Sunday, March 8, The Transfiguration

Mark 9:2-10

2Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

One of the biggest problems the Jews had with Jesus is they couldn’t fit him into their traditional theology of God. Even Jesus’ disciples were constantly faced with trying to wrap their heads around the things that Jesus was teaching and doing. He was “out of the box”. Just look at Peter’s reaction to the Transfiguration. He was terrified. He didn’t know what to say. He said, “Rabbi, it’s good for us to be here…” What he may have been thinking was, “At least I think it’s good for us to be here. I have no clue what’s happening. Is he going away with Elijah and Moses? Is that why he’s all lit up so brightly I can hardly look at him? Are Elijah and Moses here to stay? What’s going on?”

Peter then suggested they build dwellings for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, dwellings like the booths the Israelites built for themselves for the Feast of Tabernacles which is a memorial of the dwelling places the Israelites built while wandering in the desert with Moses. In his doubt and confusion, Peter fell back on traditional practices that were familiar to him. He was trying to place his experience and lack of understanding in some sort of context with what he already knew.

But Peter was not allowed to do this. A cloud covered them and the voice of God came from the cloud, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

In last week’s reflection I talked about the necessity of the desert in our spiritual life and you may recall that I said it is a place of stripping. A good question to ask here is, “What do we need to be stripped of?” The immediate answer that might come to mind is that we need to be stripped of our human faults and failures, which indeed would make the desert a kind of a place of punishment, a place where God might be heard saying to us, “You screwed up, so now you have to get it together somehow and make it right. And I’m not going to tell you how you screwed up. You have to figure that out for yourself.”

I don’t think so.

Let’s go back to Peter at the Transfiguration. Peter had been raised to be a good Jewish man. He followed all the Jewish traditions and no doubt he had a great desire to please God or at least avoid offending God. Before Jesus came along he probably thought he had a pretty good handle on how to please God: follow the rules. That’s what he was taught and what he was brought up to do. Jesus turned it all upside down and he would not allow his disciples to fall back on old theologies and traditions when they couldn’t understand what he was talking about or why he was doing what he was doing. Sometimes he explained clearly to them what he meant and sometimes he required them to keep following in faith, faith that was based solely on their relationship with him, not on their complete grasp of the ‘rules’. They absolutely had to be with Jesus every day, listening to him moment by moment, in order to grow in their understanding of who he was.

Jesus was their “manna in the desert.” They couldn’t just take some of his teaching and go away and build their lives on that. Remember the story of God providing manna for his people? The rule was they could only gather enough manna for one day. If they gathered more than that the manna immediately started rotting and worms infested it. When they tried to gather more than a one-day supply they quickly found out God wasn’t kidding. The Lord wanted his people to trust him to provide what they needed when they needed it.

We tend to gather theology and spiritual precepts and teachings the way the Israelites tried to gather more manna than they needed. We can end up so easily walking with piles upon piles of Truth filling our packs, our tents, our pots – so much truth that we are weighed down and it becomes difficult to move forward and difficult to know if we are trusting in the Lord or trusting our knowledge of rules and precepts.

I am not suggesting that your knowledge of the truth is wrong. It may be; we are all susceptible to coming in contact with bad theology from various sources. But even assuming that everything you have learned about God and about the faith is the pure truth, you have way too much to carry. I don’t think I’ve ever run into anyone who hasn’t been struggling under an overload of truth and theology. Even though I know that too much head knowledge is not helpful I still need to spend time in the desert letting things go and getting back to the basics of what I believe and need for the moment. “Give me this day my daily bread.” I have to get back to believing that what I need to know in the moment will be given in the moment, not because I’m so good but because he is so good.

Think of your children. What do they believe about you and your spouse and their relationship to you both? “Mom and Dad love me. They give me food every day. They keep me safe.” The thing is, if you asked a child what they believe about you they’d be confused by the question because they don’t think about how to believe in you and how to trust you. They are with you daily. They just know they are loved and that they are safe and that they will be fed and clothed etc.

An abused child is fearful and anxious. She seeks ways to control her parents in order to protect herself. She controls by trying to be extra good, anticipating their demands, making herself blameless and by endeavoring to follow a multitude of tight and sometimes arbitrarily changing rules to avoid punishment and disapproval. If they become angry anyway and punish her, she blames herself and believes it’s because she’s no good and she’s inadequate because she couldn’t figure out what it was they were expecting of her this time around.

The child who knows she is loved doesn’t worry about where love, food, clothing and safety are going to come from. She approaches her parents without fear and interacts with them without consciously worrying about whether the way she is approaching them is “the right way”. She approaches life without fear because she knows she’s loved and approved of.

Our relationship with God often slips into fear and we live with the subtle idea that he is more like the abusive parent than the loving parent. When our relationship with the Lord is weighted more on the side of fearfulness rather than confidence and freedom, there’s a good chance our spirituality is based on rules and head knowledge rather than a simple relationship with a truly loving Lord. It’s not always easy to see what rules and precepts we are hanging onto out of fear and it’s difficult for us to let go of the thundering windy noise of all the “stuff” we know so that we can hear the gentle breeze of the voice of Jesus.

God says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him! Listen to him daily; listen to him for the bread he has for you for today.” and then he takes us to the desert so we can learn to do just that.

The desert is a time of letting go. We will find ourselves emerging from the dry aridity when we find ourselves less inclined to define what we believe and more joyful about knowing whom we believe.