Last Epiphany (C) + The love that transfigures everything + 3.3.19

(http://saintandrewgoc.org/home/2018/8/7/
the-significance-of-the-lords-transfiguration-metamorphosis)

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a])

Christian poet Malcolm Guite’s sonnet about the Transfiguration begins like this:

“For that one moment, in and out of time,

On that one mountain where all moments meet,

The daily veil that covers the sublime

In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.”

Can you see it? Jesus up a mountain with his disciples, he prays and his appearance is all changed and suddenly, Moses and Elijah are there too, and they are speaking of what will be – and we understand that Jesus’ next steps will not be entirely alone, but will be as part of the kinship of God. And it reminds of other times when the divine and human have met – for example, Moses on the mountaintop before, as he received the commandments and shared them with the people. Humanity and Deity meet once more. Once more the covenant between God and people, indeed of all creation, is upheld. And even more so, in this awareness of all that God in Jesus would risk for God’s creation, for God’s people.

Moses was showed divinity that was outside his humanity, although his divinity woven in too by the creator who made us all. Psalm 139 reminds us that when it tells us “you knit me together in my mother’s womb (vs. 13.).” Jesus showed his divinity to us in this dazzling sight witnessed only a by a couple, but that somehow shone throughout the world and across the years. Close your eyes and you can almost see the radiance, right? In this we see Jesus’ deeper truth, divinity, even as in the next paragraph and in Jesus’ frustration even in the midst of healing, that most divine act, we are reminded of his absolute humanity.

But here’s the sweet thing about Jesus. Seeing him in his more divine form, we don’t need to feel more lost in the brokenness of our human state. We are somehow more drawn into the divine, even bwith all our fragility. Our humanity has been lifted. Just as we combine water and wine at our Eucharistic table, the ordinary and the divine are invited into a dance.
As Guite continues,

“There were no angels full of eyes and wings,

Just living glory full of truth and grace.

The love that dances at the heart of things

Shone out upon us from a human face.

In seeing Jesus in this form, we were welcomed into that dance more fully, more joyfully. We saw perfect love in a human face.

Which reminds me of something I read recently. In the book Educated by Tara Westover, we hear the story of a woman who is raised in a separatist Mormon household and who receives very little in the way of even home-schooling and how she eventually makes her way to university, even to Cambridge. But when she arrives, she always feels the imposter, until she has a healing conversation with her mother. In it, her mother acknowledges that there were times during her growing up when she did not protect her as a mother should her child. Times when her older brother was being abusive and times when her father subjected her to dangerous working conditions in his scrap yard.
Tara Westover realized that she did not feel unworthy due to the disadvantages of her upbringing, but because of the moments when she felt unloved, unwanted. And hearing her mother say that she should have protected her better, Westover is able to heal a bit. She is able to imagine a different family story. One of wholeness and love and safety. And this makes her feel confident, able to interact with the world as if she belongs.[1] Unfortunately, as with any complex family story, the story does not entirely end there, but it is an important moment in Tara Westover’s journey toward healing. And it reminds us of the promise of ultimate emotional healing in God.

Which brings me to Transfiguration.

Guite’s poem ends

“And to that light the light in us leaped up,

We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,

A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope

Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.

Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar,

Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.”[2]
Because the truth here that is revealed is not simply that Jesus is divine. He shows that in every word of wisdom and every healing act. No, a truth still more precious lies in the love of God for us, and how that saturates every moment of every day we breathe here on this earth. That even when we feel alone, unwanted, or unloved at any moment, God’s love is here and continues to be here for us under the surface of everything. Each moment we are lifted into the loving arms of God.
Hence even though we may have heard some news that did not feel like love this week – be it out of part of the Methodist Church hierarchy or another avenue, we know that that news is not the truth of our life. That news is not the truth of God’s crazy love for each one of God’s beloved creation.
No darkness in the world can eclipse truth of that love.

It is the way things really are, under the surface.

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[1] Tara Westover, Educated (NY: Random House, 2018).

[2] Malcolm Guite, “Transfiguration,” Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (London, Canterbury Press, 2012), 56.