Transfiguration Sunday, August 6, 2006:

I suspect it is more difficult to rear boys than it is to rear girls.  We have been blessed with two girls who rarely presented us with difficulties.  Apparently, boys are not the same.  I saw a recent article whose subject was the lessons mothers had learned from their sons.  One mother wrote, “When you hear the toilet flush and the words ‘uh oh’, it’s already too late.”  Another said, “Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke…a lot of smoke.”  A third said, “The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.  The spin cycle on the washing machine will, however, make cats dizzy.  Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.”

The same women who wrote about the brake fluid and Clorox also said, “80% of men who hear this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid and 80% of women will pass this on to almost all their friends, with or without children.”

 Some things do make you scratch your heads, don’t they?

The story of the Transfiguration makes you scratch your head, doesn’t it?  What a challenging story.  It begins simply, with Luke saying that Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to do a little mountain climbing.  They had stopped to pray and everything simple shortly went flying over their heads and into their hearts.  Jesus is transfigured before their very eyes.  The Greek word is the one from which we get our word “metamorphosis.”  This is not cosmetic; this is cosmic.  What they normally saw as human morphed into a glimpse of the divine.  Then, adding another layer to their bewilderment, Moses and Elijah appear and carry on a conversation with the transfigured Jesus.  Peter, in his impulsive response to most things, gets out the hammer and saw and offers to start building monuments.  God puts a stop to those plans with an overshadowing cloud that terrified them.  The voice that speaks provides the reason for this whole experience.  “This in my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 

So, how are we to understand the events in this mysterious story and how can they possibly have any relevance to our lives?  I confess to you that I have preached about the mountaintop experiences we have had when on retreat or when we have been away for a time of renewal and refreshment.  I remember striving to say that it is possible, with proper dedication, to incorporate those mountaintop times into our daily lives.  Life is, after all, lived in the valley and not on the mountaintop.

I have talked about the relationship and the interaction between Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.  The law-giver and great leader of the exodus and the great prophet who did not die but rode a chariot into heaven give a bit of credibility to the disciples as they see their rabbi in the presence of the symbols of their faith.

I have attempted in the past to say something about Peter’s misunderstanding of the moment.  He wanted to institutionalize the event and freeze it in time and space.  People would come from all over the world to see the three great monuments.  Just think of the profits to be made on t-shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs.  Children walking around with “My folks saw the Three Great Monuments and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”  It may be enough to say that God did not, would not, permit Peter to begin the construction.  I suspect God has a healthy opinion of institutions and is aware of the temptation to think that perfection is possible if we simply move farther to the right or to the left and apply the most tried and true organizational models to the work.  That may well be the reason God didn’t let Peter establish another institution.

I have come to the belief that what we have in the Transfiguration is deeply mysterious.  It simply opened the curtain between heaven and earth for a split second and Peter, James, and John caught a glimpse of the glory of God.  Not being able to say more about it might make us squirm.  We don’t particularly like mysteries.  We are pragmatic, empirical, and reasonable people.  We value knowledge and education.  We investigate and explain phenomenon.  We process information, weigh the evidence, and come to an informed conclusion.  Mystery evokes images of Stonehenge, crop circles, Roswell, and other weird events and places.  Mysteries are to be solved. 

But, today we face the deep mystery of God’s presence in our world.  In the creation, in the transfiguration, in the incarnation, and in the sacraments God reveals something of deep mystery.  I believe the church faces the great need to elevate, celebrate, and proclaim that which is mystery.  Yes, we need to read the Bible, study, read good literature, pray, worship, and attend lectures, seminars, and classes.  But, we must not only learn to tolerate mystery, but make friends with it.  That’s one way to accept the fact that we will never fully understand God.  That’s one way to stop the profane thinking that God can be pigeonholed and be made to give the Almighty endorsement to our way of thinking.  God is so much bigger than our ability to belittle.  God is beyond the capacity of our finite minds and, while there is much we can know about God, there is so much more we cannot know. 

It may be enough to say that the two things we do know about God is that God is love and God is mystery.  The story of the Transfiguration is a story of the mystery of God.  In hearing the story we, too, peek through the crack between heaven and earth to see the shining face of God.  It is a face of love and a face of mystery.  In telling God’s story we begin to know God not with our knowledge, but with our feelings.  We come to understand God in the same way we understand love; not by what we can say it is, but by what it does to our hearts. 

Now, that may well give us something worth scratching our heads about.  Amen.