“…when they looked around, they saw no
one with them anymore but only Jesus.”
--Mark 9:8
Outside my window, the branches of
the oak in our front yard are being transfigured –metamorphosing—from stark
leafless twiggy things, seemingly lifeless, icons of loss and sorrow, into
budding branches almost literally bursting with life. Images of transfiguration are all around us.
But often we either don’t see them or don’t know what to make of them. We rush on to our next appointment unwilling
to stop and stare and really see what is right before our eyes. The blessing that rises before us.
Looking at the readings for this
Sunday, I quickly read the Old Testament passage –Abraham and Isaac and the
sacrifice—and rushed past the psalm and the reading from Romans to look at the
Gospel. Eager to skip over the side dishes and get to the main course, I guess. And when I saw that the reading from Mark was
the story of the transfiguration, I thought: Oh, that’s why we have the Abraham story! Perfect! Yes. Both stories
have mountains and both involve beloved sons and both involve some kind of change
or revelation. I got that. Easy. I wonder what’s next week?
I was treating these familiar
readings with too much familiarity. I was treating them the way one might treat
an old stain on the wall, or your 851st bowl of oatmeal, or your
wife’s hair… I wasn’t really looking at it, wasn’t really noticing it. I wasn’t
really paying attention. Yeah, it’s fine. Looks nice. Tastes like it always
does… I guess. How would I know? Unless
I take the time to actually taste it, notice it, appreciate it.
When I teach poetry (this is
definitely an aside) I like to share with students a piece of historical prose
written by William Carlos Williams as a kind of introduction. The piece is
called something like “The American Background,” and I first came upon it in
Williams’s Selected Essays (pg. 134). It
is a brief observation (less than a page) about the early American settlers
from England and their misidentification of a bird. Williams tells us that
these early settlers saw a bird that looked to them like something they
remembered from their homeland and they called the bird a robin. But (according
to Williams) what they were looking at was a thrush –a larger bird, a bird of
wilder song and that even landed differently. It was a totally different bird
with only similar coloring. But instead
of looking at it and seeing that this was something new, something they had
never experienced before –they fell back on their past, retreated to what they
already knew and missed the actual: Nothing
new here. Just a robin –seen one, seen ‘em all.
Let’s go find some gold.
Instead of seeing the truth perched
on the branch before us, how often do we rush past not noticing the gift God
has set before us? How often do we look at a thrush, but see only what we think
is a robin –because that’s what we are expecting to see? How often do we read a familiar story and hear
only what we expect to hear –never really what is on the page, never letting
ourselves hear the story fresh, engage it anew?
Beginning to wonder if maybe I’d
missed something by seeing only the familiar, I went back to look at the psalm
(and possibly I was feeling sorry for it –who pays attention to the psalms?). I wondered what it might have to say about the
theme of transfiguration.
I was first struck by the words:
“I believed,
even when I said:
I am greatly
afflicted.
Precious in
the eyes of the Lord
Is the death
of His faithful ones.” (116:10)
And instead of trying to make that mean something about the
Gospel or the story of Abraham, I simply heard it and felt the words begin to
take root in my soul. Precious in the
eyes of the Lord is the death of His faithful ones… In the midst of a
culture that measures success and the value of a life by the amount of comfort
and pleasure experienced, and by the amount of pain and discomfort avoided it
is very troubling to hear of such preciousness. One might even ask: If the faithful one is so precious to God, why
doesn’t God save him?
Next the
psalm speaks of being God’s servant, of being set free by God (“you have loosed my bonds…”). And then
the psalmist sings:
“To You I will offer sacrifice of
thanksgiving,
I will call upon the name of the Lord…”
(cf. 116:16-17)
And I began to contemplate –what does
this mean to me? How is God speaking something new to me through these ancient
words? And it was in that time of
contemplation that I began to understand being transfigured doesn’t just mean a
change of appearance. When Jesus is transfigured,
Peter, James & John see Him in a new way. But it isn’t just that Jesus has
changed in appearance. In this story, in that moment, the disciples get a
glimpse of the Truth… they have the mystical experience of seeing Christ in the
fullness of His being. But Jesus isn’t
the only one who is transfigured on that mountain. Peter, James & John come
down the mountain changed, metamorphosed by the experience. And then I heard
myself asking: What about Abraham? Who is transfigured in that story? On the
one hand there is Abraham who is challenged to offer his beloved son as a
sacrifice, and in his willingness to do whatever God demands of him, he is transformed
from a man who follows God in order to receive a reward (wealth, land, generations
of children, and a lasting memory) into a man who “fears the Lord” [not afraid
the way someone might be afraid of ghosts or the dark or nuns with yardsticks,
but more like awe or a sense of being
devoted to God] (cf. Gen 22:12). Okay,
so on one level there is a change in Abraham’s relationship with God, but there
is something else; something that reminds me of the changed disciples coming
down from the mountain with Jesus. They
now understand Jesus in a new way. They have heard God’s voice from a cloud
proclaim “This is My beloved son. Listen to Him.” (Mk 9:7)
Abraham goes up a mountain following
a God capable of demanding human sacrifice, but he comes down serving a God who
refuses such a sacrifice. Abraham’s very
understanding of God has been transformed –transfigured. God has revealed something new about Himself to Abraham and be so doing He has loosed the
bonds of superstition and set Abraham free.
But this freedom is not a freedom to lick the earth, to seek comfort and
pleasure wherever you will. It is a freedom to serve God, a freedom to submit
to God’s gift of the law. A freedom to offer our brokenness and our sin, our
death to our longings and desires, our selfishness, as the sacrifice we place
upon the alter, our living sacrifice offered in Thanksgiving.
Open your Bible, climb the mountain
(go out in your front yard) and offer God the sacrifice of your attention. Give yourself to God
with a thankful heart. And don’t be afraid. Just open your eyes and let yourself see. Really see. And don’t be surprised if what you see is something you have never noticed
before; you may just find yourself transfigured.
