February 15, 2015
Sunday

“Six 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, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Mark 9:2-3

The following is an excerpt from Frederick Buechner’s book Whistling in the Dark, published again in Beyond Words.

“His face shone like the sun; and his garments became white as light.” Moses and Elijah were talking to him. There was a bright cloud overshadowing him and out of it a voice saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” The three disciples who witnessed the scene “fell on their faces, and were filled with awe”.

It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. Even without the voice from the cloud to explain it, they had no doubt what they were witnessing. It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they’d tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they’d seen as hungry, tired, and footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it they were almost blinded. Even with us something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking with his child in the park, of a woman baking bread, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.”

We have all experienced it: someone we meet whose face just seems to appear to be glowing. We can’t explain it – it is a glimpse of the Holy One within the human form – the presence of G*d that remains mysterious to us. I was talking with a woman from a previous congregation who told me a story about seeing the throne of G*d. She was sitting in choir practice one evening, when all of a sudden she saw the roof of the church opened and G*d sitting on the throne of glory. She continued to watch the scene play out, all the while choir rehearsal went on around her. After what seemed an eternity the scene went away, and she sat there transfixed. One of the women sitting next to her asked what was wrong – because she saw that her face was glowing. She had a difficult time explaining what she had just seen – not wanting others to think she was going crazy.

The disciples would have had the same look on their faces – seeing Jesus transfigured and hearing the voice of G*d. Every once in a while we experience the divine – either in the form of another who so eloquently brings to us the divine, or in our own experiences of love, prayer, worship and ministry. When you experience it, cherish it – remember it – and share it. There are so many out there who need to hear the stories of our divine encounters.

Pastor Dave