MT 17: 1-9 

Matthew in the Margins…Transfiguration / Last S. after Epiphany / Lent 2… Revised 2017

Can we go beyond celebrating Jesus’ Transfiguration as simply an historical event & find a new God-Energy flowing from it still in our own day? We’ll come back to that ‘energy’ word in a moment.

There’s more than meets the eye going on up there. Can we behold, see deeply enough into, this unique mountain-top experience to keep it active in our own present rather than some-one else’s past?  With or without a holy mountain in the offing? In exploring a 15th C. Russian icon of the Transfiguration, +Rowan Williams¹ ponders a ‘sheer energy’ he sees written into it by its creator. I’d not picked up on that ‘energy’ potential till I’d personally  gazed more deeply into what + Rowan is offering us. He focuses on Peter, James, & John, & their physical reactions in the icon, but we can see there’s God-Energy here too, for Jesus, Moses, & Elijah, & for ourselves. What God-Energy, life, is there in here for us, too? 

God is the world’s Creative Energy, an understanding perhaps more to the fore in Celtic spirituality. Why wouldn’t all experiences of God be energising, life-giving as God is? As this mystical one on the Holy Mount is? May we be enlivened by the Divine Energy as we prepare to preach.

We traditionally preach Moses as representing the Law, & Elijah the Prophets. That’s fine, but we need to move on from looking at them & their role in this as past & done with. It is  another Celtic trait not to draw too firm a line between past, present, & future, including between heaven & earth! In sharing His Transfiguration with the others Jesus invites Law to move beyond gagging us, & the Prophetic beyond nagging us!

Neither Jesus, Moses, Elijah, nor the Apostles can stay up there on the mountain, because the real world down below God is crying out for Divine Energy, even if it doesn’t know it; even if we haven’t seen that yet with our inner eyes (n.b. vv.14+). 

As we encourage others to experience new outpourings of Holy Spirit in appropriate ways, today’s celebration of Transfiguration offers us anew the opportunity to experience being energised by God’s Spirit in our journeying on. Towards Passion-tide, Easter, & Pentecost & the energisations they too represent & convey for us. More than just liturgically!

Glory is the reflection of God from inside us, not outside. Glory transfigures us when we show who we truly are & Whose we are. Glory energises us to live out God’s own compassion & love, come what may. In whatever circumstances.

¹ The Dwelling of the Light, Canterbury, Norwich, 2003, p. 4