TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS: LORD, IT IS GOOD TO BE HERE

TRANSCENDENT LORD

6 August: Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ                                      

“Lord, it is good to be here”

High above Jerusalem, on Mt. Tabor, Jesus was transformed and transfigured. His human body, suffused with divinity, was a dazzling spectacle. How infinitely splendid Jesus must have appeared during his glorious transfiguration, outshining a million suns in the divine glory that was properly his. The Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah appeared by his side, absorbed in conversation with him. By the transfiguration the old dispensation was swept up into the new. The three apostles, Peter, James and John, would be the leaders of the New Testament community, centred on the Son. The voice of the Father, “listen to him”, bore witness to his Son, the chosen, the fulfilment of his promises of old and the pledge of life and hope for the future. The transfiguration of the Lord was charged with promise.

Jesus’ three disciples were bedazzled and ecstatic in their wonderment, privileged, as they were to glimpse for a moment his transcendent state as he prayed to his Father. Peter hardly knew what to say. His words came tumbling out, the best he could find in his wonder and awe at what he saw and heard: “Master, how good it is for us to be here.” Peter confused but desiring to capture the glory for keeps, suggested pitching separate tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. It was not to be. But others have since built the tabernacle that he never built for Jesus. The place is still remembered, still visited, a hallowed spot for prayer and worship by countless pilgrims.

For what happened there is what we have surely found, though perhaps less vividly than Peter, in our own lives. If we look back through our experience, if we take into account moments that have been rare but none the less real; if we remember how we have felt and at times still feel, we find something very near to what Peter felt.  We have known moment of transfiguration. And the truth is it is likely we can find no better words than Peter found, inadequate though they may be, to express what the moment has meant. The words give no explanation, they attempt no description. There is no time and need for such things  -  they only come later. The words are simply and solely an immediate response to what at the time could neither be questioned nor denied. “How good it is for us to be here,” said Peter, and meant it with all his heart.

This experience runs through the Bible like a golden thread. Ultimately it is what the Bible witnesses to amidst all that might seem to deny the presence of God. It is repeated again and again in the Old Testament, and nowhere more vividly than in the story of Jacob in the wilderness and on the run from his involvement in a mean and wretched deceit. In that desolate place he finds his loneliness broken through by an experience of which he can only say, as much as Peter said, “Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.”

But Peter and his fellows could not prolong their peak experience. They had to realise that even though they saw “the Beloved Son”, pointed out by the Father, in the glory that was natural to him, that beautiful Son would not get away with glory. He would descend Mt. Tabor only to ascend Mt. Calvary. That’s the kind of God we have come to know  -  a God whose glory is spelled out in wounds, painful cries, darkness, and death. A God pretty much like we are; worse off than we are. The Bible story is about how God makes himself known and about his dealings with us. His presence is realised in the here and now of human life. Jesus stayed with that human life, was wholly involved in it. In him that life was transformed. In him that life was transformed and transfigured by a transfusion of the divine. And on Mt. Tabor Peter saw it and knew it: “Master, it is so good for us to be here.”

Those words have come so often in the various circumstances of each one’s life. The moments of certainty, when there could be neither question nor denial, have been rare. But the response we have felt at those moments has spilt over into a growing awareness, a kind of discerning, of the activity of God in our lives and in the lives of those who have touched ours. And in some ways, in between the certainties there come the doubts. For the God who comes to make himself known in the here and now of human life has so much to contend with, as he did even in the time of Christ. And that is true in the Church and all human endeavours. We are all awkward customers, plagued by our own follies and by the very many difficulties of being human in a world that runs to so much of inhumanity. We are not easy to work with or to work through, though that is God’s loving purpose in our lives. It is important to handle each experience  -  peak, poetic and prosaic  -  to the best of our ability. We may have to practise more patience, strive that much harder, reach inside our selves for a little more strength, muster a little more faith in God and ourselves. Like Peter’s and his fellows’, our discipleship is limited. And yet we can experience the inner peace of those who know they gave their all. We shall be better, not bitter, knowing that in God’s presence we did our best. So we can say, and with all others who bear witness to the work of God in the midst of us, with thankfulness and wonder:                          “Lord, it is good to be here.”