Mission of metamorphosis between mountaintops

“God unknown and unsheltered by our poor constructs: open to us the moments when heaven overshadow time and robs us of empty words; in the moments of silence help us to listen to the Chosen One, who goes to die that we might live, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.” [Shakespeare, Steven.  Prayers for an Inclusive Church (New York: Church Publishing, 2009) p 87.]

Mountaintops, metamorphosis, and mission.  What might the Spirit be saying to us through today’s lectionary readings?  I’m hearing that mountaintop experiences – transforming encounters with God – are powerful moments of significant change (if we’re open to it)… and, that we’re not meant to dwell on those mountaintops, but to come back down and get on with mission and ministry in the valleys.

Today is the last Sunday of the Epiphany season in the church calendar.  This has been a time in which we’re reconsidering all the ways in which the holy – the divine will - has been revealed to us in the incarnate manifestation of God’s love in Jesus Christ.  We were launched into this season (of about 40 days) by an important pinnacle moment [actually, a special combination of two pinnacles] – a mountaintop experience, if you will – in our church year.  God’s light and love comes to us as a child born to ordinary folk… and among the first to interpret this divine sign are wise foreigners of a different religious background.  This was a particularly high moment in our life together, Christmas+Epiphany… matched in elevation only by our celebration of the Resurrection (Easter) that will happen in a little over 40 days from now.  Between these exceptional peaks in our church year, we travel through important valleys, and then up to mountaintop again, and then back into another valley.  Such is our life.

We’ve now arrived at another pinnacle moment in our year together – commemoration of the mountaintop transfiguration with Jesus before the eyes of three of his disciples.  This extraordinary revelation of Jesus’ divine identity is the exclamation point to the season of Epiphany.  And, like other mountaintop moments, it’s temporal and is followed by being brought back down into a valley – this time, the valley of the shadow of death.  We’ll initiate our period of travel through this valley on Wednesday when we recognize the season of Lent with the imposition of ashes as a sign of our mortality.

Before we launch into the valley period this week, let’s see what today’s mountaintop experience is showing us.

We first heard a reading from Exodus (Exodus 34:29-35), reminding us of his mountaintop experiences.  Moses encountered God in the mountains several times – each time returning to his people with instructions about how to live more according to divine will.  Before what we heard today, Moses had been traveling with his people through a valley (desert) for about 40 years – from a moment of liberation toward a moment of restoration.  Moses came down from this mountain with instructions from God, only to find his people, having grown impatient waiting for him, worshipping an idol they had created.  In anger toward his people who had broken laws, Moses smashed the first set of tablets he had brought down from the mountain.  God tells Moses to chisel new tablet to replace the ones broken and invites Moses back up the mountain again where God will restore the instructions again.  After 40 days and nights up on the mountain, fasting before God (Exodus 34:28), Moses returns to his people in the valley with the new tablets (describing the expectation of a covenant life) and a radiant face, still glowing from his encounter with God.  He kept his face veiled when talking to the people, removing the veil only during his continued conversations with God (in the tent of meeting).

Paul, in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, suggests that Moses used this veil to hide the fading of God’s glory in through the old ways and that the veil continues to separate people from God’s presence when we dwell in the ‘old covenant.’ [note: Paul, a Pharisee himself, if very determined to differentiate his understanding of life in Christ from living under Jewish laws.]  Paul boldly claims that through Jesus the veil has been lifted so that we can see more clearly the glory of God reflected in the person of Christ – an image that, as we behold it, has the power to transform us from one degree of glory to another. God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ affords us clarity and transparency in seeing and related to each other.  Essentially, Paul is saying that the new covenant established through Jesus Christ is living instruction from the Spirit written on our hearts with love, no longer a set of words written on stone tablets. 

In describing the holy potential of our encounter with this new covenant, Paul uses the language of transformation – metamorphosis.  We’ll come back to this in a moment.

Back to the rhythm of mountaintops and valleys…. we heard a reading that recalls for us the Moses’ journeys between the mountaintop encounters with God and his time with this people in the valley.  We also heard the Gospel story of the transfiguration of Jesus from Luke’s perspective. 

Lodovico Carracci, 1594

In Luke’s telling, it was on the eighth day (eighth day – Luke’s way of signaling that this is a ‘new’ week, a new creation) that Jesus takes James, John, and Peter “to pray” up on the mountain.  Whenever Jesus prays, we know something significant is about to happen – and this is on a mountain, no less – so this outta be big… and it is.  The disciples, as they seem to be prone to do, doze off but are awakened to ‘see’ Jesus radiant (recalling the language used to describe Moses’ face reflecting the radiance of God – but this time, the source of the great light on the mountain is Jesus himself), clothed in dazzling white (symbolic of those entering the kingdom of heaven), and flanked by Moses (representing the law) and Elijah (representing the prophets and the coming of the day of the Lord, Malachi 4:4-5) with whom there is conversation foreshadowing Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.  Hastily wanting to honor this moment, Peter, out of the tradition that he’s familiar with, suggests that tent tabernacles be erected, harkening back to the ‘tents of meeting’ erected in the desert in which Moses would speak to God.  But this transfiguring moment is not like others – there is to be no containing of God’s glory here, there are to be no more veils (it will be torn apart soon).  To clarify who’s who, so that they no one assumes that this scene is represents Moses and Elijah as peers with or elders of Jesus, God’s voice booms “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  - making the point that in Jesus represents a new covenant as the fulfillment of God’s law and the promises told by the prophets… granted, even with this dramatic intervention, those disciples in His midst still didn’t get the full meaning of what was being revealed to them… and neither do many of us, if we’re honest.

Rather than dwell there in this mountaintop moment, as profound as it is, Jesus leads his disciples back to the valley and immediately gets to work – encountering “faithless and perverse” people, but nevertheless showing them mercy and healing one possessed by an unclean spirit.

Recall that in describing the holy potential of our encounter with God’s new covenant, Paul uses the language of transformation – from the Greek word μεταμορφόω (metamorphosis).  In descriptions of Jesus’ transfiguration, we also encounter metamorphosis.  In both cases, we’re talking about “beyond-form” or “to change form,” to re-form, to re-model, to fundamentally change shape or state; a paradigm shift.  If we come face-to-face with God’s love, we are invited to fundamentally change…. to change at our very core who we are and what we believe. 

I’m left wondering if this encounter was really about Jesus’ need to go up the mountain to connect with Moses and Elijah in order to be re-formed and prepared for the rest of his mission and ministry… or, if this story is more about initiating the metamorphosis that takes place among the disciples, preparing them to re-form the body of the church to carry on Christ’s interpersonal mission… a process that continues in their encounter with the risen Christ and then with the reception of his Holy Spirit at Pentecost… and process that continues in us today as we encounter Christ through our baptism and in love with our neighbors… an experience of the metamorphosis on the altar every Sunday when we behold the elements on our altar becoming for us the body and blood of our Lord and Savior… and the subsequent renewal of our own form as we inwardly digest this spiritual food.

And, as we remember mountaintop moments with Jesus Christ, we’re reminded of how we too are being invited to change our ways, our forms, and to prepare for mission and ministry between pinnacle experiences.  To see ourselves anew, not as independent beings, but as members of Christ’s body called into service, functioning today as his hands and heart in our word.

Mountaintops.  Metamorphosis.  Mission.  As important as mountaintop / pinnacle experiences are (they do mark seminal moments in our ongoing transformation), it’s our work in the valleys between them that really defines us a Christian body and demonstrates God’s love incarnate in action, compelling our mission.  Christ calls us to leave the luminance of our mountaintop experiences, return to the valleys of life, and tend to the needs of our brothers and sisters, particular those in the lowest of places.  Christ calls each of us to re-form and re-model our notions of scarcity and abundance in order to better serve the entire family of God. 

Note: For over fifteen years, the Episcopal Church* has observed World Mission Sunday on this Sunday before Lent begins (*note: Roman Catholics observe World Mission Sunday in October).  The stated purpose of this observance is to “hold up and celebrate our shared commitment and call to mission.”  We’re asked to celebrate and pray for the work and witness of missionaries we have serving in countries around the world… and to remain mindful that the Episcopal Church's official name is The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church.  All members of the Episcopal Church are also members of the Society and, therefore, we are all missionaries.

“As we celebrate this World Mission Sunday and think of the Transfiguration of Jesus, let our hearts be full of wonder and our souls be full of praise. As our worship today lifts us to the height of heaven, why don’t we come down with faces unveiled and through our actions demonstrate that we have been with the Lord?” (The Rev. Lawrence Womack, Associate Rector at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, in Charlotte, NC)

As we come down from pinnacle moments, prepare us, Lord, to do your work in the valleys all around us.  As we enter our Lenten season this week, compel us toward new awareness of who we really are and new ministry and mission in your name.

AMEN.