Day 8: Transfiguration

Posted by Abbott Bailey

This is the homily preached on Mount Tabor during our Eucharist at the traditional site of the Transfiguration.

I want to start by taking a poll.  Raise your hand if you want to stay here in Galilee.  It is good for us to be here.  Out of the loud and crowded city of Jerusalem.  Away from daily, unavoidable, insistent reminders of fear and oppression.  Into the quiet and peaceful countryside lulled by the lapping waters of the Sea.  Bodily entering into the collective memory of Christian pilgrims.  Walking daily in the shadow of the Galilean we call Jesus the Christ.  It is good for us to be here.

As if it weren’t good already, here we are on a mountain – a “high place” where human experience throughout the ages tells us that our chances of an encounter with the Holy are increased.  Where the air is thin and the distinctions between heaven and earth blur. On this mountain, Mount Tabor, heaven and earth met in the person of Jesus Christ.  And the only response Peter could muster was, “It is good for us to be here.  Let’s pitch a tent for you and our guests and stay a while.”

We know Peter often says the wrong things at all the wrong times, and this time is no different, but it’s not completely idiotic. Just several days before he had answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am,” with a very definitive, “You are the Messiah of God.”  He now sees in Jesus’ transfigured face the affirmation of what had welled up from somewhere deep inside of him and came spilling out of his usually blundering lips. He’s made contact with the collective memory of his people, who wandered in the desert and lived in tents, who were delivered, protected and cared for by God.  I imagine that something inside Peter tells him that he’s witnessing God again at work for God’s people in an extraordinary way, and so his response is to rejoice and commemorate the moment.  Peter wanted to give God the praise warranted by such a moment.

The point, of course, is that it’s not time to commemorate.  Last night at dinner Andrew told the story of another group of pilgrims who had visited Mount Tabor.  It was not unlike it is outside today, with low visibility, cloudy and grey.  Once on top, one of the course participants was lamenting the lack of views due to the clouds.  Andrew, or some other wise person among them said, “Well, it’s not really about the views is it?  It’s about the clouds.”  I would suggest that it might not even be about the clouds in the sense that Peter and the others weren’t meant to fixate on them – to want to build tents and stay a while.  It’s not the time to commemorate.

It’s time to go to Jerusalem. This was the transition point in Jesus’ ministry.  From this point forward, his face was set toward Jerusalem with the knowledge of the inevitability of the cross and of his departure and toward the fulfillment of his mission.

This is a transition for us as well.  We too turn our faces toward Jerusalem, albeit for a very different outcome one hopes, as Fran said last night. From there the journey continues home.  For many of us, coming to the holy land has been – and continues to be – like entering a thin place.  We are encountering Jesus in unexpected and sometimes surprising ways.  We’re being challenged, and at times perhaps frightened.  Our vision may be a bit cloudy and confused as we try to make sense of our faith in this fractious context.  Nasser has reminded us that as soon as we think we have it all figured out and it’s clear in our minds, we are certainly very confused.

Yet, as we know from last night’s reflections, for all of us “something has happened.”  And yet, this moment isn’t IT. In fact, this entire pilgrimage is not IT.  It’s not about commemorating what’s happened here, but about carrying on with the work we’ve been given to do, while recognizing how that work has been “transfigured” in light of our time here.

So, we leave Galilee – even though it is so good for us to be here – because, like Jesus, we must turn our faces to Jerusalem and then home, hopefully transfigured in our mission and ministry until we find our selves back in Jerusalem again.  Perhaps the best commemoration – the best way for this “thin” experience to stick with us – is to allow this experience to seep deep into our bodies so that it becomes the transfiguration is manifested in our mission and ministry when we leave this “thin” place.  This is how we might praise God best until, as Anne’s friend at the synagogue in Capernaum reminded us yesterday, “We all meet again in the New Jerusalem.”