Dislocated in Time and Space - A Transfiguration Event

 

Transfiguration Sunday comes early this year. It seems that we’ve only just wrapped up the Christmas festivities and put away the trees and lights and decorations and already we’re at the Transfiguration.  In a few days, on Wednesday, we’ll exchange beauty for ashes; we’ll trade the joy of Christmas for the mourning of lent (to invert Isaiah 61:3).  We’ll put away our hallelujahs and begin the long trek toward the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.

But that’s the way of things in this life. Life turns quickly. Yesterday the children were born, today they’re grown, tomorrow they’ll have children of their own. Our lives move from one moment to the next in a continual blur. It all happens so fast, everything changes. It’s here and it’s gone, every moment fleeting.

In our gospel reading for today we find Jesus along with his friends, Peter, James and John atop a very high mountain experiencing one of those fleeing moments – a literal mountain top experience that is over all too soon. The glory of the theophany fades and Jesus and his disciples return to the plains below.

But for that one glorious moment, they were overwhelmed by a theophany, an appearance of God. God, who is a separate reality distinct from and unlimited by the word, sometimes embraces the self-limitations of a specific time and a particular form in order to appear to us in this world. God appears as a thunderstorm, with thunder and hail, lightning and torrents of rain. Or God appears as an infinitely burning bush. And there atop the mountain in the glory of God’s appearance, Jesus was transfigured, transformed, changed.

It is a strange experience, dislocated in both space and time. Heaven and earth meet, the past and the future overlap in a moment of transcending present. Time and space are warped, blending forward and backward. And the mountain is the place for this kind of experience. The mountain is the place where one can meet with God, the place where one can leave the world of the natural and the mundane and to ascend into very heavens. Around the world, in nearly every culture, from Israel to Greece, from India to China, from Japan to the Americas, the mountain is a place where the reality of our world touches the divine realms. There is a mystery there – a sense of awe, surrounded by banks of clouds with an expansive view, unlimited vision of both the clouds of heaven and the horizons of earth. The God of the bible is sometimes named El-Shaddai which may mean the God of the mountain. He meets with Moses on the mountain. He meets with Elijah on the mountain. And this is not without relevance to our story today.

The mountain is unnamed in our gospel account; Mark describes it only as a “very high mountain.” Some have suggested that it was Mount Hermon, or perhaps Mount Tabor, but neither of these are especially high mountains. Others suggest that Mark is thinking of the same mountain of the north that apocalyptic authors, like the author of 1 Enoch, described as the place where there would be a manifestation of the divine in the last days. This is a place of mysterium tremendum – a place of strange harmony between fear and awe, a place of both fascination and great danger. A place of wonder and of terrible power.

Jesus was transformed there in front of them on top of that mountain. Elijah and Moses appeared with him and a cloud of glory overshadowed them all. And from that cloud a voice from heaven spoke saying, “This is my son, whom I dearly love. Listen to him!”

Here on the mountain with Jesus we are dislocated in both time and space. The same voice that spoke to Jesus at this baptism, speaks again to say, “This is my son, the beloved.” Moses and Elijah, prophets from the past are there to speak with Jesus about his soon coming death. Time and space blend back and forward. The Greek language has two words for time, chronos and kairos.  Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, the tick, tick, tick, of the clock hands one moment following after another.  Kairos signifies a time between, moments of indeterminate time in which something special happens. Chronos is quantitative and measurable.   Kairos is qualitative and cannot be measured or marked or preserved.  It can only be experienced.

“Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily chronos; during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in Kairos” (L’Engle, 93)

Indeed – the transfiguration event has sometimes been interpreted by theologians as a misplaced story of the resurrection. The description of Jesus’ transfiguration shares some similarity with the resurrection and it is thought by some scholars that the events of the resurrection were moved backward in the story so as to help make sense of the inexplicable resurrection event. Jesus had just before this event, told his disciples that he would suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he would be, that he must  be killed – but that after three days he would rise again. He spoke to them plainly about this, but they didn’t understand. (Mark 8: 31 – 32). The passion prediction – not understood in the moment is finally comprehended when seen through the eyes of the resurrection. We didn’t, we don’t understand how death can be glory – not until after the resurrection. I’m not convinced that this is the case – that the transfiguration story is a resurrection account transplaced in time - but it is true that the mystery of the transfiguration event expects the resurrection, and the resurrection explains the mystery of the transfiguration.

Peter’s desire to memorialize the moment is understandable. Time is fleeting. Everything fades. The voice speaks and then is silent. The cloud of glory envelops them and then is gone. The moment on the mountain fades and Jesus and his friends return to the plains below.

'Tis good, Lord, to be here!
Your glory fills the night;
Your face and garments, like the sun,
Shine with unborrowed light.

Fulfiller of the past!
Promise of things to be!
We hail your body glorified,
And our redemption see.

 

Before we taste of death,
We see your kingdom come;
We long to hold the vision bright,
And make this hill our home.

‘Tis Good, Lord, To Be Here - J. Armitage Robinson

Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten season – a time of preparation. We only just recently celebrated the birth of Lord and Savior and already we are getting ourselves ready to consider his gruesome death and glorious resurrection. But here on the mountain, in this transfiguration event, we see and hear and experience the fulfillment of that preparation. In the words of Robinson’s hymn, “We hail his body glorified, and our redemption see.”

And with Peter we might say, “Rabbi, Teacher, Master, it is good that we are here.” But Peter didn’t really understand what was happening and he definitely didn’t know what he was saying. He was so afraid. He was sore afraid (to steal from Luke’s phraseology.) On the mountain, surrounded by the cloud of glory, with the prediction of pain and suffering and death blotted out by the awe and wonder of the moment, Peter says, “let’s build three shrines here. One for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.” But he didn’t know what he was saying. He was afraid.

But time moves on, and as suddenly as it began, it was all over. Time is fleeting, every moment bleeding into the next. The vision fades, the cloud evaporates and the transfiguration is over.  Jesus and his friends come back down from the mountain and he tells them to keep quiet about it all – until after the Human one, the Son of God, had risen from the dead.  “History cannot be stopped, and we must grasp it significance. The light of the resurrection enables us to see it with hope. The death of Jesus is not the victory of darkness, which is already overcome” (Gutierrez, 51).

Lent is the time of preparation. We’ve had the glory and joy on the mountain, but now we’ll go back down to the plain and begin the long, hard road towards death and suffering and to the wonder and mystery of the resurrection. We may not understand, but we will take that journey.

 

 

Gutierrez, Gustavo. Sharing the Word through the Liturgical Year. Orbis Book, Mary Knoll, NY. 1997.  

L’Engle Madeline. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, North Point Press, New York, NY, 1980.

Robinson, J. Armitage. ‘Tis Good, Lord, To Be Here. 1890.