Second Sunday in Lent
“Jesus took Peter, James, and John and lead them up a high mountain …. And he was transfigured before them.” Mk 9:2
What if …
What if … the Transfiguration, so powerfully described in today’s gospel, was not really about a dramatic, dazzling change in Jesus, but rather was about the radical change that took place in the apostles? – They could see Jesus differently.
What if … this Gospel is really about transfigurations that take place in the lives of people around us – the kind of changes that make us ask ourselves: why haven’t I done the same?
What if … this classic story is ultimately a tale about you and me – and about moments in our life when God opened the eyes of our souls and we were able to recognize the divine within and around us?
What if?
Years ago I took a course in theology that changed my whole understanding of God. It was a stunning experience … like a veil had been lifted, a kind of “transfiguration.”
I could see differently.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, tells the story about how he was simply standing on a street corner in downtown Louisville when a transfiguration experience happened to him. The city and the people walking around began to glow. “There is no way of telling people that they are walking around shining like the sun.”
What he discovered in that moment was: “the gate of heaven is everywhere!”
Perhaps today’s Gospel is trying to get us to see that the Transfiguration of Jesus wasn’t just a spectacular incident that took place a long time ago. It’s instead a sweet glimpse of heaven that can come to any of us right now. Today.
If we can see it.
It can happen to a mother when she first views her newborn baby. It can happen to a person reading scripture when suddenly their eyes widen at words that speak to a deep place within them. It can happen while listening to a great symphony or enjoying a walk on a brilliant autumn day or watching the delight of children on a Christmas morning or standing in awe before a masterful work of art.
Transfiguration moments are experiences of enchantment that open our everyday mind to the heaven that is already present. Here. Now.
If we can see it.
Scripture describes these moments repeatedly. The Acts of the Apostles, for example, tells us Transfiguration is the awareness that “we live and move and have our being in God.” It is the gift of wisdom Moses received when he went up on a mountain, just like the apostles in today’s story, and realized he was “standing on holy ground.”
Like the apostles in today’s gospel, he could see differently.
To again quote Merton, “Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time.”
If we can see it.
Unfortunately, like Peter, James and John, we are often asleep. Consequently, we tend to miss the clues, the hints, the suggestions of Something afoot beyond our everyday recognition, Something that is way more than meets the eye.
This is what Lent is really all about: a time to widen our inner eyes so that we can better see the “holy ground” in our lives.
It’s a time to prayerfully ask:
What if …
What if I can truly be transfigured?
What would that look like?
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
2/22/18
