What I’m Thinking: Unanticipated Transfiguration

When Jesus invited his disciples to join him on a mountain hike, I’m sure they knew what to expect. Some talk, some learning, some laughs, and probably (this was Jesus, after all) some time in silent prayer. What they got was something entirely different: a transfigured Messiah.

Here’s a transcript:

This coming Sunday I’ll be in worship but not preaching at Church of the Holy Cross. Our new Interim Conference Minister, the Rev. Gabrielle Chavez, will bring the message. She’s just begun her ministry here in Hawai’i, and I’m really grateful that she’s able to come and share with us so early in her time of service.

So I hope that you can be there.

I am thinking, however, about the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday: it’s the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

When Peter and James and John followed Jesus’ invitation to come and climb a mountain with him, my guess is that they probably expect that they would spend some quiet time with him. Maybe some of it would be conversation and learning, but other [moments], I’m sure, they expected would be a quiet time, where each of them came to God individually in prayer.

But then, at the summit of the mountain, suddenly Jesus is glowing like the sun, and they see the figures of Moses and Elijah, and what they had expected is now completely different.

That is the tie between Transfiguration and our lives. We are met at some time or another – sometimes more than once, sometimes just once in life – with an event, a situation, that transfigures what we had expected into what we will live through. Sometimes it’s a crisis or a calamity, sometimes it’s an unexpected blessing. In either case, we, like James and John and Simon Peter, find ourselves in the place of adapting to and seeking to understand that which has come into our lives.

We are all transfigured.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear about what you’re thinking, so please leave your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.