The Feast of Transfiguration

What does God look like? No, really…..I want us to think about that….how does God look when we try to imagine God in our mind’s eye or in the hidden places of our hearts? We’ve been sold a bill of patriarchal goods for a long, long time by artists and others who would have us believe that God is a man’s name. So, God looks like an old white guy with a long flowing beard and long white hair and an ill fitting robe, reclining on a cloud “up there” somewhere. The problem is, that God looks exactly like the artists who painted God that way. Because nowhere….anywhere in Scripture….is God described in this manner.
For Christians, we have a better idea about one way that God looks, because in Jesus we have at least one example. Jesus is, as we learned in confirmation classes….fully God and fully human. Jesus is God walking around in the flesh. Jesus is God in conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus is God weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus is God having breakfast on the beach. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? But Jesus isn’t the only manifestation of God.
What our Hebrew siblings have in the Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, or what we call the Old Testament, is a plethora of ways of seeing God. Of visualizing God. In the Old Testament God is a nursing mother, a mother bear, a mother eagle, and a mother who has given birth. God is a mighty warrior, an angel with a sword in hand. God is a disembodied voice calling to Samuel in the temple.
And in the Old Testament, God appears to many people: to the humans in the Garden of Eden, at the Tower of Babel, to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Balaam, Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, Samuel, Elijah, Solomon, Shadrack, Meshack, Abednego, Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and to Moses. God appears more often to Moses than to anyone else. Which we’ll return to in just a moment.
Today is the feast day of the Transfiguration, the last Sunday before Lent. The Gospel reading tells the story of this incredible point in time when Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain and suddenly he begins to glow and before they know it Moses and Elijah, long dead, appear there on the mountain and begin to have a conversation with Jesus. God makes an appearance using the same words God spoke at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my Own, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests. Listen to him!” and in the blink of an eye, the whole thing is over and they all go back down the mountain promising not to tell anyone what’s happened.
It’s in the shadow of that story and the shadow of that mountain top experience, then, that we hear the first reading this morning, from the Hebrew Bible….God has once again appeared to Moses with an invitation to join God on the mountain and wait there until God gives Moses the law and the commandments.
Alright. Climb the mountain. Leave your tired, bickering people behind (Aaron and Hur can settle their disputes). Come up the mountain and wait. Fine. I’ve got an extra hour. But God doesn’t take an hour. God takes six days. Six days. Moses is up on the mountain and the cloud is covering the top and Moses is waiting and it takes God six days before anything happens?
You know what else took God six days? Creation. And we should pay attention to this literary turn. It is not an accident. God took six days to form all of Creation as we know it. What was God forming there on that mountain top with Moses? What was happening that God would require Moses to wait for six days before God revealed anything else?
Waiting is hard. I don’t do it well. Maybe you don’t either. Like the channel guide on our television screens we’d like to be able to see what’s playing next in our lives. Will that person I’m interested in like me too? Will I get the job? Will my child outgrow this phase or will we need to seek intervention? Will I have a child? Will I get that job or apartment or raise or promotion? What happens now that I’m retired?
Or maybe….will I be ordained? If God has called me to this thing….how long will I have to wait before the sinful brokenness of the Church is overcome by the extravagant mercies of Christ….those mercies lived out by a small congregation in North Seattle…..those mercies complete and just beginning, dear Laura, they live in the words you will repeat over and over on Thursday evening: “I will. And I ask God to help me.”
I wonder if Moses said something similar? Come up on this mountain. “I will and I ask God to help me.” Wait here until I’m ready to reveal what’s next to you. “I will and I ask God to help me.”
None of us in this room are Moses and only one of us is going to stand in front of God and make all sorts of promises on Thursday. But we are all called. Every single one of us and every single day. The challenge is to figure out, as each day and each hour and each moment opens itself up to us, what it is God is calling us to.
We may want it to be grand and glorious and worthy of a mountain top experience, but it probably won’t be that at all. At least not every time. No, it’s much more likely to be something like Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Feed someone who is hungry, which might mean giving money to an organization who does that or bringing food to our lunch program. Comfort the grieving. No matter what they are grieving. It might also mean that we are called to keep going, or stop so much striving, or pray or put our faith into action. But if we don’t listen to God, we will not know what it is we are being called to.
Where will we hear God? What will God’s voice sound like? Will it come with trumpet sound? Will it be thundered across the skies or flashed in front of us? How will we know when God speaks?
It’s actually Elijah’s story that holds the answer to this. In 1 Kings, Elijah is told to go stand on the mountain and wait for YHWH to pass by. And as he stands there a mighty roaring wind splits the mountains as it passes by, but it is not YHWH. Then an earthquake shakes the ground, but it is not YHWH. And then a fire, but it is also not YHWH. It is in the sheer silence….the sheer silence that God is known to Elijah.
Beloveds, God is calling you. Calling you to acts of love and mercy. Calling you to acts of courage and compassion. Calling you to stand boldly on a mountainside and wait for God to appear. In order to do that we are going to have to make some room. Make some space. We are going to have to stop grabbing and clutching and striving and we are going to have to wait. Maybe for six whole days before God even shows up and gets started. Or maybe for a solid year (Laura).
Moses finally gets what he followed God up the mountain for. Instructions about what it means to live together as God’s people. Guidelines to share with the people of Israel about not creating idols out of the things we like instead of worshipping God. Moses received instructions about living together, showing kindness instead of envy of what another had. Of respecting our family and being worthy of respect in return. Of keeping a day set aside for Sabbath rest. These are the things Moses receives up there on the mountain and it takes God 40 more days to give it all to him. Because a life this different….a life this totally turned on its head from the ways of a greedy and self absorbed culture….that takes awhile. God has called each of us to this kind of life. It requires sacrifice sometimes. And it requires putting others ahead of ourselves. And it requires, waiting. Darn it. It requires waiting.
In all of it, transformation….transfiguration is happening. If we will let God use us….if we will answer that still small voice with our own version of “I will and I ask God to help me” we will be transformed. Because rest assured, Peter, James, and John were also transformed there on the mountain. I think that’s why Moses and Elijah were the two people who appeared that day, however that happened. They too had encountered God on a mountain and lived to tell about it and lived to answer God’s call.
Moses led God’s people for 40 years toward the land of promise and died looking at it, but never setting foot in it. That should be a lesson to us. And so should Elijah’s story. Because once Elijah stood before God there on that mountain, God had one question for Elijah; and it’s the same question God asks Laura and every single one of us every single day. God asks: “What are you doing here?”
Thanks be to God and let the Church say…Amen.