three disciples up a mountain and is “transfigured” before them.  During that story, God speaks from a bright cloud, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well-pleased; Listen to him.”  This is the second time we hear God’s voice in Matthew’s gospel.  When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, we hear the same voice: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”  And so today, on Transfiguration Sunday, reading the story of Jesus transfigured and filled with light, I direct your attention to the sound of God’s voice.  And God’s voice directs us to Jesus, whom God loves and treasures.  “Listen to him.”

 

I have never quite known what to do with Transfiguration Sunday.  It has been a holy feast day of the church for hundreds of years, so it seems unwise to simply dismiss it.  Yet this traditional “holy day” is certainly no American “holiday.”  We plan festive times for Christmas and we observe the joy of Easter, but Transfiguration Sunday sits quietly between those peaks, bypassed and overlooked.

A good number of you likely came to worship today with no idea that today was even Transfiguration Sunday.  And I can’t blame you.  If I weren’t a preacher who has to pay attention to calendars to plan out worship liturgies and sermons, I might not have known it either.

I have read this story before, many times.  You have likely heard it too.  And on its face, it appears to wear a very predictable little lesson.  And the lesson is that Jesus, despite his ordinariness, really was divine.  He might not appear Godlike at first glance, but here’s some proof for you: his face is on fire and his clothes are electric.  Ok, I get it.  But a story given to us to prove that Jesus was divine leaves us empty and unimpressed.  It feels like an answer to a question no one is asking.

The story is a little odd and confusing.  It appears at a hinge point in the gospel.  It comes at the end of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and just before he makes his way towards Jerusalem where he will suffer and die.  For the most part, the gospel feels like realistic storytelling.  But here it feels different. This is a vision in which Jesus’ human form underwent some kind of luminous glow, some kind of radiant fullness.  And so we see him full of God’s light at the very point that his life enters a period of great difficulty. 

I wonder if this might be one of the clues that can help us experience the good news of this story.  Could this story become a doorway for us to begin to see ourselves as beloved children filled with light, even in the midst of all that is difficult and challenging about our lives?  Can we begin to welcome the radiance that shines from our own ordinary bodies, people who are luminous with God’s delight – a delight so deep and durable that it cannot be removed or erased by anything like suffering or pain or even death? 

Another feature that makes the story odd is the appearance of Moses and Elijah.  Right as we’re told that Jesus was transfigured – “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light” -  Peter, James, and John rub their eyes, doing their best to adjust to the new light.  And as they try to focus again on Jesus they see two more figures, Moses and Elijah, “talking with Jesus.”  Now if we were reading this story online, the names “Moses” and “Elijah” would appear as blue underlined words, hyperlinks to other important Jewish stories.  Click on these stories and you’ll find other accounts of God meeting human beings on mountaintops in radiant light.  Here on the mountain top, adjusting our eyes to this new light, we are learning that the border between heaven and earth is a thin one; that the ordinary is much more permeable by holiness and goodness that we ever thought possible.

But perhaps the most relatable part of the story is Peter’s embarrassing gaffe.  And can we not identify with Peter?  Can we not find in our own lives times when we would have been better off paying attention rather than speaking?  Have we never found ourselves nervously talking only to discover that something important was happening, and that a quiet stillness would have been the more appropriate posture?

In Eugene Peterson’s translation of this story in The Message, Peter begins to “babble.”  I think that captures the essence of the story.  Something profound is happening and Peter can’t stand the profundity.  He is uncomfortable in this new light.  And so he starts talking to fill the silence.  “Jesus, this is fun!  I like this!  But I think I need to do something.  Hey, why don’t I start building some shelters for the three of you.  It will be like the forts I built out of blankets when I was a kid . . . “

And while Peter babbles, a bright cloud covers them.  Peter’s nervous talking was finally quieted.  And God’s voice directs them again to the luminous Jesus and his radiant face: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased; Listen to him.”  You see, all my remarks so far about not knowing what to do with this story, about this story being odd and confusing, all of it is nothing more than a Peter-like babbling, a distracted nervousness.  There is a time to grow quiet.

We began with the worry that a story meant to prove to us that Jesus was divine would be a little predictable and boring.  And yet that’s not what this story is at all.  God’s voice from the brightness of the cloud directs our attention to the body of Jesus, transfigured with both light and delight.  Here is an ordinary human life, luminous with God’s joy.

I know that some of you practice yoga.  In fact, I have participated in yoga classes with several of you.  You wouldn’t think that yoga can be funny, but it can be.  I won’t share any specific stories, just ask Diana Morriss if you’d like to hear more.  But I benefit from yoga because I am an inflexible person.  And the tightness in my hips and hamstrings causes problems in my lower back.  The tightness in my neck and shoulders can give me headaches.  And so as I move through a session of yoga, what slowly emerges is a gentle pliability in my body as I relax into the various poses.  There are some poses I cannot do.  But that’s ok.  You do what you can.  You stop when the pose begins to become uncomfortable. 

Toward the end of the session, we lie on our backs in a darkened room, breathing deeply.  And we are led through a contemplative experience in which we actively imagine a line of warmth and light that slowly works its way up our bodies.  It begins in your toes and moves through your arches and ankles and slowly into your calves.  Then the light moves through knees, circles your thighs and swirls through your pelvis and hips.  Then it moves to your stomach and lower back, to your chest and through shoulders, down to your arms and fingers, and then up through your neck; the warming, gentle light finally reaching up to the muscles of your face and forehead to the top of your head. When you imagine the warm light moving up through every part of your body, you can feel your muscles relax, releasing their tension and stress.

One of the wonderful and surprising features of that imaginative relaxation experience is the discovery that there are no unimportant parts of your body.  There is no region of the body that is not mentioned and recognized.  You do not forget any of the different regions of your wonderful body.  And there is no part of you that cannot receive the warm light. 

If God wants to fill each of us with luminous warmth - and I mean fill our ordinary bodies, just as they are – if God wants to bless us with a warm radiance, I wonder whether we can quiet our hearts and minds and simply welcome the light.  I wonder if we could stop complaining about our bodies and our lives for a moment.  I wonder whether we could stop explaining about what’s wrong with us and why God feels so far away.  I wonder if we could stop sabotaging our own possibilities as God’s beloved creatures by telling stories that feature the ways we’ve allegedly fizzled or failed at something.  I wonder if we could still all of that under the bright cloud.  And open ourselves.  And welcome the light, letting it course through our bodies.  And I wonder – if we could do that, could we then perhaps see the warm light in the bodies and lives of others.

If we ourselves begin to hear God’s voice, saying to us, “You are my child whom I love, with you I am well pleased,” perhaps others will begin to hear it too.