The Transfiguration of All Things (Mark 9:2-9)

This sermon was originally preached on February 11, 2024 at
Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN.
The livestream of our contemporary and traditional services may be viewed here and here.

Today's gospel text: Mark 9:2-9

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Good morning, Gethsemane. How many of you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before today? And how many of you have actually seen a caterpillar transform into a beautiful butterfly? I love butterflies and this story so much because they show us in vivid color what a caterpillar must do to Become, with a capital B. They must undergo full metamorphosis.

In nature, this is an extraordinary process of utter, total transformation -- the transfiguring from one kind of being and body to another one entirely. For butterflies, that process happens across four stages -- egg, larva, pupa, and adult. And According to Wonderopolous, an educational hub created designed for kids but also perfect for my own grown-up imagination, it is “During this Pupa stage that the caterpillar's old body dies and a new body forms inside a protective shell known as a chrysalis…. There, the caterpillar's body digests itself from the inside out. The same juices it once used to digest food as a larva it now uses to break down its own body…into cells called imaginal cells. Imaginal -- or, imagined -- cells are undifferentiated, which means they can become any type of cell. Many of these imaginal cells are used to form the new body.” 

What’s striking to me about that whole process -- aside from the fact that it’s magical and gross -- is that 80% of all animal species do it. Not in the exact same way, but they go through metamorphosis. It also strikes me that biologically, anyway -- and as far as we know so far -- humans don’t.

Because we have before us today the eyewitness accounts of at least five witnesses across 1400 years, who tell us it does.

So today we’re going up to the high mountain with Peter, James, and John, where Jesus Transfigures before them, and so transfigures them. 

But first, as always, it’s good to notice what’s brought us to the base of this mountain. For the last eight chapters of Mark, ever since his Baptism in the Jordan and his 40-day temptation in the desert --- bookmark this, by the way-- and his calling of the disciples, Jesus has cast out demons, healed the sick and lame, cured leprosy and lameness, calmed a raging storm AND walked on water, raised the dead, grieved the assassination of his beloved cousin, John the Baptist, and fed many thousands of people along the way. 

And just prior to today’s journey, Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus tells the disciples of his coming death and resurrection, and warns all his followers that the cost of discipleship is life itself by way of the cross. 

WHICH IS ALL TO SAY: Many thousands of people have already witnessed God moving among them. And even still, six days after all that, Jesus invites his closest three disciples up the mountain where, in front of them, Jesus transfigures -- which, in Greek, is the same word as metamorphosis. Now, in Luke’s telling, Jesus’s whole face and appearance becomes “heteros” -- so wholly “Other,” such that the only discernible thing left of Jesus’s body is his clothing, which is now gleaming “as lightning.” And then, Moses and Elijah appear beside the Transfigured One, speaking with him about Jesus’s coming “exodon -- or departure -- which he is about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.” All the while, the Human Three -- the Disciples -- are stunned, speechless, and utterly terrified. And just as Peter breaks that holy silence with offers to build them dwellings because he doesn’t know what to say and doesn’t know how to be quiet (I love him so much), the Great Cloud comes, and from within its shadowy cover, all of them hear the Voice: “This is my Beloved Son, listen to him!” 

And then it’s over. And it is once again just Jesus and his three disciples, on top of a mountain going “wait, what?” I’ll come back to these three in a moment, but first, friends, the significance of These Ancient Three atop This mountain with These Three Disciples must not be missed. 

And to see that, we have to breeze for a moment back to Exodus 24 and 33, and 1 Kings 19 where Moses and Elijah were each called by God to Mt Sinai -- also called Horeb, the site of Jesus’s transfiguration and the peak upon which God’s glory so often settled. Both Moses and Elijah stayed on that mountain for 40 days and 40 nights: where Moses received the Law or Torah, where Elijah grieved Israel’s rebellion before the God who called and sent him to them. And it is where both of them, from cover of the same cleft on that same mountain, heard God’s voice speak to them from the Cloud and saw the radiance of God’s glory pass by them. In all of this, these two became Pillars of the Hebrew Faith in Ancient Israel, and trusted witnesses to God’s presence when God makes their Glory known among us. And their witness is known among the Jews.

So when they appear again upon that sacred mountain again -- this time alongside Jesus, after his own 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness, where he resisted the same temptations Israel for so long could not -- and, as God’s chosen ones of old and God’s representatives of the Law and all the Prophets, which are the breath and body of Hebrew scripture and life, they bear witness to the Three Disciples that Jesus is The Ancient One, whose voice should be heard and heeded as God’s very own. 

Which brings us to our Three Disciples who were chosen by God and invited by Jesus, just like Moses and Elijah, to the top of Mt Horeb, to see God’s radiance in front of their eyes and hear God’s voice from within the ancient cloud in their own ears, before all of it gone in a breath. Now, I don’t know if they understood in full or in part that this particular was God calling them to become new Pillars of the Faith in the time to come, after Jesus’s resurrection. But they do know they’ve just seen time collapse and eternity open in a flash of lightning, as Jesus transformed into the Ancient of Days next to Moses and Elijah. And they will never be the same. 
As they head down the mountain they’re told not to say anything until after Jesus is raised from the dead, but I can’t imagine they would want to. I cannot imagine any them -- not even Peter, who always has words -- had access to the words that would be needed to describe the mountain-top experience that now lives in their bones and moves in their bodies like new, imaginal cells suddenly awakened. Those kinds of words don’t exist in human vocabularies. But they are changed.

If you’ve ever had a mountain-top or mystical experience that shifts the cells in your whole being and changes the way you show up in your own skin and the world, you might know the insufficiency of words. I know I’ve had those moments, and as much as I’d like to, I cannot share them because I don’t have words. And friends, I, like Peter, usually have all the words -- but not for this! These moments are as unspeakable as the infinity they contain, and I find that the more I try to give them words, the smaller the moments get. 

And that veil I’m always talking about, the hazy cloud between the linear timeline we’re currently on, and the eternal NOW that lives and simply IS, just through the vapor? 

That veil is why words fail. Beyond the veil is the unspeakable, undefinable, infinite Glory of God. And words are much too sloppy and slippery to hold it. 

Which is to say: Such moments & experiences defy explanation on purpose. We are not meant to speak them, for they are not words. They are imaginal cells in our bodies that transfigure and transform us long after the moment and its memory are lost. The best we can do is trust the transfiguration that happened within, and our Maker who accomplished it.

Now, if you haven’t ever had an experience like that, I want you to know that’s okay.  Not everyone will ascend a mountain and see God’s glory or hear God speak or feel God move in the imaginal cells of your bodies, and not everyone needs to. We have biblical record of a dozen or so people seeing God’s glory made manifest, and historical record of millions more who never did, all of whose faith was just living and breathing and real as those who did. The mountain is not the point, but the transfiguring power of Seeing.

And that’s the thing about Transfiguration Sunday. It’s not what Peter James and John saw, or even where -- thought all of that definitely bears witness to the eternity of Jesus and the call of the three. For us today, the point is that they saw; that they were willing to see: not just with their eyes but with their Selves.

To see is to change. 

Let me divert for a second and share a song that’s been playing through my head recently, because it brings us to this peak and point of today’s text. The song is called “Albertine” by Brooke Fraser, which she wrote after visiting Rwanda in the wake of that genocide and meeting survivors, like a woman named Albertine. In the chorus she sings this: 

Now that I have seen, I am responsible: Faith without deeds is dead. Now that I have held you in my own arms, I cannot let go til you are…

“Now that I have seen, I am responsible.” Seeing makes all of us bearers of God’s truth and glory. It makes us responsible.

That’s why the Seeing matters most here. And the good news is you do not need to go to the mountaintop to see transfiguration happen or be transfigured yourself, because it is happening all around us, all the time, and not just in butterflies and 80% of earth’s living creatures. 

We are transfigured when we witness and welcome transgender people into our community, and trust them as the experts of their own stories of transfiguration: of becoming the Butterflies they have always been, despite those who would have us believe they will always be caterpillars. 

We are witnesses to transfiguration every time pregnancy births two brand new people into the world: the nursing infant and its birthing and nurturing parents. 
In the same way, we are also witnesses to the transfiguration of the planet around us, as our own Minnesota winter becomes something entirely Other. To see it is to be responsible stewards, and do all we can to restore health to the earth.

And, we are all current witnesses to a transfiguration of humanity itself, born out in our increased callousness toward the horrors and genocides we are all, every one of us, seeing with our eyes. We have seen, and we are responsible for where we go from here.

You see, we are always bearing witness to transfiguration, and we are always being transfigured by what we see. Always. The question is not if, but by and into what? 

So, beloved of God, my prayer is that we, like Moses and Elijah, Peter, James, and John, and so many others who came after, will hold fast to the truth and gravity of all we see, and bear it all with tender responsibly, that we may be transfigured into fervent messengers of hope and wholeness and the promise that we are always being made new.   

Beloved of God, you beautiful butterflies. May your witness be a blessing upon everything you See.
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Amen.