Let us pray.
Dear God, kindle in us the fire of your great and merciful love. In the name of your transfigured son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
What wilderness are you walking through right now?
I know for many of us, that may be a personal question, and perhaps one that’s hard to answer, hard to admit even. It may be a wilderness of grief, or of anxiety, of illness or of doubt – it may be a wilderness that we are ashamed of, a wilderness of what our mind tries to convince us is weakness or failure. Paths that are rocky, boulders that stand in our way, dry places where nothing seems to bloom or grow.
This morning’s Gospel takes us back up the mountain – we’ve been spending a lot of time up on the mountain, on the plain, these last few weeks – it takes us to a place I would argue is a wilderness of its own, a high place, not easy to get to, a place set apart from the rest of the world. In these high places, challenging but beautiful, we meet God. And in this high place, this morning, we see Jesus, God incarnate, unexpectedly transfigured, transformed, holding a conversation with Moses and Elijah – talking about what is to come, his own personal wilderness of betrayal, arrest, trial and death – his “departure,” as Luke calls it.
So it makes sense to read this story, the Transfiguration, right before Lent begins. Transfiguration draws us to the doorway, the threshold of the wilderness, and it also carries us beyond it, giving us a glimpse of the other side, showing us the glory we are moving toward, as we get ready to begin this walk through Lent with Jesus.
In fact, that word, “departure,” that word that we just heard, is a translation of the word exodos – Jesus, this morning standing with Moses, who led the Hebrew people’s Exodus centuries before, is about to begin his own difficult exodus, his own desert journey – Jesus’ Exodus, which brings us all to new life. And as we mark the days of Lent, we must go through wilderness to get to the other side, but once we’re there, we will see glory. We will be glory, as Paul reminds us in this morning’s reading from 2nd Corinthians: “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
The thing is, we want glory now. We need glory now.
There are two stories in today’s Gospel. It’s easy to focus on the first one – or maybe not easy, but certainly where our attention goes first is that first story, the mountaintop story – Jesus, Moses, Elijah, John, James, and Peter – bless his heart, wanting to build shelters for these three prophets, wanting to contain the mystery, to tie down the spirit, to hold that glory so it won’t disappear again. And as soon as he suggests the idea, God speaks: “This is my Son – listen to him!” And then that brilliant shining light disappears. And then they leave the mountaintop. And then the second story begins:
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met them. Just then a man from the crowd shouted…
I’ll admit I wasn’t planning to preach on that too – the paragraph seems extraneous, tacked on – and in fact, the lectionary includes it in parentheses, as an optional reading. Jesus and the three disciples come down the mountain, back down to the crowds, back to another demon possession, another parent, another child.
As Lutheran pastor Janet Hunt puts it, “when they come down the mountain, Jesus and the disciples are met by profound human need.” A father calling out from the crowd, asking for healing for his son.
And as another Lutheran pastor, Kimberly Miller van Driel, points out, the voice of the man in the crowd echoes the voice we just heard, of God the Father. We just heard God’s voice telling us, “This is my son” – reminding us of Jesus’ baptism by the Jordan – Here is my Son, my chosen – listen to him.
And the man in the crowd – Teacher, I beg you to look at my son.
Listen. Look. Heal.
Transfiguration is not something just to marvel at. We are not meant to tie the glory down, to build a comfortable house for it. As Paul reminds us, we are to be transfigured too. Part of the point of glory is to heal the suffering, to show the way, to illuminate the journey with us from wilderness to the promised land, from grief to glory, from exile to home.
But of course, we want the glory now. We need the glory now.
I think of the Wilderness our human family is moving through, long before this Lenten season begins. Wildernesses of poverty, of war, of political conflict, of migration – war turning homes into wilderness, flattening schools and hospitals and neighborhoods into wastelands. Refugees at our borders and homeless in our cities, navigating wilderness that is cold and dangerous and inhospitable. I find myself heartbroken by the wilderness I see so many people weathering here and around the world, especially this week in Ukraine. Heartbreak is its own wilderness.
Part of the journey through the wilderness is seeking the hope in it. For wilderness, while it is dangerous, while it is difficult, it is not without life, and it is not without beauty. Part of that hope is knowing that we journey through the wilderness not alone but in community.
And in seeing the hope, we then must ask ourselves, how can we be the hope? How does the wilderness change us and transfigure us and what do we do with that?
This past week, my husband Phil and I were fortunate enough to have a few days in one of our favorite places, that narrow, beautiful sandbar that is the Outer Banks, home to its own beautiful wilderness of sand and ocean. We usually go down in the off season, when it’s often cold and windy, though this past week was unexpectedly warm and sunny. Every year I look for dolphins, and by yesterday I still hadn’t seen them. We were up early enough to see the run rise over the water, a glory of light shattered over the waves. A little while later, after we’d put the last bags and suitcases in the car for the drive home, we took a final look at the water, beautiful but dangerous, a deep and cold part of the coastline that has sunk pirate ships, World War II merchant ships, where hurricanes have torn away the land and swimmers watch out for rip tides.
And then, there were the dolphins, leaping out of the blue, swimming south and east, their beautiful shapes arcing from the water and splashing back in again, playing, looking for breakfast, glorying in the March sunshine and the calm blue waves. After a little bit, I started to see them swimming in groups, two or three each, with young – families of dolphins, journeying through their water wilderness together, in whatever beautiful communion I’m sure that dolphins share – navigating the depths as they swam toward the sunlight.
What wilderness are you walking, or swimming, through?
As we begin the work of Lent, I invite you to seek beauty. There are constant moments like these, when the dolphins leap out of the wilderness of ocean, when light breaks through shadow. Seek beauty. Create beauty. Travel together. Know that there is glory ahead of us, and behind us, and with us. See that the wilderness is not barren, is not hopeless. Plant gardens in it. Remember that we each have our wilderness to navigate, remember empathy, walk this road in other people’s shoes. Allow space for transformation, for transfiguration, in yourself, and in the spaces you inhabit. Listen for the spirit. Listen for the voice of God, the voice in the crowd that says, I beg you, look at my child.
Amen.
