Scripture: Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36

On the day that my brother died, I was transfigured. Not, like Jesus was, into his truest spiritual self, luminous with light and radiant with power; but rather, into a person I do not, quite yet, recognize as myself. I had been taken to the airport, and was alone, awaiting the plane that would take me to my parents in Texas. I was, I thought, invisible but then, no rather, I was aching with such shock and grief that it must be shining in my face like a beacon.

Like Moses, I was changed and I could not imagine that people would want to have anything to do with me, as strange as I felt I had become. Still, I craved a human touch, evidence that my transformed self was still, somehow, tethered to the real-time world in which I had moved with ease only a few hours before. I went to the ATM to get some money for traveling, and there encountered the only person who would speak to me over that time of wilderness traveling. As I turned with my $100.00 to go to the plane, a man stopped me and begged for money. I felt
pressured, intimidated and then, unaccountably, enraged. Could he not see from my face that I was different, that I was not like everyone else? I spoke harsh words that as soon as they left my lips, I could not remember. I stuffed $5.00 into his handthe smallest bill I had available. I wanted to push him away from me, but it wasn’t necessary.

The man pocketed my cash and turned without a word. As he went, I realized that I couldnt remember his face. And I thought, who am I?

The story of the Transfiguration of Jesus in scriptures perches precariously atop a mountain, a moment of unbearable beauty flickering over a mass of needy, imperfect humanity: Up here, for a moment, life as we wish it would be: but down there, a reminder that our times away from the mess and the demands of real life are infrequent, and too few.

The story of the transfiguration marks a sea change in the life of the disciples: a life of learning and companionship, of healing and fellowship is over, the impending death of Jesus looms, fear and flight are just around the corner. Transfiguration marks the real-time end of the way things were — and the beginning of Jesus’ dying.

Theologically, it teeters recklessly on the edge of the precipice of Lent, glory fringing the edge of the dry and forbidding desert as if daring us to abandon our safe, our comfortable lives for an adventure on the edge. It is a time to examine who we are in the reflected light of Gods transforming presence and having seen, to decide what we might need to do about it.

Lent is a time for truth: for telling the truth to ourselves, for living in truth, authentically. In the life of Jesus, it was a time to say: the cost of what I have chosen to be is death. The price of my loving is losing the world. For the disciples, it was graduation day a time to look within themselves, as I did that day at the airport, and
say: who am I? Am I genuinely the person I want, in God, to be? These
rare, intimate moments of knowingourselves or anotherare
transfigurations: glimpses of the way we really are, with an option to
renew, if we are brave enough, trusting enough.

A psychologist friend of mine calls it working my mission: being
clear about what and who I have chosen to be in the world, and always
trying to live consistent with that mission. Never breaching my
integrity by choosing to act, or treat others, in ways that are
inconsistent with who I am called to be. He says it’s healthy for us to
do this: because if we don’t, if we live inauthentically, we will
experience stress and illness. We will not be at home to ourselves. And
then, after this lofty explanation, he remarkedI practice working my
mission all the time — and still, on my way over to the seminar this
morning I already breached my integrity two or three times just getting
through the traffic, and had to begin again.

Doing yoga yesterday, I remembered this story when our teacher put
us in a certain posture and then gave us a mantra to repeat, telling us
that the translation of the word was I am truth. Twisted into a
knotphysically, that is — I was pondering that mission statement when
she quietly added if this idea is uncomfortable for you, use something
else that you can repeat in your core. And I realized that I had
already forgotten the word, even while I wondered at my own discomfort.
Why should I am truth be an uncomfortable mantra for a Christian, a
child of God, a person who follows the way of Jesus to be salt and
light in the world? What might a more likely mantra be? I am a pretty
good person — I’ll try harder the next timeI don’t have enough time to
do it the way I shouldyou don’t understandjust doesn’t cut it, somehow.
Better, maybe, to try to twist myself into the discomfort, the Lenten
work, of trying to get centered in the idea that even I am truth.

It’s hard work, desert work. It’s hard for us, and harder, maybe,
for people who are walking that way with us. When the Law was received
by the Hebrew wanderers in their desert journey, Moses alone braved the
terror of holy Sinai. It was no safe place for the people of God: as he
went, the story says, the cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of
the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. But in the sight of the people of
Israel down below, the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a
devouring fire. And they were afraid. Later, the story tells us, when
Moses came down the mountain, the marriage of glory and dust was
manifest in him. Having twice braved the terror and the holiness of
sacred Mount Sinai, he came back to his people a changed man, though he
did not know it. The skin of his face shone, the story says, because he
had been talking with God. Moses received the law, he knew God face to
face — he was a man so stripped of the barriers of artifice, so
attuned to truth, that, though he thought he was just the same as he
had always been, his face shone. And the people couldn’t bear it;
afraid, perhaps, that what he knew and what he had become in the
presence of God was “catching,” somehow: that it would erode the
compromises the rest of them had made with truth in order to bear their
lives as wanderers and exiles. Shining in the transfigured face of
Moses was evidence that the glory of God could peacefully coexist with
and in mere humanity – but the people could not bear it. So Moses
veiled his face — literally covering up the evidence of God and
freedom that shone so visibly from his souland thus comforted and
diminished, his friends and neighbors could stand once again for him to
live among them.

The gospel describes how Peter and James and John went up on the
mountain with Jesus, alone, and there, saw him transfigured — covered
with glory and shining with light. And the disciples knew, though this
part of the story doesn’t acknowledge it, that this glory was bought at
the price of Jesus’ acknowledgement of his impending death. So that
when Peter and James and John saw how Jesus was changed, and yet
remained himself, centered and vulnerable to the knowledge that he was
a dying man — they were terrified. How is it possible to live at peace
with such hard knowledge? To face the end of all we hold dear, and
remain calm and serene? The disciples were frightened as much by this
living with truth as they were by the glory, as they were by the dying.
They offered to make dwellings, and wished devoutly that they could
stay with Jesus in the version of truth that was most clear, most
uplifting, most simple for them: that He was the Son of God, protected
by Light, above the dangers and the dirt of the world. But as the glory
drained away from the face of Jesus, a cloud overshadowed them, and
they were afraid. And as the holy cloud thickened into a cold fog
around the four men, Peter realized that even the blessing and the
presence of God could not save Jesus from his fate. This is my Son, my
Chosen, said the Voice with infinite pride and aching sadness, listen
to him. And the story ends, when the voice spoke, Jesus was found
alone, and they kept silent and told no one any of the things they had
seen.

We have much we could say about such transfiguring experiences –
but like the disciples, when the Voice stops speaking, we remain
silent, not knowing how or what to say. And our silence about ourselves
and about our lives is the silence of fear and deaththe veil that
separates us from them, and from living wholly as our authentic selves.
But as the saying goes, the truth will out it wants out, and will make
its way through us in glory, and stay with us in the desert, if we will
permit it.

That’s why, I think, the discussion of a Defense of Marriage Constitutional Amendment has provoked such an astonishing upwelling of communities and couples suddenly committed to the public demonstration of legal marriage between same-sex partners. Because such an amendment implies that we can force the world to be like we thought it used to be: one man, one woman, 2.5 kids and a station wagon in the suburbs but the world isn’t like that. Look at the transfiguring glory on the faces of those gay and lesbian couples lined up at the courthouse in San
Francisco, and elsewhere look around you at the families in our own church—and know that this truth is Out: love transforms us. The love between life partners of whatever gender needs the affirmation of the community, deserves the blessing of God, requires the protection of the state because committed, faithful loving partnerships, marriages and unions are part of the fabric of our common life, and visible witness to the God of love who has created us for one another, and for him.

And this grassroots uprising of civilly-defiant marriages is a
glorious, transfiguring portrait of life on the edge — of how we begin
to live life on the edge of what we genuinely are, and who God really
calls us to be. And it is the gift of transfiguration that we can see
it, that we can have a taste of how it can be on this maybe — long
journey — and the work of Lent to take up, alone and together, the
shining-forth of the truest parts of us, both the bad and the good,
which have too infrequently seen the light of day.

A priest I know believes Ash Wednesday says it all: We are dust,and
ashes. We are a people made from dirt and at the same time, a people
made in the image of God. We are dirt and deity, neither one more true
than the other.

And our work, as people of deity and dust is about facing our
hopes, and claiming them. It is about facing our fears, and letting
them do their new and strange work in us. It is the hard work each of
us do every day through the confusion and the ambiguity and the
difficult decisions to find out the ways and the wills of God, and to
do them. It is to see the faces of glory, and to ourselves shine with
it.

The author Frederick Buechner tells a story about how he remembers
this truth, and practices the Lenten way. He was depressed, in the
midst of a divorce, and riding a bus in the metropolitan New York area
during a cold, rainy March night. It was dark, and the smells, noises,
arguing and jostling of the people stuffed in the bus around him were
unbearable. He remembered that a seminary professor of his had once
said they should practice in public, seeing every person as a child of
God for whom Christ died. And so, disgruntled and bored, he began.
Christ died for you: punk rocker cursing in the back seat. Christ died
for you, old lady in a dirty coat. And for you..and for you and so it
went, around the perimeter of the bus, until he came to an empty seat
and a darkened window, and as he spoke: Christ died for you, it was his
own face he saw, shining in the glass that was dripping with rain as
with tears, even for you, he thought, and he was transfigured.