Transfigured

Today, the Sunday before Lent begins, the lectionary followed by many churches features the story of the Transfiguration. Although the text is a mere 8 or 9 verses long, it is packed with rich imagery and meaning... some, perhaps, relatively self-explanatory; some, perhaps, fairly incomprehensible. Like many bible texts, it is also rich in both promise ... and challenge. 

Having been reflecting on this text during the week there are so many aspects of this texts which interest and intrigue me but I thought I might share my thoughts, in particular, about how the disciples respond to this mountaintop experience. After initially being stunned into silence and inaction, the disciples, or specifically Peter, do finally, respond to the scene unfolding before them. With an offer to set up three shelters. 

Aside from my possibly slightly irrelevantly wondering whether or not they have come prepared for shelter building, there are several things that strike me about what this response seems to symbolise. 

The first is the desire to contain. The transfiguration takes place away from the city, on a mountain top. We can probably assume it feels wild and exposed, and that there is a pretty good view for miles around. Mountain tops are one of the places where we become aware of magnitude, of vastness. They often feel wild and exposed. 

Peter's response is to take this thing which is out in the open, which is somehow wild and uncontrollable, and to put it inside. To draw boundaries around it. To define the space it takes up. Where it begins and where it ends.

The second is the desire to compartmentalise. Here we have Jesus, Moses and Elijah, in conversation with each other. A coming together of these different strands of understanding of the journey towards being in relationship with God. The law, the prophets, the messiah: united in conversation with each other. 

And yet, Peter does not suggest building one tent where the conversation can continue, but three. Separate shelters. To take these overlapping circles which both connect and contradict and to pull them apart, each into their own place. To divide in order to more easily define.  

The third is the desire to prolong or make permanent. Jesus has come away with three of his disciples, leaving behind the rest of them, taking a break from the ministry of teaching and healing, stepping out of a journey towards crucifixion of which he has already spoken. The disciples possibly ought to know by now that Jesus never stays anyway for long. 

But Peter responds by wanting to build here. To create shelter. To cling to the moment. To tie down and hold on to something which was probably only meant to be temporary, only meant to be one part of a continuing experience, to be one more step on the journey.

I think the reason Peter's response to this situation strikes me is because it symbolises something so very deeply human about our response to the divine and the mysterious, something which is easily recognisable because I can see so easily the parallels to how the church as both communities and institutions, to how I (and probably many of us) are tempted to respond too. 

That faced with the vast, wild and uncontrollable nature of God, we have a natural desire to control and contain.

That faced with the incomprehensible and seemingly contradictory expressions of the divine, we have a natural desire to divide and define.

That faced with mountaintop moments of majesty, we have a natural desire to cling to that which is meant to leave us marked and changed but not hold us back from journeying onwards.

Although not explicitly stated, it seems pretty obvious from the text that those shelters do not get built. I suspect we probably shouldn't be building them either. I suspect we too are supposed to come down the mountain.