Matthew 17:1-9 The Transfiguration
When I was a teenager I went to spend a summer with my aunt who lived in Marshfield Wisconsin. My Aunt was a public school teacher by profession but she was also a great artist and had a lot of little side jobs painting murals on garage doors for people. I took lessons from my aunt for a while. I would send her some drawings through the mail and she would send them back to me with encouragement and some pointers and how to make them better. I never became an artist, but I did get to work with her one summer helping her paint a mural on a garage door. Now, I wasn’t very good as an artist but since SHE was and exceptional artist, it didn’t matter. If I made a mistake, no matter how bad it seemed, she could correct it by adding something else to the picture. She was able to turn my limitations into beautiful art, not by painting over it, but by utilizing it somehow as a basis for a new creation. I’ve often thought this is often how God works in our lives. God uses everything for the greater good, even our mistakes, insufficiencies, and limitations.
Another thing my aunt did was that she would give me specific things to paint – very easy shapes or squiggly lines that were easy to do so I couldn’t mess them up and she would use those shapes and squiggly lines to flesh out the big picture. Having to paint the same things over and over was sometimes very tedious and frustrating. It was only when I stepped back from the garage door and looked at the big picture that I could see how those shapes and squiggly lines actually made up the ripples in the river that she was painting all around me. I didn’t know what the purpose of all those little lines were until I was able to step back from my narrow, myopic view.
It kind of reminded me of that old movie “The Karate Kid” where, if you remember, this young man named Daniel was getting beaten up at school, and he goes to the local handyman, Mr. Miyagi to learn karate. At first Daniel is very frustrated because Mr. Miyagi is not teaching Daniel karate but is instead having him do all kinds of maintenance projects for him. He’s having him wax cars, and sand floors and paint fences. One day Daniel is fed up and tells Mr. Miyagi he is going to quit because Mr. Miyagi isn’t teaching him karate but just having him do all his work for him. Then, as Daniel is about to leave, he has Daniel show him all of the motions he was using to do the chores – wax on wax off, sand the floor, paint the fence. And in what is probably the most iconic moment in the film, Daniel’s eyes grow wide in with astonishment as he realizes that imbedded in the chores he was doing, were all of these karate techniques he was learning without even knowing it.
How frustrating it is sometimes not to be able to see the big picture. Not to be able to see the purpose of a seemingly laborious task in the pattern of the grand design.
That is one of the things today’s gospel is about. The context of this story occurs is important. The disciples have spent quite a bit of time with Jesus by now and are starting to realize that the more they learn about Jesus, the less they really seem to know. Jesus is starting to explain to them how the messiah must suffer and die. This didn’t fit with the image of the messiah they were expecting. And he was also telling them things like “take up your cross and follow me” indicating that they too were going to have suffer. None of this fit with their preconceived ideas about who Jesus was. They were following him as a way to improve their lives and everything Jesus seemed to indicate was that the rode ahead would be difficult before it would be glorious. So the disciples were confused frustrated. And Jesus could tell. So Jesus and the disciples have a Daniel and Mr. Miyagi moment where Jesus gives them a glimpse of the big picture and how everything they have been learning fits together.
First he leads them up the mountain. Mountains have traditionally been the holy places for many people in the world where people would go to encounter God. Abraham went up the mountain to offer sacrifice, Moses went up the mountain to experience God in the burning bush and to receive the ten commandments, Elijah went up the mountain and where he encountered God not in the earthquake or the mighty wind, but in the gentlest of breezes. It was high up on the mountain that they encountered God. What else happens high on a mountaintop? You see the big picture. You see for miles, you see patterns, you see how things are connected and make sense. And so just like Abraham, Moses, Elijah and many other prophets of old, Jesus leads the disciples up the mountain in the midst of their frustration so they can encounter the glory of God and get a glimpse the big picture.
The first thing they notice is a change in Jesus’ appearance. His face shines like the sun and his clothes become dazzling as light. Then they see appearing before them Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus.
Could it be that Jesus was showing them how all of the pieces of their religious tradition fit together – that all the prophets of old were part of one great big masterpiece God was creating? That Moses and Elijah and Jesus were all part of one long string of communication between God and people?
And then what? The disciples get it right? Not quite. The big picture is still too much for them to take in and they miss the point. Peter says to Jesus, “Lord it is good that we are here. If you wish I will put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” At that moment a cloud covered them and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” That is another one of the temptations we experience as human beings – whenever we have one of these peak experiences we want to capture it and control like a kid putting a butterfly in a jar. Or we want to build a monument to it – like naming a street after a brave and courageous activist so we can mark their place in the past where they are safe and controllable instead of letting their life-giving words inform our present.
So Peter says, Let’s build a monument to you and the others – three shelters – so that we can honor and worship you from a position of emotional safety.
But God is not safe. In The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, there is a character called Aslan. Aslan is talking Lion who allegorically represents God. When the children who encounter Aslan ask if he is safe, they are told that he is not safe. But he is good. God is good and God is holy but God is not safe or controllable. You can’t put Gods transformative power in a jar like a butterfly. Nor can you quarantine Gods power to the past. Our God is a God of right now. He has always been a God of the present moment. When Moses once asked God who he was speaking to do you remember Gods answer? He said, “I am”. Not “I was”. Not “I will be”. But “I am.” So when Peter wanted to build three little shelters, little monuments, to Moses, Elijah and Jesus, the disciples are immediately enveloped in a cloud and from the cloud they hear a voice that says “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” And when they looked up, they saw no one but Jesus.
God’s word came to the people of the past through Moses and Elijah but God was coming to the disciples now in the present in the form of Jesus, and he was the one they should be paying attention to. Learning about the prophets and holy people in the past benefits us only if it gives us clues to where God is working right now, because our God is not a God of the past. “I am” is a God of the present. And so the million dollar question for today’s gospel is, “Where is God at work in my life right now?”
One other thing I learned from my aunt that summer I worked with her painting garage door murals. Every now and then she had to step back from the garage door to get a glimpse of the big picture and how it was all fitting together. But then she had to hold that picture in her mind because she couldn’t paint the garage door from that far away. In order to do the work of painting she had to get up close and personal temporarily letting go of the big picture in order to do the nitty gritty. Building the kingdom of God is like that. Sometimes we have to go up the mountain to see how everything fits together, but we can’t stay there, because we can’t work from there. Tempting as it is, we can’t set up little houses like Peter wanted to do. The work we need to do is at the bottom of the mountain. To do the nitty gritty of building the kingdom of God, we need to get up close and personal and it doesn’t always make sense from up close. So, life is a constant moving back and forth between going to the mountaintop to refresh our vision, and letting go of the vision to go down the mountain and do the work.
ryanwriting 