19 February 2023 Transfiguration
How often have you heard someone recount to you a story which is ‘beyond belief’. You trust the person, you have no reason to think they are intentionally telling you lies or they are making fun of you by telling you a ‘tall story’, but the story they are telling you is so far from what you know of reality that most people would dismiss it as ‘rubbish’. That is the story Matthew is telling us today. And it is the story Peter speaks about when he tells his community that ‘we did not follow cleverly devised myths, …, but we had been eyewitnesses of [this] majesty.’ Peter was there, Matthew was not, but this story is so important to both of them that they need to keep the story alive. Remember, Matthew’s gospel was written about 30-40 years after Jesus left the disciples, and it would appear that nothing more important happened in those intervening years to replace it as a story worth telling. What of your stories will your children, or your grandchildren, still be telling 30-40 years after you have left them.
But while we may know the ‘transfiguration’ part of this gospel well, do we spend much time thinking about the rest of the story. The voice from heaven declaring the same message that was declared at Jesus’ baptism; the disciples taking fright at what they are hearing and falling to the ground; and Jesus speaking similar words to them as those the angels spoke to the women when they found the empty tomb. Fear not, do not be afraid, and then rather than ‘he is risen’, Jesus bids the disciples to ‘be risen’. Our translation of ‘get up’ does a disservice to the intent of Jesus words because the same word is used by the angel and Jesus – risen. Be risen, and fear no more.
Sometimes we doubt our own eyes, we cannot believe that what we are seeing can to real, but then we ‘see’ with ‘new eyes’ and believe it. Peter, James, and John would have been in such a situation as that, on the mountain. First Jesus becomes dazzling white, then they see what appears to be Moses and Elijah who they ‘know’ have been dead for hundreds of years. Yet, they did not doubt, and the comment from Peter strikes me as the sort of comment many of us make when we don’t know what else to say. When the situation is so breathtaking, or unusual, or confronting, that words fail us, and our mouth runs away without our brain.
Jesus does not need to make comment on Peter’s ‘funny comment’ about making dwellings, or about the disciples falling to the ground when the voice from heaven is heard. He simply invites them to newness of life; bids them rise; dispels any fear they have; and opens them up to new possibilities and new life. He speaks of what is, and what may be, in the power of the Spirit.
Most of us, do not live in constant ‘mountain-top’ experiences. Jesus did not stay up on the mountain, he came down and was immediately thrust into the ‘nitty gritty’ of ordinary life. There were people to heal, people to teach, places to go and things to do, he has just finished speaking about what will happen when he gets to Jerusalem. Mountain-top experiences are not frequent for most of us, in fact some people might doubt they have ever had one, but if we stop and think about how God has worked in us and our lives, our mountain-top experiences have probably been there, we just may not have recognised it as such. And that’s fine. But after our ‘experience with God’, we need to remember to come down and get on with life. We cannot remain on the mountain; we are needed here. God needs us to continue to live our God-filled lives in the midst of our community. And we also need to keep our ‘sacred’ and our ‘secular’ lives as one life. God does not always ‘show up’ with blinding lights, sometimes we hear God in that ‘still, small, whisper’, and often we only recognise God’s presence in the situation after it is over. All our experiences are real, they all matter, and they all lead us to a fuller life with God and our community. What is challenging for us is to find Jesus in the ‘day to day’ minutiae of life; to know Jesus is with us in the mundane, not just the spectacular; and that he is present in the unspectacular business of discipleship, prayer, service, and solitude.
God called the disciples, and God calls us, to discipleship; to ‘listen to him’. And in the listening, if we are overwhelmed by what we hear and ‘fall on the ground in fear’, let us also hear Jesus’ words to ‘be risen’ and ‘fear not’. As we prepare to enter the more sombre season of Lent, let us first hear the victory cry of resurrection, the call to courage, and the promise of new abundant life