Have you ever been transfigured-- been so effected by an experience that your actual appearance—how you look, and your countenance, how you carry yourself, changes? It can be negative—when something horrible happens and the wind is taken out of your sails, or positive, you’re in love, you’ve gotten your life back on track after some rough spots. Something about how you appear, how you present yourself to world changes.
But sometimes the causes of these transformations, these transfigurations aren’t as easily explained. They’re more mysterious, less concrete.
I had such an experience when my dad died. It’s too long to get into now, but I speak of it often. It was a tremendous moment when I was, albeit briefly, fully aware of being in the presence of the Divine, of being present for a very holy and sacred moment. Although it didn’t—it doesn’t—ease the sting of my father’s death, it did transform and transfigure me. It started a decade plus long return to my long-held heart’s desire to go to seminary, to pursue the priesthood. When it happened, I had no idea where it would lead; but I now realize how much it fuels me, how much it enhances my comprehension of who I am and what I am to do.
These experiences of the Divine, these experiences of the sacred are described, in Celtic literature, as Thin Places.
Thin Places are those times, those moments, those experiences when one feels especially close to the Divine. When one feels, simultaneously, incredibly small, miniscule in the whole of the universe and yet larger than life, one with God, one with all of Creation. Maybe it occurs when witnessing a gorgeous sunset, or maybe after the birth of a child. Or in the midst of an ordinary day—driving the car, washing the dishes, balancing the checkbook. Thin Places are available to us all, at any time and in any place. Thin places occur when we let the guard of our humanity down long enough for the fullness of the divine to breakthrough.
I think that the Transfiguration was a Thin Place experience for James John and Peter. I don’t know what exactly happened on the top of Mt Tabor that day but I do know that something happened.
In other words---who knows what the actual facts are, but I believe that what happened was transfigurative for Jesus, transformative for his friends and sacred for us all.
It helps to set the stage a bit: After weeks of hearing from the Sermon on the Mount, today we skip ahead in Matthew’s Gospel, to the 17th Chapter….Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah and Jesus has just made the first of his predictions regarding his death and resurrection. He’s trying to get the apostles ready, to stop focusing on a long-term ministry with Jesus at the lead and to prepare for carrying his message out into the world. Peter may identify Jesus as the Messiah but Jesus knows Peter doesn’t have a clue what this entails. They need to end their Galilean travels and turn toward Jerusalem, where Jesus knows trouble awaits. He needs his friends with him for this journey. Jesus needs them to get it. He needs them to prepare. He needs them ready for the increased scrutiny, for the arrest, for the torture, for the death, for Jesus being gone. They need to feel all of this, for only in feeling it---really feeling it---will they be open to the ultimate Thin Place: the glory wonder and awe of the Resurrection.
And they aren’t getting it. Maybe they don’t want to, maybe they simply can’t. And so they go up the mountain. Jesus needed to get away and in his wisdom Jesus knew they—James John and Peter needed to get away too. Because when we don’t want to hear something, when we just can’t get something it’s usually because we just don’t, or won’t shut all the extraneous noise off…we don’t get quiet enough to let God break through. By going up the mountain, they get away, they retreat, they quiet all the noise of the world.
It’s only then, when they shut off all the other noise, that this thing happens. Jesus’ appearance, his countenance changes. “The indwelling Deity darted out its rays through the veil of Jesus’ flesh; His face shone with Divine majesty, like the sun in its strength” (citation lost). At that transfiguring moment, God’s glory could no longer be contained within Jesus…it burst forth.
Sometimes, God’s glory just can’t be contained. Sometimes it just over flows, overwhelming our senses.
That’s what happens in Thin places: we’re overwhelmed by God’s Glory. In Thin Places, God’s Glory can no longer be contained.
Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary was a Thin Place, as was Christmas morning, Jesus’ baptism, and the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. Each of these moments were times when, in the course of a routine action---Mary going about the household duties of a young Galilean woman, the birth of a baby to a poor traveling couple, the baptism of a follower of John, the fulfilling of Jewish purity laws by a devout Jewish couple, and the quick trip up a mountain for some retreat time with friends----in the course of these ordinary events, God’s radiance bursts through, our efforts to shut the Divine out of our lives, the noise of daily life which tries to outshine the radiance of God, fails, and we are overwhelmed with what is pure and holy and sacred.
Our humanity can’t manage a steady diet of this radiance. We spend a lot of time and energy layering “life” upon the in-breaking of the Holy—the radiance of God. Therefore, moments of the Holy, Thin Place experiences are usually fleeting—not because God retreats, but, being overwhelmed, we reach back into the familiar—the noise of daily life--to ground ourselves in the routine, the ordinary, the familiar and unchallenging ebb and flow of our days.
This is why we read the story of the Transfiguration right before Lent. We’re embarking on a stripping down, a quieting, a simplifying of our daily life. We’re preparing ourselves for an encounter with the Divine and this story, this account of a Thin Place experience, plants something deep within us. Something transformative, that, as we settle into the barrenness of Lent, marinates, stirs, grows. So that, like James, John and Peter, when we walk that walk to Calvary, when we weep with Mary at the foot of the cross, when we linger in the seeming finality of death on Holy Saturday we are strengthened. Strengthened to feel that loss, to realize what life is like without the Divine Radiance of God through Christ. So that, just when the rigors of Lent, the nakedness of the desert, and the restriction of discipline becomes too much, when our senses long for stimulation, we stumble upon the empty tomb….overwhelmed –not by the sights and sounds of our daily world, but by the radiance of the Divine which, this time, will burst forth from our own skin, crying out Alleluia, God is alive, Alleluia, we are alive.
Amen.
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