Transfiguration

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

February 19, 2012; Last Epiphany, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 9:2-9) – Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

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Peter, James and John were with their friend Jesus on a mountain.  Something happened, and it seemed like Jesus glowed with a dazzling light.  What we know now, that they didn’t know then, is that for a moment, these friends saw more deeply into the spiritual reality of Jesus than they had before.  And then it passed, and they weren't sure what to do with what they had experienced.  Except to remember it.

I have an acquaintance, Earl, who takes hikes with his wife.  She is an amateur botanist and a rather outgoing extrovert.  On their hikes, she likes to point out things to Earl and tell him their botanical Latin names.  They were walking along a mountain path one day, she a couple of steps in front, when suddenly Earl was grasped by a small violet blooming by the side of the trail.  For a moment, everything stopped.  It was as though the little flower had seized all of Earl's attention.  He saw its velvet texture, the complex network of veins feeding the earth's nurture into every molecule of the plant, the rich variation of colors.  It seemed like nearly every shade of the color wheel was present in the subtle hues of this small flower.  All was silent.  All was still.  It was like everything in creation had been concentrated in the beauty and being of this little plant. 

Then, like a blink it was over.  His wife was several yards ahead of him on the path, still talking and pointing things out to him.  The violet had shrunk into its place as a small, inconspicuous flower on the side of a large mountain.  "Honey, what's this flower?"  "Oh, that's a..." and she gave the Latin name for it.  "It's a common variety of mountain violet."  But for Earl, the air fairly tingled with new and alive possibilities for some time.

There are these moments when our attention is grasped.  We all have these moments.  I think they are moments when we see more deeply into reality itself.  I believe it is important not to dismiss these moments, but rather to treasure them.  To let them be more real than other moments.  To let them shape our sense of reality itself.  Things may be more wonderful than we could ever imagine.

I wonder if I might cultivate a more open awareness, to be more available to the possibilities of transfiguration.  Artists see deeply because they are looking.  Poets hear deeply because they are listening.  The rest of us typically see and hear whatever we expect to see and hear, don’t we?  Except every once in a while, when we get surprised by transfiguration.

I remember watching my daughter Allison play soccer during those early years when kids play "herd-ball."  You know how it is, when all of the players crowd around the ball trying to kick it, little legs and feet all in one big jumble.  Away from the herd and the ball and the action of the game, on the far side, Allison ran across the field with joyful abandon, her hair flying behind her, running as though she were filled with delight at the simple freedom to run.  To me, she looked so happy, so beautiful, so free.  The image is permanently fixed in my emotional memory.  Several times when the complications of growing up left her appearing not so beautiful and not so free to my eyes, that memory could remind me of who she really is.

It seems to me that edge moments are times when the veil is sometimes opened, and we see or feel something more deeply.  Those moments when we are outside our comfort zone, when we are on an edge – when life is on an edge.  One of those memories for me was the day when our parishioner John Harrison died. 

Earlier in the afternoon, John was down here at the church delivering Christmas cards and gifts, and at least one exuberant kiss on the cheek.  His Christmas card was his own creation.  On the back side was a quote he had picked up from a recent Thomas Merton class he had been taking from Lynne Spellman.  The quote was from Merton's journals, a moment when Merton is looking out over some ordinary, familiar terrain:

The same hills as always, but now catching the light in a totally new way...in mist so that it seemed to be a tropical shore, a newly discovered continent.  A voice in me seemed to be crying, "Look!  Look!"  For these are the discoveries, and it is for this that I am high on the mast of my ship...and I know that we are on the right course, [and this line was underlined in John's light blue ink] for all around us is the sea of paradise.

"And I know that we are on the right course, for all around is the sea of paradise."  As I stood by John in the emergency room that afternoon, praying with my hand laid upon his head, the medical team working hard to bring his heart back to life, I felt a gentle and profound peace.  The sounds of machines and technicians receded away, the place became deeply still.  I looked up as if to see something, but there was nothing, except a quiet intuition that all was well.  This clamor – and even this death – had around it the gentle quality of a smiling serenity.  John’s leaving was bathed in love, and seemed to anticipate a reunion with a deep joy.  His death was for me and experience of transfiguration, even in my grief and sense of loss.  All around us was the sea of paradise.

More often there are those smaller moments, those ordinary moments of transfiguration.  I often have them here in this holy place, in this church.  When water is poured over someone, and I can almost see the heavens open and the Spirit alight and a voice speak, "This is my beloved child."  When bread is broken and the words repeated, "The gifts of God for the people of God" – bringing divine life to us.  When the sounds of feet walking toward communion or the words of a hymn touch something so deeply real.  There is gratitude.  And peace.  Deep gladness.  Wonder.

There are moments when the veil is lifted, and we see below the ordinary surface into the wondrous depths of unseen realities around us.  It is seeing with the eyes of the artist, the poet or the saint.  Life is glorious.  Or as Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."  (from God's Grandeur) 

It is possible to open our awareness of this "dearest freshness deep down things."  It takes a bit of willingness and expectation.  Artists see deeply because they are looking.  Poets hear deeply because they are listening.  What are your expectations?  What might it take to suspend your expectations just a bit? 

Look around you.  Every person here is a glorious, beloved child of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, and grafted into the Body of the Transfigured Christ.  You are simply glowing with the fire of divine life.  Can you see it?  Just under the surface, there is something dazzling.  Divine life is being expressed in us, God’s beloved.  Can you see the glory?  …the dearest freshness deep down things?  For all around us is the sea of paradise.

[I didn’t have time to write a sermon this week, so I pieced this together from older sermons of mine on the Transfiguration.  So if some of these illustrations sound familiar, well, maybe they are.]
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