Sermon Notes for February 26th
February 26th, 2006
“A Cloud Overshadowed Them”
Mark 9: 2-9
1. The story of the Transfiguration which we read this morning occurs in Mathew, Mark and Luke (but not in the Gospel of John) and it is one of the more complex and mystifying events in the story of Jesus and the disciples.
It comes in the liturgical year at the end of the season of Epiphany which comes right before the beginning of Lent (this coming Wednesday)… and is itself an account of one of the Bible’s major epiphany which describe an appearance or manifestation of God or the supernatural.
Well, right away, by using the word “supernatural,” we are entering into another dimension which exists outside the “natural” realm (meaning it is beyond our normal experience of the physical world) … it is, in short, an encounter with the miraculous or the Divine.
2. And this presents for us a real problem both for interpretation and for preaching in the modern world. I know this, because I have preached at least three times already on this text in the last 7 years. Why? Because it keeps coming up in the lectionary readings and it is, as I have said, in all three Gospels – So, there is no running away from it! Oh, I suppose I could preach from the Old Testament lesson, or the Psalms, or from the Epistles.
But even the Old Testament story for this Sunday is more or less on the same subject. For it is about the story of Elijah the prophet and how he was taken up into heaven on a chariot of fire. And then, in some years, there is also the even more directly connecting passage from Exodus 24:
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God.
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud.
3. Now, to begin with, it should be obvious that Mark and the other Gospel writers leaned heavily on the Hebrew Bible as they attempted to explain this event which occurred when Jesus went up on the mountain and was transfigured.
In fact, some biblical commentators have lately decided that much of the story is more in the nature of Hebrew midrash or creative interpretation than actual fact.
'Midrash' – in short -- is a particular way of reading and interpreting a biblical verse.
4. What generally happens in Midrash is that it minimizes the authority of the wording of the text as communication or normal language. Instead, it places the focus on the personal struggle of the reader to reach a moral application of the text. And, while it is always governed by the wording of the text, it also allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the story. This allows for some very powerful and moving interpretations which seem to have very little connection with the text. The great weakness of this method is that it always threatens to replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection. At its best it requires the presence of mystical insight not given to all readers.
Well, on a lighter note, before this gets too serious, here is some Jewish humor which, if we stretched the definition, could pose as Midrash:
What would have happened if three wise Jewish women had gone to Bethlehem instead of three wise men?
they would have asked directions.
arrived on time.
helped deliver the baby.
hired someone to clean the stable.
made dinner.
and brought practical gifts instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh
and what would they have said to each other after they left?
"did you see the sandals Mary was wearing?"
"the baby doesn't look anything like Joseph."
"can you believe they let all of those disgusting animals in there?"
"I heard that Joseph doesn't have a job"
"and that donkey they are riding has seen better days"
5. Seriously, though, Midrash, then is an attempt to elaborate on the text and provide further interpretation. Kind of like what a sermon does.
So, one way of looking at this is to say that if Jesus went up on the mountain with Peter and John and they did experience some kind of powerful religious moment … which left them frightened and upset … it would naturally be hard to explain afterwards to others. And, so, it would be necessary to put it into terms that other Jews at that time would understand.
So if the disciples were asked, “Well what did you see up there on the mountain?” They might answer, well it was like what happened when Moses went up on the mountain and God came to him in the cloud. And it was like Moses was there and Elijah, too.
And then people would say, “Yes, now I understand. Now it makes sense to me.”
And this would imply, of course, that Jesus was on a par, or greater, than Moses and Elijah – the first of the great prophets. And this would make sense, because it was widely believed that Moses had gone straight to heaven because of the words in
Deuteronomy:
5 And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. 6 He buried him [b] in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.
And, as I have already mentioned, Elijah also was reportedly taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot … so who other than these two great persons would there be in the presence of God.
Which would mean, then, that when the disciples were up there on the mountain with Jesus in the presence of God – indirectly, of course – that this was, in fact, truly a glimpse of what heaven is like.
6. Well, how reliable is that account? Well, being that the disciples were only human and were quite frightened by the experience we can expect that they did the best they could. And, also we must understand that a religious experience of this sort often lasts only last for a second or two before it is over … for as it says, they immediately fell on the ground -- when they looked up no one was there but Jesus.
So, what are we to make of this mysterious and wonderful event which takes us beyond the realm of the normal? Was it just a case of creative story telling intended for the purpose of explaining or elaborating on certain aspects of who Jesus was? Or was something else going on? More literalistic interpretations of the Bible of course would have us believe that it all happened just as miraculously as it says.
Which of course leaves us today wondering why things like this only happened back in the Bible. Why does God not appear today? And why are there not angels and things like that?
7. I, too, have long pondered this question and recently I ran across an interesting discussion on the subject by a Jewish scholar at Harvard, James Kugel. And he does address the really big question of why it was that people in the Bible – particularly the Old Testament actually talked to God and angels. The book is called The God of Old.
Kugel writes that the Hebrew Bible was composed over an extended period of more than a thousand years. During this period, he notes, people’s understanding of God naturally changed.
Whereas nowadays, he continues, we tend to separate life into categories like “spiritual” and “material” – the early Israelites did not see things that way.
For, in biblical times while people did not like to talk about other people who had direct person to person experiences of God it was not because God was invisible as we believe today … but, because the believed that actually seeing God was very dangerous. “No man can see Me and live” is what it says in Exodus 33:20. Angels, then, were often intermediaries from God who were used to send messages to human beings. Just as it says that an angel appeared at Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection.
8. Well, there isn’t time to go into all the detail this morning… so I would like to focus on just one interesting aspect of the biblical accounts of God’s presence. Which is that in most accounts people often seem confused and actually do not recognize what is going on at first. Which seems no different than today, really. Let me give you a couple of accounts where this is reported:
13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"
14 "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord [a] have for his servant?"
15 The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so.
And this is only one of many stories including such accounts as Moses at the burning bushing. But the common theme is always human confusion. After all, a quite normal thing for a human being when suddenly confronted by God. Does that make sense?
This is because -- as we think about it, what is happening here is the intrusion of the spiritual into the physical realm. Something that ordinarily isn’t supposed to happen – or is never supposed to happen.
9. So, what happens, of course, is that because we have managed to separate the two realms … we are totally unprepared for the overlapping of the two.
It is kind of like what I call the Lone Ranger effect. You remember the Lone Ranger – he would suddenly appear in some situation where there was trouble, solve the problem, and then suddenly ride off. At this point, some incredulous person would always say, “Who was that masked man?” And someone else would say, “Don’t you know? That was the Lone Ranger!”
Well, the Lone Ranger, while a factious character, was in way, a mysterious outsider who mysteriously arrived on the scene and saved the day. Which is kind of what happens in the Bible when God appears.
Some similar even sometimes happens today. I once read about a Good Samaritan character who used to cruise up and down the San Francisco freeways stopping to help stranded motorists – he was referred to as the Lone Ranger. A kind of one man Triple A.
10. Now, in some of these biblical accounts, the mysterious appearance of God is not without its humor. Consider for a moment the great story of Balaam and his donkey:
Balaam was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. 23 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, she turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat her to get her back on the road.
24 Then the angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between two vineyards, with walls on both sides. 25 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam's foot against it. So he beat her again.
26 Then the angel of the LORD moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff. 28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"
29 Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."
30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?"
"No," he said.
31 Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.
11. And then, there is the story of Jesus on the Road to Damascus
13Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem. 14They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16but they were kept from recognizing him.
17He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"
19"What things?" he asked.
"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."
25He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ[b] have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.
30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"
12. And what is most interesting in these stories is the refusal of most people to initially recognize the presence of God … which is followed by the sudden opening of their eyes.
Well, today brings us to the end of the season of Epiphany … the season of light – of illumination – and of opening our eyes and hearts to the presence of God in our world …which is really the crossing over of the spiritual into the physical.
How can this happen? We can never be sure. One thing is certain. It can happen to anyone. Fop the stories in the Bible reveal that God often chooses the least likely people. Even us.
Can we make it happen? Not really. It just doesn’t work that way. Again, we can only be open to the possibility and be prepared. What will it be like? Well, both illuminating and perhaps frightening – first. But, all reports, make this one discrimination … which is that what is experienced is definitely not merely a subjective state of mine … but also of something or someone outside the self.
And, as I mentioned last week, it can be experienced even in dreams like in the story of Jacob wrestling with the stranger which is most clearly a dream sequence.
13. So, my point in all this is that what the disciples described after their experience with Jesus on top of the mountain, it is more than mere midrashic interpretation. Something did actually happen to the disciples in Jesus’ presence. And it happened more than once … and that reality continued after he died … and forms the basis for the resurrection experiences (such as the one on the road to Emmaus).
The transfiguration of Jesus, then, is really the beginning for the disciples of realizing who Jesus really was. In short, they began to see him in a brand new light.
What does this mean for us?
Have any of you suddenly had your eyes opened by some revelation? Have any of you “seen the light.” How did it happen? Was it gradual, or all of a sudden? Have you ever been up on top of a mountain? What was that like? Exhilarating? A little scary? Or have you instead had some kind of a “mountain-top experience” in every day life?
14. One of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century and perhaps of all time was Leo Tolstoy. Like many extraordinarily creative people he experienced life in a very intense way. He saw things other people did not ordinarily see. He was also tormented by the demands of his art and his inner religious life.
In his famous book, the Varieties of Religious Experience, William James reports this account of Tolstoy’s awakening:
“I remember,” Tolstoy wrote, “one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it was always busy with – the quest for God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?
“And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in me awoke and received a meaning … Why do I look farther? A voice within me asked. He is there: he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledged God and to live are one and the same thing. God is what life is. Well, then! Live, seek God, and there will be no life without him…
”After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was saved from suicide.
15. It was, in a way, Tolstoy’s epiphany. His awakening. His new found ability to see God – not literally – but in all things.
And it isn’t always a one time thing either.
For, just as the idea of God changed over the thousand years of the Bible and again with the coming of Jesus - our understanding of God necessarily changes as we mature throughout our life …
For we should expect that the way we understood God as young people will not be the same today … or tomorrow.
And these changes will not always be easy … as we grow and mature in faith … any more than in other things … and throughout life we can expect to experience new moments of realization … moments of reflection … even moments of epiphany where our eyes are suddenly opened.
So, for today … le me try to sum this all up with the idea that perhaps the ancient Jewish writers in the Bible and even in the New Testament, as well, weren’t so primitive as we think. For, in reality, even today, God is still much closer to all of us than we think. For, like in the story of Tolstoy, it is all about how we perceive the world and God.
And now let me close with some words from the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel:
To pray is to take notice of the wonder of the universe, to regain a sense of the mystery than animates all beings. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer for the mystery by which we live.
We do not step out of the world when we pray; Heschel said, we merely see the world in a different setting. We are no longer the hub of the wheel but one of the spokes – for God is the center toward which all things are drawn.
So, let us pray …
“A Cloud Overshadowed Them”
Mark 9: 2-9
1. The story of the Transfiguration which we read this morning occurs in Mathew, Mark and Luke (but not in the Gospel of John) and it is one of the more complex and mystifying events in the story of Jesus and the disciples.
It comes in the liturgical year at the end of the season of Epiphany which comes right before the beginning of Lent (this coming Wednesday)… and is itself an account of one of the Bible’s major epiphany which describe an appearance or manifestation of God or the supernatural.
Well, right away, by using the word “supernatural,” we are entering into another dimension which exists outside the “natural” realm (meaning it is beyond our normal experience of the physical world) … it is, in short, an encounter with the miraculous or the Divine.
2. And this presents for us a real problem both for interpretation and for preaching in the modern world. I know this, because I have preached at least three times already on this text in the last 7 years. Why? Because it keeps coming up in the lectionary readings and it is, as I have said, in all three Gospels – So, there is no running away from it! Oh, I suppose I could preach from the Old Testament lesson, or the Psalms, or from the Epistles.
But even the Old Testament story for this Sunday is more or less on the same subject. For it is about the story of Elijah the prophet and how he was taken up into heaven on a chariot of fire. And then, in some years, there is also the even more directly connecting passage from Exodus 24:
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God.
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud.
3. Now, to begin with, it should be obvious that Mark and the other Gospel writers leaned heavily on the Hebrew Bible as they attempted to explain this event which occurred when Jesus went up on the mountain and was transfigured.
In fact, some biblical commentators have lately decided that much of the story is more in the nature of Hebrew midrash or creative interpretation than actual fact.
'Midrash' – in short -- is a particular way of reading and interpreting a biblical verse.
4. What generally happens in Midrash is that it minimizes the authority of the wording of the text as communication or normal language. Instead, it places the focus on the personal struggle of the reader to reach a moral application of the text. And, while it is always governed by the wording of the text, it also allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the story. This allows for some very powerful and moving interpretations which seem to have very little connection with the text. The great weakness of this method is that it always threatens to replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection. At its best it requires the presence of mystical insight not given to all readers.
Well, on a lighter note, before this gets too serious, here is some Jewish humor which, if we stretched the definition, could pose as Midrash:
What would have happened if three wise Jewish women had gone to Bethlehem instead of three wise men?
they would have asked directions.
arrived on time.
helped deliver the baby.
hired someone to clean the stable.
made dinner.
and brought practical gifts instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh
and what would they have said to each other after they left?
"did you see the sandals Mary was wearing?"
"the baby doesn't look anything like Joseph."
"can you believe they let all of those disgusting animals in there?"
"I heard that Joseph doesn't have a job"
"and that donkey they are riding has seen better days"
5. Seriously, though, Midrash, then is an attempt to elaborate on the text and provide further interpretation. Kind of like what a sermon does.
So, one way of looking at this is to say that if Jesus went up on the mountain with Peter and John and they did experience some kind of powerful religious moment … which left them frightened and upset … it would naturally be hard to explain afterwards to others. And, so, it would be necessary to put it into terms that other Jews at that time would understand.
So if the disciples were asked, “Well what did you see up there on the mountain?” They might answer, well it was like what happened when Moses went up on the mountain and God came to him in the cloud. And it was like Moses was there and Elijah, too.
And then people would say, “Yes, now I understand. Now it makes sense to me.”
And this would imply, of course, that Jesus was on a par, or greater, than Moses and Elijah – the first of the great prophets. And this would make sense, because it was widely believed that Moses had gone straight to heaven because of the words in
Deuteronomy:
5 And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. 6 He buried him [b] in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.
And, as I have already mentioned, Elijah also was reportedly taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot … so who other than these two great persons would there be in the presence of God.
Which would mean, then, that when the disciples were up there on the mountain with Jesus in the presence of God – indirectly, of course – that this was, in fact, truly a glimpse of what heaven is like.
6. Well, how reliable is that account? Well, being that the disciples were only human and were quite frightened by the experience we can expect that they did the best they could. And, also we must understand that a religious experience of this sort often lasts only last for a second or two before it is over … for as it says, they immediately fell on the ground -- when they looked up no one was there but Jesus.
So, what are we to make of this mysterious and wonderful event which takes us beyond the realm of the normal? Was it just a case of creative story telling intended for the purpose of explaining or elaborating on certain aspects of who Jesus was? Or was something else going on? More literalistic interpretations of the Bible of course would have us believe that it all happened just as miraculously as it says.
Which of course leaves us today wondering why things like this only happened back in the Bible. Why does God not appear today? And why are there not angels and things like that?
7. I, too, have long pondered this question and recently I ran across an interesting discussion on the subject by a Jewish scholar at Harvard, James Kugel. And he does address the really big question of why it was that people in the Bible – particularly the Old Testament actually talked to God and angels. The book is called The God of Old.
Kugel writes that the Hebrew Bible was composed over an extended period of more than a thousand years. During this period, he notes, people’s understanding of God naturally changed.
Whereas nowadays, he continues, we tend to separate life into categories like “spiritual” and “material” – the early Israelites did not see things that way.
For, in biblical times while people did not like to talk about other people who had direct person to person experiences of God it was not because God was invisible as we believe today … but, because the believed that actually seeing God was very dangerous. “No man can see Me and live” is what it says in Exodus 33:20. Angels, then, were often intermediaries from God who were used to send messages to human beings. Just as it says that an angel appeared at Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection.
8. Well, there isn’t time to go into all the detail this morning… so I would like to focus on just one interesting aspect of the biblical accounts of God’s presence. Which is that in most accounts people often seem confused and actually do not recognize what is going on at first. Which seems no different than today, really. Let me give you a couple of accounts where this is reported:
13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"
14 "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord [a] have for his servant?"
15 The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so.
And this is only one of many stories including such accounts as Moses at the burning bushing. But the common theme is always human confusion. After all, a quite normal thing for a human being when suddenly confronted by God. Does that make sense?
This is because -- as we think about it, what is happening here is the intrusion of the spiritual into the physical realm. Something that ordinarily isn’t supposed to happen – or is never supposed to happen.
9. So, what happens, of course, is that because we have managed to separate the two realms … we are totally unprepared for the overlapping of the two.
It is kind of like what I call the Lone Ranger effect. You remember the Lone Ranger – he would suddenly appear in some situation where there was trouble, solve the problem, and then suddenly ride off. At this point, some incredulous person would always say, “Who was that masked man?” And someone else would say, “Don’t you know? That was the Lone Ranger!”
Well, the Lone Ranger, while a factious character, was in way, a mysterious outsider who mysteriously arrived on the scene and saved the day. Which is kind of what happens in the Bible when God appears.
Some similar even sometimes happens today. I once read about a Good Samaritan character who used to cruise up and down the San Francisco freeways stopping to help stranded motorists – he was referred to as the Lone Ranger. A kind of one man Triple A.
10. Now, in some of these biblical accounts, the mysterious appearance of God is not without its humor. Consider for a moment the great story of Balaam and his donkey:
Balaam was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. 23 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, she turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat her to get her back on the road.
24 Then the angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between two vineyards, with walls on both sides. 25 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam's foot against it. So he beat her again.
26 Then the angel of the LORD moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff. 28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"
29 Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."
30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?"
"No," he said.
31 Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.
11. And then, there is the story of Jesus on the Road to Damascus
13Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem. 14They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16but they were kept from recognizing him.
17He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"
19"What things?" he asked.
"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."
25He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ[b] have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.
30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"
12. And what is most interesting in these stories is the refusal of most people to initially recognize the presence of God … which is followed by the sudden opening of their eyes.
Well, today brings us to the end of the season of Epiphany … the season of light – of illumination – and of opening our eyes and hearts to the presence of God in our world …which is really the crossing over of the spiritual into the physical.
How can this happen? We can never be sure. One thing is certain. It can happen to anyone. Fop the stories in the Bible reveal that God often chooses the least likely people. Even us.
Can we make it happen? Not really. It just doesn’t work that way. Again, we can only be open to the possibility and be prepared. What will it be like? Well, both illuminating and perhaps frightening – first. But, all reports, make this one discrimination … which is that what is experienced is definitely not merely a subjective state of mine … but also of something or someone outside the self.
And, as I mentioned last week, it can be experienced even in dreams like in the story of Jacob wrestling with the stranger which is most clearly a dream sequence.
13. So, my point in all this is that what the disciples described after their experience with Jesus on top of the mountain, it is more than mere midrashic interpretation. Something did actually happen to the disciples in Jesus’ presence. And it happened more than once … and that reality continued after he died … and forms the basis for the resurrection experiences (such as the one on the road to Emmaus).
The transfiguration of Jesus, then, is really the beginning for the disciples of realizing who Jesus really was. In short, they began to see him in a brand new light.
What does this mean for us?
Have any of you suddenly had your eyes opened by some revelation? Have any of you “seen the light.” How did it happen? Was it gradual, or all of a sudden? Have you ever been up on top of a mountain? What was that like? Exhilarating? A little scary? Or have you instead had some kind of a “mountain-top experience” in every day life?
14. One of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century and perhaps of all time was Leo Tolstoy. Like many extraordinarily creative people he experienced life in a very intense way. He saw things other people did not ordinarily see. He was also tormented by the demands of his art and his inner religious life.
In his famous book, the Varieties of Religious Experience, William James reports this account of Tolstoy’s awakening:
“I remember,” Tolstoy wrote, “one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it was always busy with – the quest for God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?
“And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in me awoke and received a meaning … Why do I look farther? A voice within me asked. He is there: he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledged God and to live are one and the same thing. God is what life is. Well, then! Live, seek God, and there will be no life without him…
”After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was saved from suicide.
15. It was, in a way, Tolstoy’s epiphany. His awakening. His new found ability to see God – not literally – but in all things.
And it isn’t always a one time thing either.
For, just as the idea of God changed over the thousand years of the Bible and again with the coming of Jesus - our understanding of God necessarily changes as we mature throughout our life …
For we should expect that the way we understood God as young people will not be the same today … or tomorrow.
And these changes will not always be easy … as we grow and mature in faith … any more than in other things … and throughout life we can expect to experience new moments of realization … moments of reflection … even moments of epiphany where our eyes are suddenly opened.
So, for today … le me try to sum this all up with the idea that perhaps the ancient Jewish writers in the Bible and even in the New Testament, as well, weren’t so primitive as we think. For, in reality, even today, God is still much closer to all of us than we think. For, like in the story of Tolstoy, it is all about how we perceive the world and God.
And now let me close with some words from the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel:
To pray is to take notice of the wonder of the universe, to regain a sense of the mystery than animates all beings. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer for the mystery by which we live.
We do not step out of the world when we pray; Heschel said, we merely see the world in a different setting. We are no longer the hub of the wheel but one of the spokes – for God is the center toward which all things are drawn.
So, let us pray …
posted by Anonymous at 11:14 AM
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