St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Tennessee
Transfiguration by Madeleine L’engle
Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
the way he really was all the time,
although they had never seen it before,
the glory which blinds the everyday eye
and so becomes invisible. This is how
He was, radiant, brilliant, carrying joy
like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was - is - from the beginning,
and we cannot bear it. So he manned himself,
came manifest to us; and there on the mountain
they saw him, really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us
Then, perhaps, we will see each other, too.
What a mountain top experience! These three apostles are seeing something they have never seen before. Something it is said, no one has seen, and lived. They are undoubtedly changed by their experience.
I know a little of mountain top experiences myself. I live in Sewanee, Tennessee.I spend most of my time, literally on a mountain top.That is where I am seeking God. I find spiritual nourishment in my walks
alone with God crossing the tripping brook that is running through the forest with me. Or taking my theology books out to the bluff to be distracted by the expanse of God’s work in nature while attempting to focus myself on the nourishment of mind through study. I even moved to the mountain
two years ago on the Feast of the Transfiguration and I have been undoubtedly changed in my tenure there.
I have loved my time on the mountain and it is important to return now and then for another taste of the Mountain Top Experience. But what I have discovered in that time is that I can not stay on the mountain.
Like Peter, I would love to remain in the moment, to build a tent, a marker,
So I could keep the feelling of those holy moments. But Jesus tells Peter, no. They must return to the valley and continue the work.
That is why I am here at Saint Luke’s. For seminarians , this period is called Field Education. A time to leave the mountain and go into the field
and continue the work. I, as all of us, will learn much, when we do the work God has called us to do, and we allow ourselves to be transformed in the light of transfiguration.
In 1958, the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton was walking in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. While standing at the corner of Fourth and Walnut,
Merton himself saw the same light of transfiguration. In his own words of the experience, Merton says,“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs,
that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”
The experience resulted in him reevaluating his vocation, and though he remained a monastic for the rest of his life he turned his focus to issues of social justice and sharing with the world the epiphany that all peoples are connected. He went on to write of the Louisville Revelation, “It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world,the world of renunciation and supposed holiness . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realized what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
We have seen Christ, as He is. Every week we are given a small glimpse of that flickering light through the celebration of the Eucharist. Daily, we must live as an image of Christ transfigured, full of joy in the light of the love of God radiating out into the midst of a dark and lonely world. Walking around, shining like the sun.
Though those mountain top experience fill us with life and vigor we often walk away with the feeling that we could do anything, life back in the valley though, is not easy. We sit in the shade, which can easily become the shadow of our own selfishness. We pass the homeless man on the street
and do everything in our power to convince ourselves he’s not there. Or we tell ourself, that’s someone else’s problem. Or we suppress the empathy welling up within us for the friend who seems to be having a rough time right now.So we don’t say anything, and hurry home. I know it’s true, because I am guilty of it myself.
But when we truly see Christ AS HE IS We have to die, we have to die to ourselves and allow the light of the transfigured Christ to drive away the shadows we chose to live in. It is not easy, but since we have seen Him, we can not help but be changed.
Archbishop Rowan Williams a few years back wrote a small book called “The Dwelling of the Light.” It is a series of reflections brought about by praying with Icons of Christ. The first one is this, of the Transfiguration.
In his reflection, he sits in the juxtaposition between this image of Christ on the mountain top and Christ crucified on the hill. We hear this in the Collect for today
Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory
Williams calls it, “A huge hope, but also a huge dose of unwelcome reality: to be brought into such relation with Jesus that we live in his glory ought surely mean that we are kept safe, taken out of the world. But faith in Jesus appears to mean that we have to live in the world with all its risks, our lives open to the depths from which Jesus lives.”
That is why Madelein ends her poem the way she does.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us
Then, perhaps, we will see each other, too.
We have seen Him, The “SELF” is blinded by the light so we die to ourselves daily. We now live as reflections of the light. We must leave the mountain, walk out of the church and into the field. The field of our places of work, our homes, our schools, our community, and share the light of the Christ we know. This is why we pray at the end of the Eucharist “. . .And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do. . .”
You have seen Him as He is, now go, and see each other too.
