March 1, 2015

March 1, 2015: The Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18: God put Abraham to the test.

Psalm 116: I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

Romans 8:31b-34: Brothers and sisters: If God is for us, who can be against us?

Mark 9:2-10: Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. … From the cloud came a voice: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

March is the Month of St. Joseph.

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

-- William Blake

Diane’s Reflection for March 1, 2015

Mine eyes have seen the Glory

Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain… And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light… Then Peter said, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here.” … While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. …

I have always been haunted by this strange story – maybe partly because I’m an artist of sorts, who is always astonished by stories of seeing – and maybe because I often wonder how little I actually see of what is here. Even ordinary honeybees can see colors that human beings can’t. Who know what the universe really looks like? I have been intoxicated by color ever since I first opened my eyes, dazzled by the sun-dappled dancing of leaves and entranced by that delicate fusion of greens and turquoise and deepening blues that you see in a clear Western sky right after sunset. All those colors to see, in all their infinite shades and patterns! What an extraordinary universe we live in.

And yet: Even at our best and sharpest, we see only the thinnest surface of things. We see, only and ever, through a glass darkly. At those rare moments when the window is opened, when the light of God comes blazing through, we discover we have no way to describe it, even to ourselves. Have you noticed how often the writers of the Gospels use deadpan, almost boneless language to describe tremendous, earth-shattering wonders? It’s never more obvious than in the story of the Transfiguration. The story comes out like the half-asleep account of a rather muddled eyewitness: “Well, you see, we went up this mountain … and when we got to the top our leader, Jesus, was – well, he was kind of – he was changed somehow – I mean, he was really, really different -- his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And that was weird enough, but there was also Moses and Elijah – no, really! I’m not kidding – Then – well – a sort of bright cloud cast a shadow over us… and then a Voice spoke from that cloud…. Actually, it wasn’t a voice. It was the Voice. …” And the rest is silence.

The disciples didn’t have to ask Whose Voice it was. They knew. They “fell prostrate,” which is a dignified way of saying that they flopped right down to the ground on their faces, shaking like jelly, dissolving in sweat, because, as Mark says in the understatement of the year, “they were very much afraid.” Yes, I bet they were. Thinking about what they saw gives me the shivers as well. And I suspect that time and thought and breathing itself pretty much stopped for the three, for who knows how long, until Jesus came over and gently touched them, and told them – as he so often tells us – “Do not be afraid.” He also said, Don’t tell anybody yet, but then again, how could they communicate what had just happened? What on earth could they possibly say about an experience that went so far beyond all experience?

We know, from reading the New Testament, that the disciples were capable of great eloquence. But after the Transfiguration, they were pretty much reduced to words of a single syllable. When they eventually tried to describe what happened, they did so in language as laconic as you’d hear on something like the old TV show Dragnet -- as if Detective Jack Webb were there, saying tersely: “Just the facts, ma’am.” All the flavor of what happened is scrubbed away, all the colors, the feelings, the smells. There’s hardly a real adjective in the entire New Testament. And that’s one of the things that makes it so powerfully convincing. There’s no embroidery, no gloss, no striving after special effects to be found in the Gospels. The Evangelists might describe wonders, but they do so as simply as possible – they write, in fact, much the way that real people talk. I think that’s because the strange story they tell really is “just the facts, ma’am.”

This is not because the people of the time did not know how to use language. It’s not because they did not love words and music and colors and shapes. It’s because they had suddenly run up against something that could not be described – something there are no words for, in any language ever spoken, in any music ever sung. Peter, James and John saw Reality itself, the Ultimate Truth – what you might call the One Thing Necessary – which means that, for that brief, shining moment, they saw Jesus as he really is. And they heard, oh astonishing thought, they heard, the Voice of God Himself. Even the greatest poets lack the words for that kind of thing.

We are, all of us, helpless in the face of God’s Beauty, in the fact of God’s Truth. Our brains come stuttering to a halt, we grope and scramble to construct a shred of a thought. And yet we can’t help but try to describe what just happened. So the disciples, groping for words later on, said Jesus’ clothes became white as light. That might not sound like much, but think about it: His clothes became white as light – and light, you see, contains every color in existence. Even the ones our eyes are incapable of seeing. Jesus, in other words, became more bright than everything in Creation put together.

I tend to regard the Transfiguration as less a vision of blazing glory than as a stripping away of all blindfolds. I believe the disciples suddenly, briefly, saw things as they truly are. No wonder they were dumbstruck; no wonder they blurted out some nonsense and then collapsed. And no wonder they yearned to stay on that mountain, even though they sensed that they couldn’t. “Rabbi, it is good that we are here!” Peter exclaims giddily. “Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” As Mark notes, in another understatement, “He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.” Yes, I expect so.

And then the Voice spoke from the Cloud and hushed them, reminding them that the Lord had brought them there for a reason. What was that reason? I think it was so that they could hear these words: “This is my beloved Son,” God said. “Listen to him.”

All thoughts of putting up pup tents vanished from their minds. We always want to stay on top of the mountain, and we are terribly tempted to try to hold on to God in a possessive way – to put God in a tent, or a box, and claim Him as our own property – instead of doing the opposite: Letting God lay claim to us. The disciples could not stay up on that mountain; they had to go back to their everyday lives. But there was one way they could carry at least part of the experience with them: By listening to Jesus, now and always. We can’t hold on to the Lord, but we can let the Lord hold on to us. We can’t put up tents on the mountaintop, but we can find a place for Jesus in the heart of our hearts.

We’re not meant to live on the heights; we’re never allowed to get more than a glimpse of glory. Not because God is stingy; it’s because we are not yet large enough to contain it – any more than we can stare straight at the Sun. God in his mercy sent a bright cloud to cast a shadow over the disciples. He did this for their sake, not his. They could not have endured the Glory if he hadn’t. We’re just not built that way.

But it will not always be so. One day, as the Bible says, we will be able to See as we are Seen. The Transfiguration is a glimpse of the promised glory. Not glory in the pitiful, tawdry sense we use the word: Academy Award, Las Vegas-style bling, with cameras flashing and neon lights and people in fabulous clothing saying “You look fabulous!” This is Glory in the sense of sharing in the vision of God: Seeing Jesus – and seeing Creation – and seeing each other, and even ourselves – as we truly are. No blindfolds, no more “through a glass darkly.” That is a vision well worth waiting for! On that day, our eyes will truly see the Glory of the Coming of the Lord. In Jesus’ name. – Diane Sylvain

One day, when the glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours.

One day, when the glory comes, it will be ours –

It will be ours!

--- from the song “Glory,” in the film Selma

Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:

THE FIRST READING: Lent is a journey in faith through dark places toward the promised light. Abraham’s faithful obedience took him to the brink of his son’s death by his own hand as he prepared to sacrifice to God the very gift God has given to fulfill the promise of countless descendants. In Abraham’s story, faith and obedience are rewarded by reprieve. But a surprise reprieve at the end did not lessen the cost of that long journey made in fear and grief to the place of sacrifice, knowing that knife and altar awaited.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM 116: Filled with awe in the presence of the Lord who has “loosed my bonds,” the psalmist writes, “I am your servant.” It is indeed a psalm of gratitude and pledged faithfulness. God, who rescues his servant from the cords of death, regards the death of his faithful ones as precious. We see a God who cares for humanity in all its frailty, imperfection, and possibility. God loves his people and asks only for obedience in return.

SECOND READING: God’s love chose to take no reprieve from the sacrifice of the beloved Son, for the cost of reprieve would have been the loss of all those others who would become God’s children by adoption. Yet even here, in this relentless story of love’s ultimate sacrifice, the promise of Easter shines through the clouds.

THE GOSPEL: The stories of God speaking on the desert mountaintop to Moses from a cloud of fire and to Elijah in profound silence, commanding each of them to go to the people with the word of life, come together here to identify Jesus as the one in whom the fire dwells unseen and of whom the voice says, “This is my beloved Son.” We are charged to listen and to follow through the twisting desert paths before us to the final fulfillment of the promise of life made again and again to God’s wandering people.

--Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends (2015 edition.)

“Our Lord's descent from the holy heights of the Mount of Transfiguration was more than a physical return from greater to lesser altitudes; it was a passing from sunshine into shadow, from the effulgent glory of heaven to the mists of worldly passions and human unbelief; it was the beginning of His rapid descent into the valley of humiliation.”

― James E. Talmage

The Transfiguration of the Lord

In all three liturgical cycles we have the strange story of the Transfiguration on the second Sunday of Lent. What does it mean? In the second reading (Romans 8:31-34) St Paul writes that the Lord "will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body." The Transfiguration, then - whatever we discover it to mean - is not only about Jesus but about us. It is to make some discernible difference to us today.

There was the everyday Jesus who was well known to his friends; and then there was the moment when they scarcely recognised him, so transformed - transfigured - was he. Divinity shone through him, revealing depths that they had never imagined. Can this happen only to Jesus? When the little girl was asked what a saint was, she replied (thinking of the stained glass windows in the church), "A person that the light shines through." Can this be more than an image? Can it also be a reality? Could you and I let the light through? We may be too aware of our wretchedness to feel at ease with a thought like that. But it is just these "wretched bodies of ours" that are the material of transfiguration, according to Paul.

In a poem called The sunrise ruby, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) the Sufi mystic, imagines a girl speaking with her beloved.

'Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell the absolute truth.'

He says, 'There's nothing left of me.

I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise.

Is it still a stone, or a world

made of redness?

It has no resistance to sunlight. '

There it is: in one way it is a stone, but in another it is a world of redness. This gives some impression of what transfiguration might mean. When you are completely absorbed and self-forgetful as you look at the sea, or the night sky, or a friend, you are still yourself, of course; but you are also more than yourself. At any rate you are a kind of larger self, and not the small self that thinks before he speaks, and counts money, and always looks after his own interests.

But we would like to hear what Christian mystics have to say about it. Johann Tauler (1300 ­- 1361) wrote the following. “God fires the spirit with a spark from the divine abyss. By the strength of this supernatural help the soul, enlightened and purified, is drawn out of itself into a unique and ineffable state of pure intent toward God. This complete turning of the soul toward God is beyond all understanding and feeling; it is a thing of wonder and defies imagination. In this state the soul, purified and enlightened, sinks into the divine darkness, into a tranquil silence and inconceivable union. It is absorbed in God, and now all equality and inequality disappear. In this abyss the soul loses itself, and knows nothing of God or of itself, of likeness to Him or of difference from Him, or of anything whatsoever. It is immersed in the unity of God and has lost all sense of distinctions."

Sadly, this aspect of the Christian faith is not as familiar to most of us as it should be. We have learned to settle for less. Most people believe that the best things are not for them. We are all called to deep enlightenment and union with God. Does this mean that we are to be somehow unreal and up-in-the-air? Hardly. Tauler and the people of his time had to be intensely practical. But his words live for centuries beyond the time he uttered them, because he was in touch with the living heart of our Faith. It is he, and the likes of him, who will lead us to the heart of God.

–Donagh O’Shea, from Today’s Good News, the website of the Irish Dominicans

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It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Marianne Williamson

THE LIGHT WE’VE BEGUN TO KNOW (Transfiguration)

We think we know light’s movements –

the way sun’s rays can play across

the surface of the water, the way

it falls from candle flame, or

softly sifts through leaves to lift

the petals on their stems, opening up

each blossom like a blessing.

We think we know light’s gradients –

the way it can take the shade of rain

or break into the colours of the rainbow;

the way it burns a hole in blue

from the blazing summer sun;

or reddens clouds before it gives

night’s gift of stars and moon.

We think we know light’s stories –

like the glow that shone from Moses’ skin

as he brought the law in stone down

from the mountain; or the brilliance

of the fire of the chariot and riders

that swept to heaven the prophet named Elijah.

But today the light we thought we knew

has taken on new radiance, has made

an unexpected move, is telling a new story;

it dazzles the eyes but more our hearts,

for this is the light embodied: this

is the light of the knowledge of God

that shines in the face of Jesus.

Nor is this the final story

that the light in Christ will tell:

the veil that is lifted so briefly

upon his unseen glory drops again;

the tale to remain untold

until his rising from the dead – when

the light we’ve begun to know

makes its home in the church,

to reveal his glory in us,

and transfigured will be me and you.

Andrew King, -- Andrew King, A Poetic Kind of Place, https://earth2earth.wordpress.com/

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise thee, in the way which thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to follow forth thy praise, thy truth, they will. Make me preach thee without preaching – not by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I do – by my visible resemblance to thy saints, and the evident fullness of the love which my heart bears to thee. – John Henry Newman, 19^th c.

The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make his face to shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you,

And give you peace.

-- Numbers 6:24-26

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