The surprising and often missed transfiguration of Christ

Today is the Transfiguration of Christ Sunday.  Transfiguration…that’s a word you and I don’t use a lot, if ever.  It we go back to the original Greek, we see the root and basis for this is “metamorphosis”, which is a little more familiar to us; it means change.  The transfiguration is one of the miracles of the Gospels, and is the only miracle to happen to Christ instead of from Christ during his life.

We find Jesus, James, John, and Peter on a high mountaintop, but this mountain is not identified for us, to pray.  While there, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light, and the prophets Moses and Elijah appear with him and speak with him.  Then a voice from the Heavens repeats nearly the same words as we heard at the Baptism of Christ “This is My Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”. 

Every year on the last Sunday before Lent we observe Transfiguration Sunday, and the text throughout the Synoptic Gospels is relatively the same.  Last year we talked about us being transfigured people.  This year I want us to focus more on this change that Christ experienced and how that impacts us in a time when Jesus physically doesn’t walk the earth the way Peter, James, and John experienced it.

I’ve had a few things happen to me this week that drove me in a different direction to this text.  More than once this week, I’ve had conversations centering around “taking the hand of Jesus”.  One was a friend’s teenage daughter who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she needed to take Christ’s hand, but she didn’t know how.  This, paired with the other conversations, made me stop and think about the times I’ve struggled to take the hand of Jesus, and how many people one degree of separation from me face the same challenge. 

Over the past few weeks we have talked at length about the Sermon on the Mount and throughout Epiphany the light that emanates outward through us from Christ.  Too often we think in these terms exclusively; we know with what we are tasked and we begin to focus on these tasks, but we often fail to understand why we are doing them, or even seek why.  We become so focused on doing that we don’t stop to think of the why – the theological aspect.

When we think of taking the hand of Christ, the first images that likely are conjured are turbulent.  We think of Christ extending his hand to Peter when he stepped out onto the choppy waters of the Sea of Galilee, or at least I do.  Then I begin to think of the stormy seasons in my life when I needed to reach for Christ for stability; the times when I wasn’t able to stand on my own and was in need.  I tend to think in the construct of when I needed saving, and it’s within this construct that I began to see how my entire view of this was wrong.

Just as Christ was transfigured on this mountain top, so too are we transfigured people, changed by baptism and confirmation.  We shed our old, and take on new with the light of Christ beaming out from within us, a light so bright that it shines like that city on the hill.  Today, I ask, how has this transfiguration changed us?  How are we different and new?

I’m sure everyone has stuck with me until this point; but from here forward, we need to have one of those hard conversations that are difficult for your introverted pastor. 

I think the first step in taking the hand of Christ is realizing what exactly Christ has been changed into, being that he no longer roams the earth physically with you and me.  At the transfiguration, Christ’s physical and supernatural entities came together in one divine being for all to behold.  This transfiguration continues today in the very light we have spoken so much about and have heard about ever since we were children, the light that is in every single person who ever was, who is, and who will ever be. 

I realized this week at Nicholas Sutton’s execution, when the clergy person took his hand to pray with Nick one final time, that clergy person took the hand of Christ.  When the counselors at the pregnancy resource center here in town reach out to those men and women, they are taking the hand of Christ.  When someone hands someone living on the street money, or a meal, or whatever act of compassion they are handing off, they are handing that into the hands of Christ.  When we extend an embrace to someone in pain, we are embracing Christ. 

In that same spirit, we need to realize that not only the good, but the bad is also true.  When we exclude, deny, or pass judgement on people because of ill formed beliefs, we are excluding, denying, and judging Christ.  When we prevent justice or equality for someone based on their race, or gender, or socioeconomic status, we are likewise doing those things to Christ.  When we cut social programs aimed to help those who aren’t as advantaged as us, or make the requirements so ridiculous that we have people that go to bed hungry, we are starving Christ.  When we deny immigration to those who are seeking to escape violence in their homes, we are denying Christ safety.  When we value some lives over other lives we are devaluing Christ.  When we worry more about our rights than we do our responsibilities, we begin to recognize the depth of our idolatry that clouds our vision.

I don’t have the answers to these difficult things you and I are faced with every day, and I don’t know how to reconcile with the compounding sociological-divisional issues we grapple with; I do know that instead of waiting until I’m in need to reach for the hand of Christ, I will choose to stop looking inward and start looking outward for the hand of Christ that needs me to grab it.