Matthew 17:1-9 "Beetles, Butterflies, and Personal Transformation"

         In the Harry Potter book series, “transfiguration” was a required course at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  It focused mainly on changing teacups into rats or maybe flowers into candles.  In Franz Kafka’s novella, Metamorphosis, transfiguration was a traveling salesman waking up one day to find that he had turned into a giant beetle – much like a monarch butterfly emerging from its chrysalis but without the existential angst.

         However, neither of these illustrations really get to the bottom of what Peter, James, and John witnessed on that mountaintop the day Jesus invited them to come along, and they naively thought it was simply to join their rabbi friend in a time of prayer.  Little did they know that they would be exposed to some of the most awesome pyrotechnics that would ever come to be recorded in the Bible.

         Not that they should have been caught completely unaware!  After all, the Gospel writer of Matthew tells us that the four of them hiked up to the summit of a “high mountain.”  What was left unstated, but was the norm in ancient Jewish literature, was that a “high mountain” was a “thin place”, a locale where the veil between the world as we know it and God’s world is diaphanous, nearly transparent.  A “high mountain” was a place so close to the spiritual realm that sacred encounters were bound to occur. 

         I mean, look at Moses on Mt. Sinai coming face-to-face with Yahweh/God (well, maybe not face-to-face, but the writer of Exodus does declare that he saw God’s backside).  Less dramatic perhaps were the words Jesus preached that we have heard for the past five weeks – the Sermon on the Mount.  Surely there was something sacred about them as well as they spilled down the hillside to the folks listening below. 

         This time, we are told, the three disciples looked up from their praying and daydreaming and saw the most astounding sight.  There was Jesus standing before them a short distance away, boxed in by the two most prominent men in the entire history of Judaism:  Moses representing the law and Elijah the prophets – and Jesus in the middle, symbolic of the fulfillment of the two. 

         The writer does not tell us how the disciples knew that the two men flanking Jesus were Moses and Elijah.  After all, they had come and gone generations before – but no matter!  That is not our concern.

         The Gospel writer does tell us that they were chatting away but fails to reveal what they were talking about.  Was it abstract theology?  Or just how the three of them found themselves together on the mountaintop – Why here?  Why now? Or were they just discussing the weather and “how about them Red Sox?”         

         However, the gist of their conversation is not our concern either because, at about that time, a cloud spread overhead, blotting out the clear blue sky.  And then Peter, James, and John heard a voice that, on the face of it, sounded so holy, so sacred, so nurturing.  It echoed the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism:  “This is my son, my beloved.”  And then it gently admonished the three disciples.  “Listen to him.”

         As Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner notes, “It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. Even without the voice from the cloud to explain it, they had no doubt what they were witnessing. It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they'd tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they'd seen as hungry, tired, and footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. “

         The disciples were left flat-footed and awestruck in the midst of the glistening white and dazzling faces.  Moments passed – or was it hours?  Who knows, but it was Peter who came to his senses first. 

         Now, he often gets a bad rap for what he did next – though I remain unconvinced that most of us would have suggested anything different.  Peter wanted to savor that moment of unabashed sacredness as long as he could and consequently felt a strong impulse to do something in response to it.  

         It was like the young parish priest who walked into the worship space of his church one morning and saw Jesus Himself praying at the altar.  He immediately alerted the priest-in-charge who in turn alerted the bishop.

         The bishop told the priest-in-charge that he must consult with the Pope on this, and he would call him right back. The phone rang shortly afterward, and the priest-in-charge asked what the Pope advised. The bishop replied, “The Pope says — look busy!”

         When you come right down to it, that is all that Peter wanted to do – look sharp and save the day!  So he ordered James and John to begin collecting materials for little booths (tents as one translation describes them) – one each for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. 

Why?  Just because it seemed like a good and reverent thing to do: It was rather like building a church.  However, before they could pick up a single stick, the cloud enveloped them all, and the voice surrounded them:  “This is my son, my beloved.  Listen to him.”

         And as suddenly as the encounter had begun, it ended.  The voice was gone.  The cloud had vanished.  Elijah and Moses had flown the coop. 

         It was just Jesus – just Jesus - beside them, touching their arms, patting their backs, telling them once again not to be afraid and (Listen!) it was time to get back to the valley because there was work to do and a long road ahead.  And by the way, do not tell anyone what happened here.  The world would know soon enough what they had seen a glimpse of.  

         This Biblical idea of transfiguration is a far cry from teacups turning into rats and men into beetles and caterpillars into butterflies.  This story is one that seems so far fetched and “out there.”  And yet, it is found in all three Synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so it must be of profound importance – and not, I would venture to say, because of the special effects. 

         After all, as United Church of Canada pastor David Ewart wrote in his blog “Holy Textures,” “There is more to be known about what is really real than the eye can see.”  In other words, we need to look past the robe turned as white as any laundry detergent could make it and the face that looked as if it were on fire.  We need to quit focusing on the pyrotechnics and trying to come up with rational (or irrational) explanations for them, and seek the truth of this astounding passage.

         I love this story of the transfiguration – but only when I reflect on it as something other than a smoke and mirrors ploy to impress me into believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.  I love the story of the transfiguration when I see it as a narrative that offers me both a deeper perspective on Jesus and all that he stood for and, at the same time, empowers me to believe in the possibility of my own personal transformation.  Because when I read the story of the transfiguration that way, I cannot help but believe that I can actually make a difference in the world.

         The story of the transfiguration helps me to see Jesus in a fuller and richer way. 

In this story of a mountaintop experience, I am comforted in realizing that Jesus did not suddenly become someone he was not – one minute human and the next divine.  Jesus did not change from one type of being to another – from teacup to rat or person to beetle.   He did not change and become something new. 

         Rather, it is as Frederick Buechner noted, “It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it (the disciples) were almost blinded.”  It was as if who he was all along was displayed for one brief shining moment in a different way. 

         I am comforted too in knowing that Jesus was not like Superman – one minute a bumbling Clark Kent and the next, after diving into a phone booth, a blue-caped superhero who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. 

         If Jesus changed only in appearance and did not become something new, then maybe, as Episcopal priest Michael Marsh speculated, the disciples were the ones who changed.  “Their sight was healed, their vision corrected, and their blindness removed. They saw the world transfigured, capable of revealing the beauty of God’s holiness.

They experienced all of life and creation (themselves included, I would add) as sacramental (holy). They saw and experienced life and the world as God sees and intends it.”

         If Jesus was really and truly human (and that is really and truly what orthodox Christians believe) and yet also embodied all that God dreamed for the world as the story of the transfiguration so beautifully illustrates and the church affirms, and if it was the disciples’ perspective that changed so that maybe they understood that they themselves had a spark of holiness deep within them because they were really and truly human too, then maybe – just maybe – it is the same with me, and I can be transformed as well. 

         I am comforted in knowing that Jesus lived in the valley along with the rest of us and so, in a mysterious way, his divinity was displayed not only on a mountaintop but also when he healed a leper, spoke to an ostracized woman at a well, and wept over a dead friend.          And I think that maybe I too can embody some of God’s dream as Jesus did when I am loving someone unlovable, protecting the rights of the ones cast aside, building bridges and seeking to understand rather than first being understood. I am comforted in knowing that Jesus and I might both harbor in our hearts a sacred spark, his an unquenchable fire and mine just a holy ember because we are both human and both have lived in the valley.

         The challenge of this passage for us then comes not in the mountaintop experience itself (which most of us will never have) but in the aftermath – in what we choose to do as a result of now knowing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Jesus is not just a good man to follow, but he is a man through whom all the fire and light and love of God shines through. 

         Peter did not need to build a tent for Jesus.  That is where he went wrong.  That is where he was so naïve.  It is as one Bible translation puts it:  “Jesus pitched his tent in the neighborhood and lived among us for awhile – full of grace and full of truth.”  Jesus did not need a tent.  He already had pitched his – right in the midst of all of us.

         This is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany here in church.  Lent with its ever-encroaching darkness begins this coming Wednesday and will take us all the way to Easter. 

        The season of Epiphany ends as it began – with light– first from a star that guided the magi to a cradle in Bethlehem and finally with a glimpse of Jesus as the Daystar, the morning star, the light that shines in the darkness, the light that illuminates the path we are called to walk together with him. 

         There is a time for mountaintop experiences.  There is a time to glimpse the holy.  There is a time to shout out all the ways we have been transformed and transfigured these past few weeks when we have tried to walk the path that Jesus lights for us. 

         How have you been transformed?  Have you been more loving, more generous?  Have you recognized Muslims, transgendered youth, immigrants facing deportation as beloved by God as you are? Have you thought about the ministry to which Jesus might be calling you?  Have you fed the hungry?  Have you spoken out for justice?

         Yes, there is a time to shout out all the ways we have been changed shout them from the highest mountain, but there is also a time to go back to the valley – and that time is now – because those ways in which we have been transformed find their life in the valley. 

        There is still work for us to do in the name of Jesus.  There is a long road ahead – but the path is illuminated – and our light too, with the help of God, will light it even more – as we edge closer to Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week, as the world’s light continues to dim all around us.