Year C: Last Sunday before Lent, 27 February
2022
Standing back from it all
Every now and again we need to be taken out
of our routine comfort zones and be surprised by joy. This happened to Peter, John and James on a
mountain top where Jesus took them. Mountains have always featured among the favourite
places for dreamers, poets and wise persons. The Irish landscape is dotted with stone
arrangements on hill tops showing us that our ancestors had a special
connection with these places and what lies beyond (or below). In some parts of
the world it has been customary for monastic communities to pitch their ‘tent’
on high ground. Indeed, the site of the story of the transfiguration is
believed to be Mount Tabor – a two hour walk from Jesus’ home village of
Nazareth and about 25 kilometres from the southern shores of Lake Galilee which
lay to the East of Mount Tabor. No doubt Jesus had been there many times before
and beheld the beauty of the surrounding countryside as he marked out with his
eye the places where he grew up. In all
likelihood Jesus and his three friends made the ascent early in the morning
before the heat of noonday and on a good day with a blue sky as one does in
such warm and exposed climates.
We don’t need to travel alone
Jesus needed a break in the midst of a busy
ministry in Galilee. He had a strong sense that his time of extreme tribulation
was nearing and he had warned his friends about this just before the mountain
experience. He needed to draw apart for a little while and pray – with three
chosen disciples (might there be a theological significance in bringing three
to what was to be revealed?). So, Jesus
went up the mountain to pray – for his disciples and everyone else. There, a
response was given to the witnessing disciples: ‘Listen to him!’ (v.35). We
don’t need to climb mountains alone or keep those glory moments to ourselves.
The Christ’s religion is a community religion. We travel with others and never
alone.
From glory to agony and back again
The story of the transfiguration is also a
story about journeys. To climb a
mountain with one’s friends and experience, there, the mysteries of God’s glory
is one thing. To come down from that mountain and face certain death is
another. This is the point of the story.
We need moments of ‘glory’ and deep, replenishing joy. Deep joy. This is
our food and our strength for the journey that lies ahead. The transfiguration
was a dress rehearsal for the Agony in the Garden on the eve of Jesus’
crucifixion (Luke
22:39-46). We note the strong
parallels: a mountain; Jesus with the very same Peter, James and John; people
sleeping while another prays; conversation; foreboding and heavenly comfort.
Life has a funny habit of repeating itself.
Into the cloud of unknowing
The cloud represents the presence of God as
in Exodus
40:34-38. But, very often in our lives we are stuck in a ‘cloud of
unknowing’ (also the title of a work of an English mystic in the late 14th
century and which should be read by everyone at least once in a lifetime). Ours
is a state of not knowing what next or who or where. The temptation is to try
to remain fixed or fixated in a moment of glory and consolation. Some seek
solace in narcotics, food, etc. Others seek solace in ‘religion’ and
‘spirituality’. Each is understandable. We are only human. But, the real deal
is not this or that thing or person or relationship: it is the love of God that
speaks to us in silence in the depths of our hearts in this cloud of unknowing.
The reality is that we may find ourselves
alone and confused in a cloud of unknowing but it is only afterwards we see
that we were not alone. There is a lesson here each time. At the time of
unknowing we were greatly afraid just like the disciples. Then we saw back like
on CCTV that there was nothing to be afraid of.
We should savour and recall such moments of realisation and insight afterwards but not cling on to them.
These moments enable us to move on and embrace what lies ahead.
END
Addendum
Key to understanding the Transfiguration is
what happens just before it. Some eight days before (to quote Luke) Jesus has a
very frank conversation with his friends. Not only was Jesus himself faced with
death and rising again but, he went on to tell them
‘If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and
follow me. (Luke
9:23)
We may note that in the Transfiguration the
highly significant persons of Moses and Elijah and appear and disappear to
leave the disciples standing with Jesus, alone.
Readers of Luke in around 80 A.D. would not have missed the point that
the old order or religion is giving way to a new deal – one in which the
Messiah has come and it is to his voice that we now listen for that life that
surpasses our greatest dreams. Moses and
Elijah are not cancelled out; rather their ministry is now done and taken up
into the work of Jesus, the Son of God. The transfiguration story reaches back
in time to the ‘exodus’ of the chosen people (the Greek word for ‘departure’
cited in verse 31 – ‘They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure,
which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’) and it reaches forward to a new
covenant between the nations of the world and the Messiah. But, first there must be a time of great suffering
and passing from the old to the new order. The disciples Peter, James and John
have been warned already before ascending the mountain that they, too, would
suffer like Jesus. But, this does not
stop Peter proposing the erection of three ‘tents’ (this links to the Jewish
festival of Tabernacles recalling the time when the Hebrews wandered for 40
years in the desert). But, clinging to
Moses and Elijah (the good old order) as well as clinging to that extraordinary
and glorious scene on the top of this mountain will not do. The point of the
story is that we only have Jesus to cling to now. Put another way, the
Transfiguration offers little by way of ‘comfort religion’ either then or now.
