+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’s 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 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 sometimes called “Thin Places.”
Thin Places are those moments when we feel especially close to God. When we feel —simultaneously—really small--miniscule in the whole of the universe--- yet also larger than life, one with God, one with all of Creation.
Maybe they occur when witnessing a gorgeous sunset, or maybe after the birth of a child. But they can also happen in the midst of an ordinary day—driving the car, washing the dishes, checking Facebook. But we can’t make them happen—they just happen when we least expect it—-when the guard of our humanity is 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. 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 and Jesus will need friends with him. He needs his friends to get it. He needs them to prepare. He needs them ready for the increased scrutiny, for the arrest, for the torture, for his death. 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 Resurrection.
And, as usual, they aren’t getting it.
Maybe they don’t want to, maybe they simply can’t. So Jesus takes them up the mountain to pray. In his wisdom Jesus knew James, John and Peter needed to get away. They 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 tune out the noise of the world.
And it’s then and only then, with the noise quieted, that this “thing” happens, this transfiguration. Jesus’ appearance, his countenance changes. At that transfiguring moment, God’s glory could no longer be contained within the person of Jesus…it burst forth, all over that mountaintop, all over James, John and Peter, and all over us.
Folks, 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 follow business as usual 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. Therefore, moments of the Holy, Thin Place experiences are usually fleeting. Not because God retreats, but, because we do. 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 within us. Something 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 to feel the intensity of loss-- to realize what life is like without the light and love of God as given to us in Jesus. 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 will stumble upon the empty tomb and find ourselves—once again—overwhelmed…not by the rigors of daily life, but rather by the radiance of the Risen One who through his Resurrection gives us the glory and the wonder of Life Eternal. My friends, my Lenten wish for us is that we become open enough, willing enough, receptive enough to be transfigured by and through this Jesus, the one who simply longs for us to walk with him. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia and Amen!
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