Lent

“There in their presence he was transfigured, his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as the light.” - Matthew 17:2

This must have been a mystifying and mysterious experience for the three disciples who went with Jesus to the mountain top on the day we now know as the transfiguration.

There can be transfiguatiognal moments in everyone’s life. Ever so often something like this happens once in a while. 

As Fred Buechner puts it this way, “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, ……. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing.

Here in this almost out of the world happening it is the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory that is seen. It is the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it that the disciples were almost blinded.

There is another way of looking at transfiguration. Desmond Tutu describes it this way. “God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world.”

O Holy One,

on mountaintops and valley floors

you reveal to us the light of your love.

Our hearts desire is to bask in the amazing glory

of the divine presence.

With each encounter we are changed and transformed.

Draw us nearer

that we might receive a double portion of your Holy Spirit.

Help us, O Holy One, to live our lives as a reflection of divine glory.

May we walk among our brothers and sister as a blessing,

bearing light into dark places,

hope to displace despair,

and love that casts out hate.

Our world is hurting

and we need the followers of Jesus to follow more closely.

Maybe then we will hear your voice speaking to us and saying,

… “listen to my Child, the Beloved!”  Amen.