Reverend Ina Bork
Congregational Community Church, Sunnyvale, CA
Focus Scripture: Mark 9:2-9
Today, at the end of Epiphany season, we have arrived at Transfiguration Sunday – the story of Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain.
Well, until preparing for this sermon the word 'transfiguration' was not one of my active vocabulary! While I can sense immediately what the meaning of 'transfiguration' is, I'm wondering at the same time...
'Trans' means 'through' or 'across' - like in 'Trans-America', and 'trans' carries the image of change in word combinations like 'trans-formation' or 'trans-plant'.
And 'figure' has a whole host of meanings – a figure is mathematically a number or an amount, or figure can mean 'outer appearance' or even 'person'. And you can figure something, or you can figure something out. And then you can speak 'figuratively' as opposed to literally – well, go figure!
Our story – while last week we were still in the first chapter, we are now roughly in the middle of the gospel of Mark – speaks about a true mountain top experience.
We have heard during Time with Children what the children thought about being on a mountain top - being scared of the height, being exhausted from the climb, but also being proud and enjoying that everything down below seems to be as small as ants.
Mountain top experiences are predestined to give us a sense of the sacred.
I remember real mountain top experiences while hiking - when I have really exerted myself and then finally arrived at the top, often with trembling knees – to then see the world from above, proud of the achievement. On the hour and hour long way up here, the summit seemed to be so far at times, so close at other times, only to then again move farther away because there was yet another turn in the small path.
Sometimes it felt like I was never going to make it up there – now on the top, I feel so good about myself. And I enjoy the perspective: everything is ant size – oh, this metaphor for life, how irrelevant seem some of my problems when I'm a little removed from them, I get them in perspective from the higher ground I have attained.
And I long to keep that switch in perspective - to head back down feels like loosing that achievement.
(In the Alps I always made sure I signed my name in the summit book in that little waterproof box up on the mountain top, made sure I stamped the stamp attached to it in my hiking pass – both as proof and memento that indeed, yes, I had made it to the mountain top...)
Mountain top experiences of a different kind- more figuratively speaking – I have had in conversations with friends or with my counselor or in bible study groups or in camp or in worship: when I have felt that intensity, the sense that heaven is opening to us and my heart is expanding... When I just felt that Jesus' promise is true, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
Jesus takes a few friends with him to the mountain top. Peter and James and John, some of the closest disciples.
They witness that encounter with the sacred, Jesus being transfigured, and in conversation with Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah, those two important pillars of Jewish tradition: Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets. And then the voice out of the cloud declaring Jesus as beloved Son of God.
In the composition of the gospel of Mark Jesus is declared three times as Son of God: right in the beginning at his baptism, here in the story of his transfiguration on the mountain, and then again at the end when the Roman centurion who saw Jesus on the cross exclaims, "Surely this man was the Son of God".
Peter, James and John had been with Jesus for a while when he takes them up on this mountain, they had heard him preach, they had seen him do wondrous healings, and yet, in the light of this encounter with the sacred, they don't know how to respond. Some of the
closest disciples don't quite grasp it, don't know how to react. Peter wants to make the experience last “let us build dwellings”, but it cannot.–
I guess we can relate, sacred moments can leave us feeling stunned, overwhelmed, maybe clumsy - it is never possible to express an encounter with the divine in human words, never possible to language the unspeakable.
Sacred moments – what we learn is that it is not about staying in the sacred, but about preserving the sense of the the sacred that we get to experience once in a while.
It is about carrying over that sense of the sacred into the mundane and the profane. The longing for such moments will probably never leave us. And – hopefully – we will be blessed with them once in a while and time and again.
I believe the art and the blessing is to keep some of that sense of the sacred which we experienced and to transfer it into the normalcy of our lives. So that we sense and see and live the divine more in the ordinary.
That is something that we as people of faith can bring to people in our to day-to-day life: the sense of the sacred that we have experienced.
Sense of the sacred: feeling close to God and uplifted.
Putting things into perspective.
Knowing that the ultimate truth does not lie with anyone of us, but with God.
Acknowledging the petiteness (and, yes, pettiness!) of so many of our problems...
I think that most of the times transferring our sense of the sacred into our ordinary translates into rather simple gestures:
A word of understanding and comfort that extends God's love.
An effort at real, empathetic listening.
An honestly uttered feedback, a criticism brought forward with respect.
A warm smile in a tense situation...
So, in the all too day-to-day-ness of our lives, let us figure in the sense of the sacred that we have experienced and that is close to our heart –
In that sense: go (trans)figure!
