A Glimpse of Glory

Matthew 17:1-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

The 20th century poet T. S. Eliot once wrote: “Humankind can only stand so much reality.” Such a statement is predicated on the notion that we humans have limited ability to deal with all that life hurls at us and further, implies that reality is often (maybe always!) overwhelming and negative. “Stop the world! I want to get off!” (In calmer moments when life comes at us in more measured doses, we can acknowledge that reality can bring blessing as well as challenge.

Permit me to tinker with Eliot’s words: Humankind can only understand just so much reality. Even with all our advances in science and the proliferation of knowledge, we seem only discover that when we  push back the frontier we discover that   there are worlds beyond worlds, horizons beyond horizons infinite levels of reality. The more we know the more we realize there is to know. And if we have even a hint of humility, we have to acknowledge, particularly if we include spiritual matters, that we finite creatures will never comprehend or understand the infinite. If we could, it wouldn’t be infinite.

One of the primary claims of all monotheistic religions is that God is infinite, without creaturely limits or boundaries. And that leads us to the thrust of the story we just read from Matthew, an account whose intent is to give Peter, James and John a glimpse of glory, an experience intended to reveal the divine nature of this man Jesus. We call this event “The Transfiguration”.

Through the eyes of those men we are permitted to see a reality that we do not have the capacity to see unaided, unassisted. The veil is pulled back. We get a peek behind the curtain. (My imagination envisions a scene where very dark glasses are handed the three guys so they won’t be blinded.) Metamorphosis is an apt term. Dazzling is the adjective used in this translation.

A glimpse of the infinite and what a glimpse! Appearing in the experience were two heavyweights from the Old Testament there to underscore the continuity of this revelation with God’s activity in the past. Peter wanted it to be more than a glimpse; he wanted to linger in this glory; to make it last… permanent. “I’ll put together three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” You can hardly blame Peter for wanting to celebrate and commemorate the occasion. It’s a natural human tendency to want to institutionalize the experience; to lock down on the moment and preserve it,  squeeze the most one can out of the moment. Today we would call those who do this, “experience junkies.” Their faith is dependent on maintaining the emotional high, the exhilarating experience.

Don’t misunderstand. Experience can be an important foundation for faith. But, to quote Eliot again,  “We had the experience but we missed the meaning.” We tend to focus on the past and live there, forgetting that God is still active. Glimpses of past glory tend to stick in our soul. That’s good, but to turn them into a formula, to institutionalize them or make the experience a sign of superior spirituality – wear a t-shirt that says “I was on the mount with Jesus at transfiguration” – “I caught the light” or whatever is to misunderstand, even to cheapen one’s faith.

What is the meaning… so easily missed? We must dig deeper.  Look at the next verse: “A bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice said, ‘This is my beloved Son; with Him I am well pleased; listen to Him!’”
 
And then, we’re told, the disciples fell to the ground in fear; knocked of their feet. As dramatic as this transfiguration encounter was, it was not without precedent. Seems it happens often when people are confronted by the living God. The author of Hebrews 10:31 writes, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God”. Get ready Peter, James and John; this is not the last time a revelation will scare the bejeebees out of you. You’ll be on the lake you know so well and he’ll come walking on the waves; you’ll be fishing without a bite and he’ll speak and you’ll be blown away by the catch; and one day you’ll run to his tomb… and find it empty. Fear is a frequent emotion when you’re in the presence of the living God who cannot be controlled; who defies all our comfortable notions about how a nice, tame God should act and who call us and redirects our lives.
Will Willimon, pastor and author, tells of a young man who met with him and began the conversation by saying, “Look, you’re a sort of expert on God, right? Well some things have been happening to me in my life, strange coincidences. And I am going to tell you about them. And I hope that I know what you’ll say. I hope that you will tell me that this has nothing to do with God. But then again, I am afraid it might, so here goes.”

Then he told me a series of odd coincidences and happenstances, weird revelations and realizations. When he finished, I said to him, “Well in my expert opinion, this all sounds suspiciously like the voice of God. I think God is intruding into your life, attempting to get you to do something for him.”

“Oh, no!” The young man moaned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

That was what he said, “afraid.” He was a smart young man, and while he didn’t know everything about the Bible, he knew enough about the Bible to know that encounters with a living God can be demanding. In my experience, when most people talk about wanting to get “spiritual,” they mean that they want to get warm and cuddly with some amorphous, sweet and always smiling sort of “godlet”.

But encounters with the living God can not only be deeply moving, but often threateningly fearful, as well as life transforming. On the mountaintop Jesus doesn’t simply reveal himself to his followers, he calls them to follow him. They are to walk the path that he walks.

No wonder the disciples fall on the ground. And no wonder Jesus says to them, “Get up and do not be afraid!”

I wonder sometimes if people don’t avoid coming to church not for the standard stated reasons:  “Church is just a bunch of hypocrites”; “I can’t stand those draggy, old hymns”, or “I despise that contemporary Christian karaoke”; “It’s tradition bound and besides that the air conditioning is never set on the right temperature”; “It’s just too hard to understand” or “too simplistic”.
 I wonder if some, maybe many, don’t come because it scares ‘em to death. Is it possible that at some level, conscious or not, they know it entails seeing reality through new lenses, giving up the comforts and controls they rely on, starting in a new direction… knowing that scares a lot of people to death. And there’s no soft-soaping it; no toning it down to a level that keeps us in control. What we need  is to recognize that we are in the hands of the living God who says, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him…” and none of us can do that without shaking like a leaf… unless we also hear this Son say, “Get up and don’t be afraid.” “Get up and don’t be afraid.”

Strategic Withdrawal

A Communion Meditation by

Dr. J. Lawrence Cuthill

February 3rd, 2008

Winter Park Presbyterian