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Luke’s account of the Transfiguration seems to me to be a very appropriate Lenten scripture. For one thing, it places us squarely in time and space, the reality of our lives. It places Jesus squarely in time and space also, the reality of HIS human life. We find him and his close friends at the top of a mountain, always in Scripture an intersection between the time/space dimension and the heavenly one. Jesus and the Apostles stand with their feet on the earth, glimpsing beyond time and space into eternity. This is pretty much all of our human stance. We see Jesus from his place in time speaking with prophets from the past, gloriously transfigured in the present, while predicting a future that will make this marvelous moment into timeless permanence. It is in Luke that we hear the message that the glorious release from our captivity will come only by walking a path of suffering and death in this earthly dimension. Luke’s is surely a Lenten Jesus with the most Lenten of Transfiguration narratives. Luke’s Jesus is one of us; he suffers like us; he remembers God’s covenant and promise like we do; he faces the effects of living from moment to moment until his work is over, just as each of us must do, just as all in our world must do.
We see the Apostles here, as in other places in Scripture, sluggish and sleepy. Their lives were filled with day after day invasions by people in need and situations that had to be handled. Luke’s Gospel is filled with the pressing crowds, the poor and the sick, the downtrodden and oppressed. No wonder they were tired. Jesus, however, was awake, and it was during his prayer that Moses and Elijah came to him, transfigured before him and he along with them, taken out of time for a brief moment, but in that brief moment hearing about his exodus in time, his journey forward into suffering and death. Jesus, God made flesh, remains, even in this ecstasy, very much a creature in time and space, where we also live. The message he hears is that life in this world with its day-to-day suffering will lead to a life of everlasting glory. Perhaps he didn’t need to be reminded about that. Perhaps this was all done for his Apostles. We don’t know. What we do know is that many years after this event Peter talked in his Epistle about looking back on this time and taking courage and hope and confidence from it.
Our Lenten journey so far has not been a long one. The path ahead to this year’s Easter may seem daunting. Our path is often filled with the unexpected and mysterious, and much of it may be wintry and dark. Battling nature, balancing schedules, dealing with routines that can sap our energies just because they ARE routines face us when we get up in these late winter mornings, symbol of many of life’s mornings. This story of the Transfiguration greets us as a reminder of how to deal with our Lenten and winter and lifetime tiredness, whether physical or spiritual. The Apostles woke up and were awed at the promise of glory, despite the fact that it was woven into the fabric of pain and suffering and death. Peter, James and John took to heart the prophetic message, even though they didn’t understand it. They contemplated it as it applied to Jesus and to themselves. As they leave this awesome scene, full of death and of life, Luke doesn’t show a Jesus insisting that the Apostles tell no one. Apparently they weren’t about to do so. They realized this gift of a glimpse into life’s meaning was only that: a glimpse. There were to be no permanent dwellings here, not in this life. They were to hold this story of passion, death and resurrection silently in their memory. They were, like Jesus, like us, to reflect on it as they continued to live beyond this moment in time and space. They were to pay attention to life’s unfolding mystery remembering that its pains and trials were interwoven with the glory of meaningful fulfillment.
The example of Jesus and the Apostles is a lesson for us also as we journey through this Lent. As we meet our days of work and prayer, sometimes with tiredness of body and spirit, we might well recall that there are threads of glory in it all. Because we embrace the covenant commitment as the once doubting Abram eventually did, we share in Jesus’ redemptive mission and walk with him toward glory. Because we live in time and space, we gradually bring about the Kingdom that God promised Abram and that Jesus brought to us by sharing our humanity. In the second reading Paul echoes the Gospel story with his promise that our lowly body will be transformed into a glorified one by the power of Jesus, that power we see a glimpse of today. Such power is not just for ourselves, but is something we bring to all we do, each of us in our own way.
Yes, this Transfiguration story is a good one to carry with us during Lent, during all our life. May we, like the Apostles, be in awe as we contemplate in faith the mystery of our suffering and death and its culmination in glory. May we continue to walk our path in time and space as Abram did, with the God who through Jesus gives us a covenant promising much more than the land between the Wadi and the Great River. That mutual commitment of Jesus to us and us to Jesus that we are reminded of today is meant to empower the rest of our Lent, indeed, the rest of our lives. As this Eucharist continues, we pray to live in the strength of that power. We pray and we contemplate and we hold in our hearts this wondrous story that links our earthly journey to an eternal fulfillment.