Divine Snapshots
Homily: Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2006
The Very Rev. Harry Pritchett
The Cathedral. of St. Philip
Sometimes I imagine important church feast days as different kinds of lights. All deal in wattage, but in a different way. The source of the light is the same, but the manner of manifestation is different. For instance, Christmas seems to me to be like riding late on a lonely interstate with your dashboard gas gauge resting on empty and you finally see that beautiful service station sign, lighted again the dim sky, high up in the air so you can see it at a distance, and you breathe a sigh of relief. In the dark of winter, when I’m about out of gas, Christmas illuminates the dark with a speck of light seen as far away as Advent, and full of hope for new energy. It’s the light that points the way to the filling-up of my tank again.
On the other hand, Easter is more like the blinding light of a gigantic spot when you are on the stage, in the play, and suddenly out there from the dark, you’re bathed in total white light. Given the forty days of Lent to get my act together, and then, Camera! Lights! Action! This blinding spotlight rises like the sun over the buildings in downtown Atlanta on a spring morning and searches every crevice of the street below with its warmth, and I am over whelmed. Surprise! It’s Easter! And then there’s Pentecost, which to me is sort of like strobe lights. It’s like the flashing of a divine rock concert – many colored, glorious wind and fire and excitement, the singing and dancing of electric energy – holy power – holy spirit – blowing all the circuits – Holy Pentecost
And then there is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Nobody much even knows where it comes – tucked away on a hot, dusty August the 6th, only occurring on Sunday once every six years. But here it is today in the dog days of August. Transfiguration to me is more like a camera flash bulb – a Sylvania blue dot. It’s like someone taking the vacation snapshots when you’re not expecting it and splat! It flashes. The rods and cones in your eyes go scurrying and a frantic retina needs reassurance behind the close door of a comforting eyelid. You may have been lined up for the family picture and you knew it was coming, but you didn’t know exactly when. Ordinary ongoing life is illuminated by a momentary flash of insight and becomes very extraordinary indeed—different from what you were experiencing just before or just after the camera flashes. But the camera does not lie. The truth is out in the light – in the open—at least for that moment. As my old Alabama friend use to say, "You don’t know how you look ‘till you have your picture took!” Every thing is made real, and for a split second you see! Later perhaps it’s a cloud and it’s down the mountain, but now, spat, the camera flashlight explodes and every thing is transfigured.
The gospel story for this feast day is rich in images. Jesus takes his closest three friends, Peter and James and John to the top of an unnamed mountain. And indeed they have what we might even today call a mountain top experience. It depicts a moment when the disciples get a fleeting glimpse behind the mask of Jesus. It’s not a long view, but a very deep view. They see a snapshot of their friend, and the truth and mystery of all that is gets somehow strangely revealed in that moment.
He appears to be talking to Elijah, the gigantic prophetic figure out of the past who was not unacquainted with mountains himself since his life changing event on Mount Carmel with the devious Jezebel. And then the second person in the “divine pow-wow” is Moses, the great law giver , the founder of the faith – who also did significant time on top of Mount Sinai with tablets of stone. Peter, James and John are awestruck and terrified and rightly so. Who wouldn’t be? Peter speaks in his usual impetuous manner and stammers out the first thing that comes to mind. Let’s build three monuments to mark this place – one for Moses—one for Elijah – and one for you, Jesus”. Peter was making a high tribute by suggesting that the entire Jewish tradition could best be symbolized for all future generations by carving the faces of Elijah, the great prophet and Moses, the great lawgiver along with Jesus into the Mount Rushmore of Israel. That was high praise indeed to attribute to the ordinary son of a carpenter – a wandering, itinerate preacher from Nazareth Yes indeed, this moment is a powerful vision that enlightens them – that gives them deep insight into who Jesus is. They see, so to speak, if only for the moment. “This is my beloved son. the revelation of who I am. So listen.. Listen”. But it doesn’t last long. A cloud dims the brightness of the truthful moment. Their vision becomes vague and fuzzy again and they all will betray Jesus at the end. Jesus becomes alone again naturally. And they all must now go down the mountain, and be engaged again on the long road, ending on another mountain called Golgotha with three crosses, only to be surprised later by the white hot spot light of Easter sunshine.
So what do we make of all this? What is the good news for us in this feast? I believe it lies some where in the experience of Mystery…in the ordinary becoming extraordinary…in the common moment or person who might reveal to us something very deep, very holy. It was Albert Einstein, of all people, who said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” And it is that mystery which we celebrate today in the Transfiguration. In the awesome moments atop that mountain, Peter, James and John, who were blind and deaf before, suddenly began, little by little, to seethe mystery of Christ in this man Jesus. And their story becomes our story when we begin to see beyond the horizons of our earthbound eyes that the world is not flat – cause and effect alone – bereft of depth. There are mysterious mountain tops everywhere because God is infused in the sweet Mystery of all of life.
Now these mountain top transfigurations may be something large and earth-shaking like the holy moment of birth – or the empty silence of death – or the cleansing tears of along held back loss – or the pure gladness of falling in love with the love of your life on a summer night. Or these mountain top transfigurations may be little things – very ordinary things that suddenly glow with mystery and take us momentarily outside ourselves to another place. Like tucking in your sleepy child, and looking at her soft face and knowing for a moment you have really seen an angel. Or standing at the kitchen sink after an exhausting day and feeling his hand over your shoulder that says, “I know. I care. I love you”, and allowing yourself to experience the warmth of being touched by more than human hands, but by the hand of God. Or prolonging the brief silence at the meeting after the right decision has been made, not necessarily the easy one... and hearing in the silence, “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased.” Or singing through your tears at the funeral of your beloved one, “Jesus Christ is risen today, alleluia, alleluia.” And allowing yourself to be transported to the heavenly chorus of angels and archangels. Or as for me one moment last week when I saw again that snapshot of Manachim Begin and Answar Sadat shaking hands before a beaming Jimmy Carter and knowing again the shining truth that we humans really are one! Kyrie eleison, indeed. Kyrie eleison. Yes, yes, there are mountain top experiences of being grasped by the mystery…. of truth shinning through and radiating the ordinary.
But for now and for most of the now, we are on our way. Yet I believe that each one of us harbors a deep longing for revelations on tops of some mountains somewhere. Unless we are open to the mystery – the something more—in and through our ordinary lives, we may miss the mountain –– we may miss the transfiguring snapshots of the light of Christ who is after all the light of the world.
Comments? Contact Dean Pritchett at: HPritchett@stphilipscathedral.org