When was
the last time you had a vision? Perhaps it depends on your definition
of "a vision." Here's one definition:
A religious
experience that involves the senses. The quality of the experience
suggests that the content of the perception is real, a direct, unmediated
contact with a non-ordinary aspect of reality that is external and
independent of the perceiver.
In other
words, not a figment of your imagination. Actually some 80% of all Americans
say they have had a deeply meaningful spiritual experience, a powerful,
even miraculous intervention of God into your life, an awareness of
God's presence as if for the first time, a sudden and dramatic experience
of conversion. But those aren't necessarily a vision as we've defined
it. Nor, frankly, does it count if you're high on something. Well, whether
you've had a vision or not, we must surely concede that what the three
disciples experienced on that mountaintop with Jesus was a vision-"a
religious experience that involved the senses, a direct, unmediated
contact with a non-ordinary aspect of reality that is external and independent
of the receiver." In other words, not a figment of their imagination.
Luke's
account in today's gospel says that while the disciples watched Jesus
pray, "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became
dazzling white." This kind of illumination could only mean one
thing: here was a man sent from God who would manifest God's glory as
God's Son, as God's Chosen. The disciples could hear the voice of God,
the disciples could see the transfigured glory of God.
Now whether
or not you and I have ever had such a vision, and given that the Transfiguration
was something of a unique event, we can all expect some moments of revelation
as part of our human experience, some glimpses of the grandeur that
is God. In the words of Fulton Sheen,
The
universe, according to God's original plan, was made transparent,
like a windowpane: a mountain was not to be just a mountain, but a
symbol of the power of God. A snowflake was not just a snowflake,
but a clue to the purity of God. Everything created was to tell something
about God, for "in the visible things of the world is the invisible
God made manifest."
And so
a mountain isn't just a mountain. A snowflake isn't just a snowflake.
This bread and wine isn't just bread and wine. They reveal God if we
can but see things through the eyes of faith.
Peter,
of course, suggests that they memorialize the event, build shelters
for Jesus and Moses and Elijah so that they can prolong the moment,
so that they can remember the moment. That's what you and I do all the
time, and we can be forgiven for it. Who doesn't want a photograph of
our children just after they've been born? Who doesn't want a discreet
videographer at our children's weddings to get all of it? Who doesn't
go to Wrigley Field and point out the players' numbers that have been
retired and remember the great moments Ron Santo and Ernie Banks and
all the others gave us? These are more than mementos. They recreate
those great occasions for us. The verify their importance to us.
TS Eliot,
however, would say to Peter and would say to us in these moments of
grace
You
are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or
carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid. And
prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of
the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. And what the
dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead:
the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language
of the living.
TS Eliot
is saying: Nothing can memorialize or capture the spirit adequately
for it can only be etched indelibly into our souls.
And yet,
the Transfiguration of Jesus did have a purpose beyond the moment for
Luke tells us that it was meant to point Jesus and the disciples toward
Jerusalem, toward his suffering and death. The position of the Transfiguration
gospel on the Sunday before Lent is deliberate. It says, in essence,
the way of Glory is the way of the Cross, and that you and I as disciples
have been given the privilege to share in that sacrificing love as members
of Christ's body in the world. That is the nature of Christ's love recounted
in Paul's famous hymn of love to the Corinthians. We remember that the
word in Greek for this kind of love is Agape. It's distinct from the
other Greek words for love, Eros and Filia, but is the word used to
describe Christ's motivation in being lifted high upon the Cross to
die for our sakes.
On the
positive side of the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion
of the Christ is the nature of the sacrifice Christ truly experienced.
The reality is that crucifixion was a horrific way to die. That point
is apparently made over and over and over in the movie, and quite apart
from the question of "Who killed Jesus?" is the question,
why such unremitting violence? In Gibson's mind, I suspect, that was
the point. Christ's death was real, and because it was real it was redeeming.
Nothing less than that Passion could have accomplished the salvation
of the world, Jesus taking upon himself the full weight of the sins
of the world.
In the
glory that was the Transfiguration we are led to the glory of the Cross-not
to end there, however, but then to the glory of the Resurrection. Without
having seen the film, I can only question the Passion of Christ as an
end unto itself rather than the sacrifice which then leads to resurrection.
It occurs to me that while the season of Lent is forty days, the season
of Easter is fifty days, and Eternity is forever. If Mel Gibson's point
is that you can't skip Good Friday, he's right. And if it serves to
remind us that a penitential season is a good thing for our soul's health,
then he's right again. But the glory of Christ's transfiguration is
fulfilled in the glory of resurrection, in our song, "Jesus Christ
is Risen today. Alleluia!"
Amen.
