Last Sunday afternoon, I was due to be in Indianapolis in preparation for a clergy conference that I was helping to lead. I went a little early so that I could stop in the hospital to visit Ron and his family as they sat and waited for his beloved wife Millie to breathe her last breaths. The ventilator had been turned off earlier that day and while she was breathing on her own, everyone knew it wouldn’t be long.
It was one of those terribly tragic stories, a relatively minor treatment, a nerve block, an injection, and something went horribly wrong. Almost immediately she was gone, no brain function, massive heart attack, she lingered on the machinery for a few days with the wild hope that something would change. But it didn’t. We celebrated her life this morning, even as our hearts were breaking and our minds were reeling from the suddenness of it all.
When I walked into that room last Sunday it was filled with family and friends who were stunned into an uneasy silence. The love and support in the room was tangible in the touches and the whispers. When we prayed together I could feel them all leaning into the Spirit, with sighs too deep for words and they clung to each other, and reached out to touch Millie, wanting to call her back, wanting to gather her up, but knowing that she was already in other hands.
Ron asked about the weather, he’d been cooped up in that hospital for days and he wasn’t sure whether winter had passed into spring and he missed it. The sun was shining, I reported. The whole trip down it was almost too bright to see. Really?, he responded, unbelieving. And he wasn’t the only one struggling to comprehend that light. There were others in the room who seemed just as dubious. How can it be, they wanted to say, how can a light be shining when the world seems so dark?
You’ve been there, so lost in a never-ending darkness that you doubted whether there was such a thing as light any more. To speak of light, and hope and joy, seemed almost offensive, ringing hollow in the emptiness of your soul. You’ve looked for straws to grasp, for signs of a Presence speaking of a tomorrow worth living for, and had occasion to doubt whether you would ever know love again.
The things that really matter seem frightfully elusive in this life. It is no wonder we tend to cling too tightly to material things to find our meaning and purpose. Things we can hold, things that will last, things we can pull out when the doubts come back. It is hard to hold on to love. It is hard to snuggle up to hope. It is almost impossible to stand confidently on grace. Yet that is our call. In light or in darkness we are called to hold on to hope.
This is Transfiguration Sunday. You know event of the Transfiguration, don’t you? That odd little moment on a mountain before Jesus began his journey into Jerusalem. The special effects laden encounter with historical figures and a voice from above, that sent the inner circle of disciples straight to their knees with permanently furrowed brows and shoulders that wouldn’t shrug any more. Shining faces and clothes that glowed, you remember.
Liturgically, Transfiguration serves as a hinge that lets us swing from the revealing of the light of Christ in the season of Epiphany to the journey of self-examination and sacrifice of the season of Lent. It is a rest stop on the pilgrimage of following Christ from birth to life and ministry, to passion and death, and then, incredibly, resurrection and life eternal. We pull off that highway and take time to climb a mountain, and see ... well, we see God.
When planning for this Sunday, I assumed that everyone was confident and perhaps even a little bored with the Transfiguration. After all I had covered this ground year after year for who knows how long. So, I thought it would be good to approach it from a little different perspective. I decided instead of telling the story again, we would take a look at the Epistle reading for this Sunday.
2 Peter 1:16-21 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." 18 We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
There is some debate - because biblical scholars love nothing more than a good debate - as to whether this was actually written by the Apostle Peter. All the usual objections, the timing isn’t right, the language doesn’t sound like Peter, etc. etc. But the most interesting argument is that this depiction of the Transfiguration doesn’t sound like the ones in the Gospels. And if it had been Peter, surely he would have included all those details, the glowing clothes, the magical appearances, his own offer to build tents for Jesus and Moses and Elijah to ... to take a nap in, or whatever.
I’m not enough of an expert to say whether it was Peter or not, but I don’t find it difficult to believe that Peter wouldn’t be giving a complete account in this passage. He had a specific purpose in these verses and it wasn’t recounting everything that happened on that mountain.
He is dealing with doubt. He is dealing with those who are beginning to question whether Jesus is really coming back, whether this Kingdom of God thing is really real or was just something we imagined while he was here among us. Maybe this is a good as it gets. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe we were just fooling ourselves. He is dealing with the darkness of unknowing, of being afraid, of experiencing loss and not knowing how to hope any more.
No, he says, Peter or his spokespersons, No, we didn’t make this up. There was a moment, he says, where the mask of this world slipped a little bit and the light from the next one shone through. There was a moment, he writes, when the doubts fled before the Presence, when hope rose in our hearts, when joy filled us and we knew - we didn’t wonder, we knew that he was who he said he was, and that we were his, not just for a moment, not just for now, but we were his for eternity. And in that moment there was nothing I wanted more than that, to belong to him. And nothing, not time, not fear, not loss or injury or doubt or darkness can take that away. When you’ve heard the voice, you can live in the silence and still hope.
Memories? No, much more than that. We look back on the moments of pure joy, the encounters of profound love, the connection of mind heart, body and soul, and nothing, not even death can take that away from us. In the dark places that this life seems too full of, a light is shining. That Transfigured Presence is with us always. That living love, those saints who opened the door to eternity will never leave us.
God bless you Millie.
Shalom,
Derek
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