Transfiguration Sunday

Seeing the Light

When we look at the events of these scriptures through modern eyes, it is hard to know what to make of them: Elisha watching and seeing the prophet taken up to heaven; Jesus on the mountain with his friends suddenly glowing with an unearthly light.


The stories seem, well, like stories, something unreal, unbelievable. But maybe the best word to describe them is mysterious.

It is that thick veil of mystery that makes it difficult for us to see and understand, and at the same time the mystery is so much a part of what is happening that it is impossible to extract it. This is hard for us because we are not people who sit easily in the presence of mystery. We would rather be confronted with a problem that can be solved, a situation that can be fixed, a challenge that can be overcome. But the holy mystery that permeates these stories is not something that we can ever completely figure out. And take comfort, if you will: those who were there and saw it had a hard time with it, too.

The great prophet Elijah has come to the end. He is preparing to leave this life, but his companion and pupil in prophecy, Elisha, will not let him go without getting a blessing. When all the others have abandoned the dying Elijah, Elisha continues to follow him, keeping watch over him and making one last request – for a double share of the spirit that has been upon his mentor. Elijah tells him to keep watching because if he sees Elijah being taken up to heaven, what he has asked will be granted. Elisha does not turn away from the chariots of fire; he does not turn away from that which is beyond comprehension. And in the midst of wind and flame, he sees Elijah carried into heaven. It is an amazing transformation.

But just as amazing is the transformation that happens to Elisha. In his following, his focusing, and his faithfulness he receives a new identify. He takes up the mantle of his predecessor, and clothed like him, he becomes like him. It is a transformation no less powerful, no less mysterious, than Elijah being carried up to heaven. What Elisha sees gives him a whole new sense of his own calling, a new understanding of the power of the holy that is his to use in the world.

There is also a mystical transformation on the mountaintop with Jesus and his three friends. It was his practice to find a deserted place where he could be undisturbed by the crowds, where he could commune with God, where he could pray. And up there in the high thin air, the power of his praying wraps around all of them so that they are enfolded in his vision, and they see him as never before. All their defenses are stripped away; all the barriers that blind them to the presence of the holy are destroyed. They see him with the eyes of their hearts, as he really is, and it is overwhelming, so powerful and other that it is terrifying. They experience what the ancients called the fear of the Lord, fear that it is the beginning of wisdom. They begin to know him as he is; they begin to see him as he is.

But they don’t seem to know what to do with this new wisdom. Peter’s immediate reaction is to want to build three little shelters to house the holy men, to contain them on the mountain, but that is not to be. They have had a mountaintop experience, to be sure, but it will not be limited to a lofty, lonely place. Jesus, the one whom God claims as beloved, the one who now embodies both law and prophecy, does not stay on the mountain. He returns to the valley where there is suffering and sorrow, pain and sickness, exclusion and isolation, broken hearts and broken lives. And the disciples follow, focusing on him and who he is and beginning to see the light, starting to understand what it means to be faithful. Through some miracle, some mystery, on the mountain, they have seen him as he really is and it will change the way they see everything else.

And because he is one of them, they see how they, too, are made in the image of God, bearing in their lives somehow that same holy power. They see this power in him and in themselves, and they see how he uses it in the world ,and they understand perhaps for the first time their own calling: not to build monuments on the mountaintop but to pray and to preach and to practice healing, down in the valley where the people are. The disciples are called to follow, to stay focused on the source of their power, on God, and to act with radical faithfulness.

But there were only three disciples up on that mountain, only three who saw what happened to Jesus. What about the rest of them, the other nine? And what about all the others who have come after them? What about us? We haven’t seen him face to face either.

Or maybe we have and we just didn’t know it. Because we are made in the image of God, and that means that something of the presence of the holy is in us. And if the image of God is in us, then it is also in every other human being.

Part of the transformation that happens when we are enfolded in the power of Jesus is that we see ourselves as we really are, and not only that, but we see others as they are, too. Not altogether perfect, any of us, but not altogether imperfect either. Instead we are finite creatures, vessels of clay as the apostle Paul says, bearing the glory of God.

To see the light, to see ourselves and each other clearly and truly – warts and all -- is a necessary part of transformation. But it is not all that easy to do. We can put a lot of effort into trying to convince others -- and ourselves – that we are good and perfect and right. We often look for someone else to blame when we are at fault. We expend a great deal of energy denying our need for forgiveness. It is a paradox that we have to see our own brokenness in order to comprehend the potential of our own holiness.

The light that shines through Jesus on the mountaintop illuminates our own lives as they really are, and is somehow also reflected in them – in our lives and the lives of others – those like us and unlike us. The holy is present all around, if only we could see.

The writer Madeline L’Engle (in The Irrational Season) describes the mountaintop transformation this way:

Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
the way he really was all the time,
although they had never seen it before –
the glory which blinds the everyday eye and so becomes invisible.
This is how he was:
radiant, brilliant, carrying joy like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was, is,
from the beginning and we cannot bear it.
So he manned himself, became manifest to us,
and there on the mountain they saw him,
really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us?
Then perhaps we will see each other too.

And here is the heart of the mystery: when we see Christ, we will see each other – and we must see, really see, each other in order to see Christ. And then, when we see the light, we are changed, a transformation as irrevocable as death. We take a long loving look at the real. We see the world as it really is, and as God intends it to be, and we act in faithfulness to realize God’s vision. And the light of the world shines on us and in us and through us, and nothing looks quite the same ever again.

A story is told about two of the ancient desert fathers:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Father, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “Why not become all flame?”

This is what it is to see the light. It is to know that the one who is the light of the world burns bright within us. It is to know Christ as Christ really is, and to find our own selves transformed by that wisdom. It is to bear the light into the world. It is to become all flame.

May it be so.






(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Home is.....

Driving to church in Daddy’s pick-up
Singing two Fanny Crosby hymns
Sleeping late and then taking an afternoon nap
Sitting around the kitchen table
Playing Scrabble
The smell of bacon for an alarm clock
Warming by the wood stove
Watching the children climb the magnolia tree
Teaching Sunday School
Rocking the baby
Polishing the silver pitchers and ironing tablecloths
Having lunch with 35 people
Laughing and telling stories
Saying the blessing at every meal
Taking care of each other

Spring is coming!

Some doubt the truth of global warming. After all, we have had one of the coldest, snowiest Januaries ever. But yesterday, at the bird feeder right outside my dining room window, there was a robin. I cannot recall seeing one here this early. And he (or she) was right there -- up close, in full feather, and beautiful. I wonder if the bird felt out of place in this frozen, icy wasteland, where the only accessible food is that supplied by someone who goes to the store and buys bird seed. Does that bird wonder what happened, why the seasons, the warmth, the wind, whispered "Go home. Go home," far before it was really time to fly? I don't know why the robin is here, but I do know that he is beautiful. I have never seen one so close up. I have never seen one in the depth of winter. But here he is and his presence is the promise of spring, of new life, of hope. So...thank you, Robin, for coming and renewing my faith, restoring my hope, and proving that there is and will be spring!

Being Alive

After the amazing landing of the airplane in the Hudson River, reporters were rushing to interview the passengers. One man talked about the experience right after he and the others had been plucked from the plane. His voice was shaking with emotion. He paused and apologized to the reporter for that, saying "I'm just excited to be alive."

I've recalled this man's words over and over. I wonder why it takes something like surviving a plane crash or cancer to show us how sweet life is. A few days after I heard the interview, I had a too-busy, stressful day. I was walking from one meeting to another, and the day was crisp and cold. The sky was blue above and people were bundled up, going here and there. And the man's words came to me like a kind of commandment, instructing me to be excited about being alive. In the middle of busyness, stress, worries, difficulties, and duties: Be excited to be alive. And in that moment, my mood shifted and I saw how beautiful everything was, around me and even within -- my own life.

To the man from the plane, I offer my thanks. And a prayer that his revelation of the amazing experience of being alive will continue to shape him and those of us who heard that interview for a very long time.

Inauguration Day!

Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no Winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul [we] ever took.
Affairs are now soul size,
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.

Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951)

Not the same

It was snowing this morning and my street was not plowed. I suppose I could have been slightly heroic and gotten myself to church, but I decided to stay home. Instead, I worshiped at the "church of the internet" -- live streaming video from a famous church. It was a lovely service, carefully choreographed, with guest musicians, a large choir, and an intellectually-leaning sermon. It was nice -- and better than nothing, I suppose -- but somehow it wasn't quite church.
And this leads me to think some about what is church and, related, what is worship. For me, it is a physical experience, being in the same space with others engaged in the same actions. It is the sounds, smells, warmness or chill of the air, touch of the bulletin and hymnal, presence of others nearby in the pew standing and sitting, breathing and coughing and whispering. So for an experience to be church for me, it is incarnational. And it is also communal. There is something about the gathered body that is essential. One alone can pray and worship, too, but one alone is not church. Church is where I meet others on the same path but with their own journeys; where I share their burdens and hand over mine to them and to God; where I turn my attention from my own self to others and to the world; where I can see God in the world in those made in the image of God. I can pray and sing when I am by myself and that is necessary and important, and it is praise and good. But for an experience to be church and worship for me, it needs to be with others, all of us gathered by the Holy Spirit to meet God and live into the calling of Christ.
I hope it doesn't snow next Sunday...

Paradise with People?

My book group is reading "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. The premise of the book is summed up in the title: what would happen to the earth if people suddenly disappeared. The author describes, in sometimes excruciating detail, the way human-made structures would quickly fail. He also tells of the effects of humans on the air, soil, and water of the planet. And he explains how the earth would begin to revert, heal, restore -- you pick the word -- if we were no longer here.

I've known in a small way what the book proposes all my life. On our farm, cleared land left for only a season or two quickly begins to sprout up with all kinds of things. The blueberry farm where I worked all through high school, acres and acres of cultivated bushes yielding a good crop and employing the neighborhood for three or four weeks each spring, is now all grown up in pines. The barn where we packed the berries is probably fallen down but it is hard to know since the road through what was once field is now completely gone. Places on the farm where timber was cut only fifteen years ago are again forest. For the farmer, maintaining the human enterprise is constant work, so it is not surprising to me to read how quickly nature, of a non-human nature, rushes in.

In November, I traveled in New Zealand. This is one of the places the book discusses. Because it is a remote set of islands, New Zealand existed without humans for a very long time and it is relatively easy to figure out what life was like there before "we" came. One thing that happened with the coming of humans was the introduction of other animals. Stoats, rats, and possums found easy pickings in a place where the only native mammal was a small bat. Centuries of evolution had produced flightless birds, some of which became easy targets for predators, both animals and people. The signature kiwi was almost eradicated; the giant moa was.

There are some small islands just off the large South Island that are being restored to their prehuman state. The rats and possums have been trapped, and naturalists keep constant vigil to see that no new predators are reintroduced. We visited one of those islands, and it was incredible. The whole island is a rain forest, lush and green, with giant ferns reaching up to the sunlight. The most amazing thing was the birds. They are almost tame. I sat for a while beside the path, and all kinds of wild birds came and gathered around, seemingly curious but also astonishingly unafraid. It was a powerful experience to see them up close that way, looking at me with interest, just as I was looking at them.

Many of those on the trip talked about these places as paradise; we observed that walking through these primeval forests must be what it was like to walk in the Garden of Eden. Of course, in Genesis story, paradise is lost soon after the humans arrive. But I want to believe that paradise with people is still possible. Maybe one of the unanticipated effects of all this financial woe will be to turn us away from the kind of mindless overconsumption that has destroyed so much of the earth, attacking like a predator introduced into a trusting, unsuspecting ecosystem.

New Zealand and its birds are very beautiful. So are the doves and juncos and cardinals and sparrows cavorting in the snow under the feeders in my back yard. And I do believe that paradise is possible.

First Footing

From Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community, a prayer for the new year:

New Year

The opening door

This is to be used as a 'first-footing' prayer. In Scotland and the northern parts of England, New Year is given much importance: folk go from house to house wishing each other a good year ahead, and celebrate their good wishes with food and plenty of drink. It is often seen as important who should be the first to cross the threshold and 'bring in the year' once midnight has passed. This song (spoken or sung) asks Christ Himself to come and 'first-foot' for us. The door is opened to welcome Him in and invite His blessing, whether He comes in silence or in the company of other guests.


This day is a new day
that has never been before.
This year is a new year,
the opening door

(Open the door)

Enter, Lord Christ --
we have joy in Your coming.
You have given us life;
and we welcome Your coming.

I turn now to face You,
I lift up my eyes.
Be blessing my face, Lord;
be blessing my eyes.
May all my eye looks on
be blessed and be bright,
my neighbors, my loved ones
be blessed in Your sight.

You have given us life
and we welcome Your coming.
Be with us, Lord,
we have joy, we have joy.
This year is a new year,
the opening door.
Be with us, Lord,
we have joy, we have joy.

Amen!

A New Year

The snow is white and crisp and clean. It fell all day, covering up the grayness of mid-winter. Tonight the air is so cold that it gives a kind of purifying shock to the lungs. The sky is black velvet clear with all those distant stars twinkling as bright as the Christmas lights reflecting on the icy walkways. The old year is now as gray and dull as the winter landscape was before the snow. Soon we will turn the calendar, learn to write 2009, look for a fresh start. May this year be like the cold brightness of this night, beautiful, erasing the old dinginess, giving us a sparkling landscape so pure and new that it takes the breath away. May we be able to begin again, right the wrongs we have lived into, turn our backs on the past. And may the bright shining stars light the way into a future where we learn how to be the best selves that we can be, our true selves, the ones who are made in the image of God.

The Christmas Parrot

Psalm 148

Luke 2:22-40

Did you get what you expected for Christmas? Or did you spend the last few days standing in line somewhere, waiting to exchange? It is always nice to get the perfect size, the right color, the preferred item, at the outset, but sometimes, in spite of our lists and our not-so-subtle hints, that just doesn’t happen. Usually we can – and do – swap for something else, but there are those things that we just get stuck with – no exchange, no gift receipt.

This happened a number of years ago to friends of mine. On Christmas morning, one member of the family received a huge box. I imagine it was far and away the biggest gift under the tree. Everyone waited in anticipation to see what it was.

Well, what it was – was a very large, ceramic parrot. The parrot was about three feet high, painted a really bad shade of green with orange and yellow trim. It was pretty awful.

I don’t know if the gift-giver meant it as a serious gift or not but the Christmas parrot became a great tradition in that family. After the first year, the object was for the previous year’s recipient to foist the parrot on another relative. And, as I understand it, the rules of this tradition mean that once you have, you have it until you can get somebody else to receive it. The Christmas parrot roosted in my friends’ sun porch for several years, actually.

After the flannel shirt is frayed and worn and the sweater is moth-eaten, when the box of candy is long-gone and that year’s hottest toy is gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, the Christmas parrot endures. How ironic that what seemed to be a joke at first has become one of the most lasting gifts in my friends’ family.

Now, you probably don’t have any Christmas parrots in your family – it seems a unique tradition, fortunately – but I imagine almost everyone has received a gift that was not quite what they expected. And that should not be a surprise or a disappointment to us, because when you think about the story of the first Christmas, almost no one there got what they expected either. From the very beginning, Christmas is about the unexpected.

Old Zechariah in the temple is visited by an angel who tells him that after he and Elizabeth have given up, they will indeed have a child. And that child, John, will be the one to prepare the way for the messiah. Zechariah’s reaction: “How can this be? Are you sure?” The angel also visits Mary and gives her unexpected – unbelievable – news. Her reaction is the same: “How can this be?” And Joseph, an orderly, measured man, no doubt, a carpenter, receives life-changing instructions in a dream. It would not be surprising if in the cold, bright light of day he asked himself: “How can this be?” Then the two of them, Mary and Joseph, find themselves in Bethlehem, a baby needing to be born, and no provisions. And we might ask ourselves: “How can this be – that the son of the great God of the entire universe should come into the world in this way?” Yes, from the very beginning, what people got was not what they expected.

And the beginning is even before Mary and Joseph. The prophets told of the unexpected as well – a messiah, a savior, coming in a world of disarray and disappointment, a world of sorrow and sadness and sin.

And even that is not the beginning, perhaps. If we had the vision to see, it might be that we would know that the beginning is without beginning. We would know the most unexpected thing of all – that the Lord of all the world cares even for us; that before we even existed, a great and powerful love was built into all that would come into being; that this love would not depend on our merit or worth or goodness, but it would come to us as an amazing unexpected gift of grace. We would know what Simeon and Anna knew – that God has not abandoned us, but instead has provided for our salvation, even when that means saving us from ourselves.

But this knowledge of the prophets is not an easy knowledge. It defies our expectations. All the waiting and anticipation for deliverance comes, not through power and might, but gathered up in a tiny baby. The prophecies are fulfilled in the strangest way imaginable, wrapped in fragile flesh and completely helpless. God wears a human face, and is called by a human name, and lives a human life. And almost everything about that life, the life of Jesus, is unexpected: his birth, his ministry, his friends – none of it what the people were looking for.

The one who fulfilled the ancient prophecies of the messiah was born to a poor unmarried couple, far from home, with no place to stay. The first witnesses to the miracle of his life were shepherds – unsophisticated, uneducated, unwashed field hands. He never wrote a book, built a church, had a family – never did any of the things that we might think memorable. For his entire, brief ministry, he associated with the most unlikely types – not the rich and powerful, not the religious leaders, not the respected of society. He spent his life with common laborers and IRS agents, with fallen women and contaminated lepers: the outcasts of society, the least and the last and the lost.

Even during his lifetime, the good news he brought was a strange kind of good news. So why should we be surprised if the gift of the presence of God still comes in strange and unexpected ways. Just like the first Christmas when it seemed nothing quite went right, and yet the Lord was in the midst of it, so it often is in our own lives. And sometimes it almost seems that everything has to fall apart in order to make room for his coming. Perhaps Simeon’s words to Mary are also meant for us: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many. . . . And a sword shall pierce your soul, too.”

“A sword shall pierce your soul.” The cross is in the cradle and we do not receive the baby of Bethlehem without also embracing the man of sorrows. Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner explains it this way:

“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there, too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.” (The Hungering Dark, pp.13-14)

“Just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.” God comes, in loss and disappointment and broken dreams. God comes, disguised as illness. God comes, through unlikely companions and disrupted plans, through heartbreak and betrayal. It is all gift, but it is gift cloaked in mystery, because what seems at first to be a joke turns out to endure through our lives, bearing the presence of God in a way we least expect.

When your marriage has not lived up to your hopes and dreams, when your children turn out to be a disappointment, when your life seems dull and unfulfilled, for the face of the savior. He will be there, born to you in a form that you least expected. When you are sick, really sick, or worse still, when someone you love is ill, look for the face of the savior. He will be there, leading you into a new way of life, showing you how precious the ordinary days can be, offering healing whether or not the doctors can promise a cure. When nothing seems to be going right, when everything is falling apart, look for the face of the savior. He will be there, born in the midst of the world’s chaos.

That is how it was at the first Christmas. And that is how it is now, too. We sing “all is calm, all is bright”, and that is true of the places where he is, but it is also true that he does not wait until everything is calm and bright in order to come. He is to be found in the places of fear and unrest, in pain and suffering, in the darkest of times. His presence is a gift, a soul-piercing gift, and it comes in the most unexpected ways.

Especially at Christmas, we want a God who will lift us out of our troubles and instead we get one who comes to be with us in whatever mess we are in; one who will use anything, even the woes of the world, to touch our hearts, to turn our heads, to get our attention; one who knows both the joy and the sorrow of being fully human. We get a God who comes to be with us, because this is the one who loves us with an everlasting love, and that is the greatest gift of all.

So let us take what is offered, this amazing, unexpected gift. And like Simeon and Anna, let us seek to live out our days in peace, because with our own eyes, we have seen our salvation. And let us praise God and speak about this child to all who will listen.

Thanks be to God for the gift of Jesus.