+Have you ever been transfigured-- been so affected by an experience that your actual appearance—how you look… 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 the world changes…and it shows!
But sometimes the causes of these transformations, these transfigurations aren’t as easily explained. They’re more mysterious, less concrete.
These experiences of the Divine, these experiences of the sacred are described, in Celtic culture, as Thin Places.
Thin Places are those times, those moments, those experiences when one feels especially close to the Divine. When one feels incredibly small--miniscule in the whole of the universe--- and yet also 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. But it can also happen in the midst of an ordinary day—driving the car, washing the dishes, checking Facebook. Thin Places are available to us all, at any time and in any place, because 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—what happened to Jesus on that mountaintop in today’s gospel--- was a “Thin Place experience” for James, John and Peter. Now, I don’t know what exactly happened on that mountaintop ---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.
As we prepare for the beginning of Lent on Wednesday, we’ve fast forwarded a bit. Moving from the early part of Jesus’ ministry, to the latter part when, once and for all, he turns his followers toward Jerusalem where everything will come to a head.
This is going to be a tough journey and Jesus needs his friends with him. He 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. Not only do they need to be ready for it all to happen, they have to be ready to feel all the emotions connected to it---They need to feel it, 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, as usual, they aren’t getting it. Maybe they don’t want to, maybe they simply can’t. And so Jesus takes them up the mountain to pray. Jesus, throughout scripture, would take retreat times-- going off by himself to pray--- and in his wisdom he knew James, John and Peter needed to get away too. They needed needed to lessen the distractions of their everyday life to get quiet enough, open enough and hopefully willing 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 then and only then, when they shut off the noise, that this “thing” , this “transfiguration” happens. Jesus’ appearance, his countenance changes. As one commentator puts it: “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. ”
At that transfiguring moment, God’s glory could no longer be contained within Jesus…it burst forth, all over that mountaintop, all over James, John and Peter, and all over us.
Sometimes, God’s glory just can’t be contained. Sometimes it overflows, 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’re overwhelmed with what is pure and holy and sacred.
The truth is, 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, because the power of God’s presence is so overwhelming, we reach back into the familiar—the noise of daily life--to ground ourselves in the routine, the ordinary and unchallenging ebb and flow of our days.
This is why we read the story of the Transfiguration right before Lent. On Wednesday we embark on a stripping down, a quieting, a simplifying of our daily life. In Lent we prepare 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, and 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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