Mark 9:2-9

The event in the life of Christ that we call the Transfiguration is one of those stories drenched with meaning and truth, and we aren’t supposed to get distracted by whether it’s a factual account of an historical moment. If you get stuck on that question, you’ll miss the good stuff.

We hear the story every Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus leads Peter, John, and James up on a mountain by themselves. There, he is “transfigured,” but Mark doesn’t tell us what that looks like except that his clothes become dazzling white. Two other figures appear – Moses the lawgiver and the prophet Elijah. Peter’s response is, “Let’s build houses! Let’s stay here!” That’s often our inclination when we’ve had a spiritual high, a mountaintop experience. But we see Jesus leave the mountain to pick up his everyday life and his ministry of healing.

There are, indeed, mountaintop experiences that change us forever. Besides those momentary spiritual highs, however, there is the long and sometimes difficult climb of the life of faith. Most people realize marriage is work; experts describe it as a daily commitment, not just a one-time decision. As one writer says, “Every day you wake up you must decide to commit to your spouse for better or for worse.” It’s the same with the daily decision to follow Jesus, the decision to put one foot in front of the other on the path of faith.

There’s a reason Transfiguration Sunday is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I’ve often thought of Lent as a reset button. You lose focus, you lose your way on the path, you find yourself more distant from God than you want to be. Time for a reset. For centuries, Lent has been the season when we focus with new energy on the process of transfiguration that happens over the lifetime of a person of faith; it’s a season of practice, of training. Maybe “training” doesn’t have the sparkle of a mountaintop moment but as Cornelius Plantinga writes, “Spiritual exercise is like jogging. You often do it gladly. But you are no hypocrite if you jog even when you don’t feel like it.”

Just before Jesus heads down the hill, we hear the voice of God. God says, “Listen to him.” Listen to Jesus. I like the fact that God doesn’t say, “Become exactly like Jesus,” or “Take up your cross.” Just, “Listen to him.” That’s probably something I can do. Listening to Jesus in Scripture seems like an obvious place to start. When we listen to Jesus in Scripture, we’ll hear, “Peace be with you.” “I will give you rest.” “Take heart … do not be afraid.” We’ll hear that we will keep our heart only by giving our heart away, that we will find ourselves only by losing ourselves in love, and that we will be saved together, not in separation. We’ll hear that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the most important way we can love God.

And if we strive to love our neighbors as Jesus tells us, we will listen to our neighbors, as well. The 14th century Persian poet Hafiz wrote:
Everyone
Is God speaking
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?

God speaks to us again and again through the stories of other people, through our loved ones, through the person whose life is utterly different from yours or mine, and through people whose stories and experiences we might prefer not to hear. Some say that listening is the first duty of love; others say that listening is love. Listening tells someone that he or she matters, and that we are willing to risk being changed by what they say. One definition of communication is “opening yourself to change,” because if you really hear the other person, it means that you are allowing what the person says to impact you, to touch you, to change the way you think and feel and act. In other words, listening transfigures us.

The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope. We aren’t stuck with the way things are. You aren’t stuck with the way things are. Things can change, the world can change, we can change. This is the very purpose of the life of faith.

I think I just chose my focus, my training and practice for Lent this year: listen.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.