The Very Reverend Sandye A. Wilson
6th August 2023: The Transfiguration
Let us pray:
“In the beauty of the lilies,
Christ was born across the sea;
with the glory in his bosom
that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make folks holy
let us live to make folks free.
Our God is marching on.”
May I speak in the name of the loving, liberating, life giving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Feast of the Transfiguration, which falls on August 6, has always held a particular fascination for me thanks to two realities.
The first: 24 years ago, while on a family trip to Rome with my parents, siblings and nephews, we visited and toured the Vatican and the Vatican museum.
At one point in the tour, we happened upon Raphael’s famous painting of the Transfiguration.
My six year old nephew walked along with me holding my hand, and as we listened to the docent, Theodore pulled on my hand.
I looked down at him and he said loudly, “Aunt Sandye, all those people in that painting were not at the Transfiguration.”
Somewhat amazed, I asked him “who was at the Transfiguration.”
He said, “Let’s see: there were Moses and Elijah and Jesus, and Peter and James and John. Only six people were at the Transfiguration.”
Amazed, I asked my sister how this six year old knew this and she countered with, “What would you expect? He goes to church and Sunday School and he knows all about these stories.”
Turns out he was absolutely right, because in that painting the top portion is the Transfiguration and the bottom of the painting is the next story in the Gospel of Luke, which is the healing of the demoniac.
That is the first part.
The second irony for me is the haunting fact that on August 6 1945, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the United States Army chose to drop the first atomic bomb on the citizens of Hiroshima.
Of that day, John Hershey wrote, “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima… Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, stood by the window of her kitchen watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-defense fire lane…
“As Mrs. Nakamura stood watching her neighbor, everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen… the reflex of a mother set her in motion toward her children… she took one step… when something picked her up and she seemed to fly into the next room… was buried in the rubble of her house… she heard a child cry… started to frantically claw her way toward the baby, she could see or hear nothing of her other children… then, from what seemed to be caverns below, she heard two small voices, crying, ‘Help! Help!”
They were survivors.
Of the 245,000 people, a hundred thousand were killed instantly, and another hundred thousand were wounded and five years later, some 200,000 were still recovering from the effects of the radiation and their transfiguring experience as their bodies were lit up in that mushroom cloud.
Storyteller Luke tells us that atop a mountain, Jesus shone whiter than any white anyone had ever seen.
Peter, James and John see him speaking to Moses and Elijah about his “exodos”, his exodus, his great escape, his exit.
Moses and Elijah are experts on dramatic exits.
Moses was dazzling white as he came down from Mt Sinai having delivered the Ten Commandments.
We note that this blazing white shine on Jesus is literally traveling through time to confer with these ancient heroes representing the Law and the Prophets of Isarael.
Peter and James and John had just before this been told by Jesus of his impending death and yet there was in his message a hopefulness for what lay ahead.
As Jesus was transfigured—changed before their very eyes, it was such an exciting experience to hear God’s voice from the cloud that engulfed them proclaim words that we heard at the Baptism of Jesus “This is my beloved Son, my Chosen one, Listen to him!”
That was love personified.
The love of a God who became human that we might become divine.
A love that drew those on that mountaintop close to one another, but most importantly close to God.
A Love that led Peter and James and John as sleepy as they were, to get comfortable.
Peter proposed that they should stay on the mountain and that he could build three huts for them to live.
It was a love fest on the top of that mountain that day as God revealed the true Greatness of Jesus.
Have you ever had an experience that was so exciting and life giving and life affirming that you did not want it to end?
Think about it for a moment…I know someone who refused to take off her wedding dress on her wedding night, because the day had been so perfect.
Interestingly, the marriage did not last.—But that moment lived with her forever….
Each of us has had some mountaintop experience that we want to freeze form in a selfie photograph so that it will never end.
The problem for Peter and the problem for us is that life is a series of mountaintop experiences that strengthen us to go back down the mountain to be present and transformational and transfigurational where people live and suffer and need to know the joy and love of Jesus…
Having been blessed on the mountaintop, they could not stay—-they needed to go down into the valley, strengthened for the work ahead.
Jan Richardson writes this about that experience:
A Blessing for Transfiguration Sunday
Believe me, I know
how tempting it is
to remain inside this blessing,
to linger where everything
is dazzling
and clear.
We could build walls
around this blessing,
put a roof over it.
We could bring in
a table, chairs,
have the most amazing meals.
We could make a home.
We could stay.
But this blessing
is built for leaving.
This blessing
is made for coming down
the mountain.
This blessing
wants to be in motion,
to travel with you
as you return
to level ground.
It will seem strange
how quiet this blessing becomes
when it returns to earth.
It is not shy.
It is not afraid.
It simply knows
how to bide its time,
to watch and wait,
to discern and pray
until the moment comes
when it will reveal
everything it knows,
when it will shine forth
with all it has seen,
when it will dazzle
with the unforgettable light
you have carried
all this way.
Everyday is no mountaintop experience, but the strength we receive on the mountain is not just preparation for death; it is preparation for the loss of anything we hold dear—-a relationship, a marriage, a job, your health, your home, friendship, your child, your hope…
And every experience is not in the valley, though that is where we find God most.
The mountain is as my nephew reminded me, a place where not everyone was, but it is place where we all are now.
And as someone has said “We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit. We have to find the strength to love.”
This is about the strength that comes from the love of God.
You will remember Dr. Martin Luther King on the night before he died, declared to the people, “I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people WILL get to the promised land.”
He knew that something was about to change in his life, but he had the experience of the mountaintop and the strength to love.
He knew that he too must go down the mountain to that place where real people live and move and have their being: a place where God has work for us to do to being God’s justice to all.
That place for him was death for the sake of others, but it is also witness of the gift of “A Strength to Love”, which comes only from God in those moments.
We are all there when God moves the curtain of heaven and lets us glimpse something we never knew was humanly possible.
Last week we were reminded that all things work for good for those who love the Lord.
The the mountaintop experience reminds us that this too will pass.
We descend, but we do not lose heart and we do not worry because God says “I will be with you, and I have given you the strength you need in the valley from up here on the mountain.
God can be found in all the regular things of life.
Ordinary experiences can be transformational.
You never know what people are going through, especially in this post-traumatic stress disordered society, exacerbated by the last three year of the COVID pandemic.
Your response may be an answer to their prayer.
We never know.
My Italian and Spanish are not very good, but there is the universal language of a smile, a hug, a “have a nice day.”
We, like Peter, want to bring tables and chairs and make the mountain our home, but we are just passing through.
The mountaintop is not our home.
We are there for that moment or those moments to gain strength, only to be able to descend, to bring love and light and healing to a confused and broken world, to build community and to share God’s justice and compassion.
God has work for us to do, as agents and instruments of transfiguration and transformation…
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: On the 6th day of August, 1945.
The experience of those from the Naval base in a primarily religious City of Buddhists, who had no idea that the bomb —the mushroom cloud that they had just dropped and saw below their planes would destroy a city and its people for life: Hiroshima.
3 days later the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and neither time did the citizens know what was coming.
The iconic photograph of the young girl running naked with her skin glistening and falling off of her body haunts us to this day.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were transfigured into vapor and charred bodies.
We understand that Transfiguration is to change and make whole and new.
This transfiguration was to evaporate and annihilate people.
This is what nuclear proliferation is about.
On the Feast of the Assumption, August 15th, Japan surrendered.
We are blessed that some of them have survived to tell their story.
What this story shows is that human beings can choose the human inclination to evil and war and alienation and destruction or can choose the human capacity for goodness.
Dr. King said “I choose love because hate is much too heavy a burden to bear.”
Nagasaki and Hiroshima experience of biological warfare was the result of hate.
Transfiguration that Peter and James and John and Moses and Elijah and Jesus experienced was pure love.
The transformation and transfiguration into which God calls us today is love.
August 6th and 9th and 15th and beyond in 1945 showed us all about the human capacity to destroy and the awe of the God who comes to turn things right side up… it is a poignant moment, and the transfiguration is just that—a moment.
Transfiguration is ultimately God’s dream/God’s plan/God’s purpose to transform hate into goodness; hate into love; chaos into cosmos and understanding: ultimately that is what this is all about.
Wherever there is conflict and war in the world right now, there is chaos.
We serve a God of love and goodness, forgiveness and reconciliation.
There is in human beings the capacity to be so evil and yet at the same time there is the human capacity for goodness.
That is the good news for today.
“In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
with the glory in his bosom
that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make folk holy,
let us live to make them free—
our God is marching on.”
Let us live the love, hope, strength and joy of Jesus. Let us be strengthened to do the work God has for us to do and let us be good news to share good news with all around us.
That day on the mountain top, a dark cloud came over the disciples and over the whole mountain. From the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Beloved; listen to him!” Jesus was there alone. He and his disciples call us to go down, and down, and down the mountain with them, and with newly awakened hearts share Christ’s love for the world that never dies, with all those who are left behind, the lonely, lost, afraid, and suffering …