Year B Transfiguration

The end! We’ve had a lot of endings over the last twelve months. Our entire way of life has changed, due to a pandemic, and our government has changed, due to an election, and our outlook has changed due to these things and possibly to illness in our family, loss of loved ones, loss of job, or just due to adjusting to what we’re calling “the new normal”. We’ve experienced so many losses, so many endings, it’s difficult sometimes not to see everything in a very negative light. But there is always another way to look at things, the way that is blessed, or, as TS Elliot put it, “…to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.

In our first reading today we encounter the prophet Elijah and his anointed successor, Elisha. Elijah has been with Elisha every day, every moment, teaching, preaching, supporting, as anyone would do for the one they know God has chosen to succeed them, to replace them. And Elisha has observed and understands that the power of God rests, not in our human bodies, but in the Spirit that fills and guides us when we give it free rein.

Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”

Despite understanding the importance of the Spirit, which he demonstrates with his request, Elisha is attached to Elijah, to the man, to his mentor. Nonetheless, the time comes for Elijah to leave, and God, in a form the ancient Israelites recognized as His Presence, the whirlwind, Personally comes down to bring Elijah home.

As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.

The affect this has on Elisha is no surprise. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father!... But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Our Old Testament reading ends here, with the grieving Elisha. We know all about grief! But Scripture tells us that Elisha will take up Elijah’s cloak, and carry on as God’s prophet. In Elijah’s end, for Elisha there is a new beginning.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

Today’s reading begins high up on a mountain, a place where the ancients felt one came closer to God. Jesus’ followers would not have been at all surprised for Him to have led them there to a quiet place, away from the others. He often went to solitary locations to pray, and they would probably not have been immediately filled with concern or trepidation. They would have anticipated another quiet time with our Lord. But then, everything changes.

And He was transfigured before them…

Humans, in general, don’t deal well with change, and we deal very poorly indeed with abrupt and terrifying change that occurs right before our eyes. Thankfully, most of us have been spared witnessing firsthand the calamities that plague our world, calamities that can touch our personal lives, but in our Gospel today we have three men, all of whom suddenly must cope with and respond to the unimaginable. If we put ourselves in their place, we realize we would react the same way they did. We would be terrified.

What has occurred is a mystical moment, a visible manifestation of the union of human and divine in Jesus. The disciples have had a glimpse of God’s eternal glory, and Jesus’ unity with that Glory, and indeed the unity of all humankind forever and ever, world without end, in God and Jesus.

The disciples are so terrified they don’t know what to do or say. Nonetheless, no one runs away, which might be what we would do. Peter even tries to respond. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Peter is so fuddled he’s babbling, reaching for an appropriate response, and failing.

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

This experience of light, and power, and glory is a turning point for Jesus as well as His disciples. Jesus, reminded of His unity with God, turns toward the inevitable end of His human story. The Transfiguration is a bridge between Jesus’ public ministry as a traveling teacher and healer in Galilee, and the road to His passion, i.e. His suffering, death, and resurrection in Jerusalem.

How interesting that on this Sunday, where Light is everything, where Jesus shines with God’s light, we are meant to think about endings. One would hope for the joy of this season to continue, but we wonder how it can, because this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday - the beginning of Lent. We think of Lent as a “dark” time, a time of penitence and sorrow for our sins – not as a time of joy. But there is something wonderful we may be missing.

There is an old saying, “The cross is the gift Christ gives His friends”. We who at all times hunger for light and joy sometimes find it difficult to grasp that suffering is also a gift from God. St. Paul and others tell us that God helps us prepare for suffering by teaching us and showing us that through suffering we are meant to go deeper in our relationship with Jesus. You get to know Him better when you share His pain. And, yes, when we think about our pain as something we can share with Him, we are ready to learn from it, to grow spiritually from it. The people who write most deeply and sweetly about the preciousness (i.e. the infinite value) of Christ are people who have suffered with Him deeply.

When we give up something for Lent we are actually attempting to, at the very least, introduce discomfort into our daily lives, and at best to produce some suffering – that we may share that with our Lord. If we think of Lent as a time to share with Jesus, we realize it is a new beginning, that we are going from worrying and misery to finding meaning and worth in what we have been called to endure. This year we can take all the pain of the pandemic, of the upheavals in our government, of our personal losses, and offer it all to Jesus, asking Him to teach us how to change our misery into the joy of serving Him.

When we think of our suffering as our “personal pain” – we are being selfish. On the other hand, when we connect our suffering to Jesus, offering it to Him to use as He wishes, letting go of it, we are no longer trying to cling to our pain and our past. Instead, we move forward, opening ourselves to a new beginning.

Like Elisha, when we suffer we grieve, but we must also be ready to respond to Jesus’ call, growing spiritually more mature was we walk the way of the cross. Like the disciples, we must be open to the terror and awe that our learning experience can produce, but not cling to it. We must rejoice in what we learn, but cling only to Jesus.

Suddenly when the disciples looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

Jesus is with us always. We are always called to new beginnings, to both suffering and to joy. This is the last Sunday of the Epiphany. We start anew this Ash Wednesday.

Let us pray:

Dear Jesus, Help us to remember in these troubled times the cross you carried for our sake, so that we may better carry ours. Please use our pain to make something beautiful, and fill our hearts with Your peace and joy. Help us in the face of endings to always turn to You, and begin again. All this we ask for Your love and mercy’s sake. Amen