Who could not love Peter in this Gospel story? He is so very human, even child-like, in his offer to build dwellings on the mountain in order to hold on to a glorious moment.
We have all been there. We have all had a moment or two in our lives, moments so perfect and beautiful, that we have yearned to stop time in its tracks.
We call them “mountain-top moments” for good reason. They are typically moments bathed in holy love and holy light, like the one described by Mathew, and like Peter, we want to stay in that moment forever.
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| Detail from The Transfiguration icon. |
Today is the last Sunday after the Epiphany, and we end this holy season of “showing forth” the way we began it…, with a theophany—a human encounter with God. We—and the world in the persons of the Magi—saw the star, followed it to the infant Jesus, and knelt in wonder before God Incarnate.
That was six weeks ago. Today we are with the disciples on the mountain top witnessing the glory of God Incarnate once again.
Soon, the vision will end—as all mountain-top experiences must. We must put our shoes back on, head down the mountain, and with Jesus, turn our faces toward Jerusalem. I don’t think the disciples had much of a clue about what was coming, but Jesus did. He has tried to tell them and will try again, but… we see little evidence in their words or actions that they understood.
Who can blame them? We understand—to the extent that we do—only with the help of the biblical record and two thousand years of hindsight.
“To the extent that we do.” I put that phrase in that sentence very purposefully.
We regular church goers are very familiar with the progression of the church year. We prepare for Christmas with advent, we celebrate the holy birth with gusto, and we give at least a nod to the showing forth on Epiphany. We mark the transition between Epiphany and Lent by gorging on pancakes and King Cake, and then get down to the serious business of ashes and fasting, perhaps a bit of extra alms giving…
So, yes, we get it. And we have organized our church life around these events in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. But I’m directing our attention to something deeper.
Jesus knew what was ahead in Jerusalem. I like to think that he gained strength and courage and resolve for the agony to come from his glorification and moment of complete unity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit on the mountain top.
But as Jesus descends from the mountain, his face turned toward Jerusalem, something important and telling happens. Our lectionary reading for today stops just four verses short of this event, but I think it an important part of the story.
So.. Jesus and his disciples are descending from the mountain having a brief theological discussion about what has transpired. And then they encounter the crowd they had left behind to go up the mountain to pray.
Immediately, a man steps out of the crowd and presents himself to Jesus—and not just “a man,” but a distraught and desperate father. Lord, have mercy on my son, he says, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water.
Now Jesus, in my mind, has every right to stay focused on the larger mission. He has bigger fish to fry. He must go to Jerusalem to fulfill all things, to become through his passion, the salvation of the world. Big, big orders, just confirmed again in his glorification on the mount.
But Jesus does what we have come to expect Jesus to do. He responds to the human need and pain in front of him. Go get your son, he says to the father, and the father does and Jesus heals him.
How do we encounter God in our own
lives? What do we do with those encounters? Are they turning points in our
relationships—with God, yes, but with the hurting world of which we are a part?
I’m going to tell you a story about
something that happened in my own life just a few days ago—Thursday, to be
specific. But I do so with trepidation, for two reasons. One, it seems a little
self-serving, so please understand, I am not presenting myself as one who
always “gets it” and responds accordingly. And, two, it involves the very
controversial topic of immigration and asylum-seeking and how we respond to the
thousands seeking to come to this country.
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| Where immigrant assylum-seekers are detained in Louisiana. |
But the main way I have gotten involved is in helping those who are released. When a detainee is granted asylum or is bonded out by their families, the responsibility of ICE and the detention facility ends at the front door. And, actually, the challenge in helping begins earlier. It seems to be virtually impossible for the support network to get clear, definitive information about when someone is to be released.
So, last Thursday: Another volunteer and I took turns going to Richwood Detention Center to pick up a Cuban who was being released. The network had gotten word early in the morning that he was definitely to be released, probably mid-morning. Then the word was “noon,” then early afternoon, and so forth.
I had to teach a class at Grace School, so the other volunteer was on call. By the time I emerged from class at 3:10 p.m., the Cuban had just been released and was sitting with the other volunteer in her car in a parking lot near the prison.
His family has been in the U.S. for some time. They live in Florida but a bus ticket to take him there would have cost $250. This network carries on with no official funding. But we had a plan. One of the key people in the network, a friend of mine, lives in Natchez, Mississippi, and she had been in touch with his family. If we could get him to Natchez, his brother and cousin would drive all night from Florida to meet him there.
The other volunteer could not take him to Natchez, but I could. It’s important to know that when an asylum-seeker is released from detention, whatever they brought to this country with them, they no longer have it. This man was wearing every item of clothing he owned, namely a torn pair of jeans that did not reach his ankles, loafers with no socks, and two thin shirts.
Do you remember the weather Thursday afternoon? Cold, wind, rain. I offered him a heavy corduroy shirt left behind by my late husband, but he declined. I offered him a meal at Taco Bell; he said he wasn’t hungry, although he was certainly thin and looked hungry. When they get out of detention—where they have typically been for 8 or 9 months or more—they have one thing on their minds: Contact with their family.
So we got into my car, I stopped to fill up with gas, and as we headed east on Winnsboro Road toward Hwy 15 south toward Natchez, I plugged in my phone and handed it to him. None of his family was among my contacts, so he used the instant messaging app to request connection. A few minutes later, his mother responded—cautiously, because she of course did not recognize my phone #.
Hola, quien es? she typed. Who is it? My passenger grabbed the phone, hit the “face time” button, and all heaven broke loose in my car. I have never before witnessed a family reunion anything like it.
Te amo! Te amo! Te amo! My conversational Spanish is not good. I can read the language very well, I can speak it pretty well, but when native speakers are conversing, I understand very little. But “Te amo!” is easy. “Te amo!” means “I love you.” And that is what the first few minutes of that conversation consisted of. Te amo! I love you.
About 5 minutes in, my passenger tapped my arm and turned the phone toward me. His mother wanted to see me. Thank you, thank you, she said in heavily accented English, thank you for helping my son.
The reunion continued unabated for a full hour as we drove south. The father came into the call, and other family members. There was much laughter. At one point, my passenger sang a song to his mother. I gathered from the occasional word I understood that he was singing her the song he had used to sustain himself emotionally through long months of detention. She cried.
Then she asked to speak with me again. Did I mind if her younger son, my passenger’s brother, played and sang over my phone. Of course not. And so we were serenaded by a clearly talented younger brother. And on it went…
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| Immigration, by Spencer |
Jesus was there Thursday. It did not feel like a mountain-top experience at the time. But Jesus was there.
Jesus was in my car driving through the rain and in that family reunion. Jesus was in my friend in Natchez orchestrating the whole thing—although she would be the last person to say that! She then drove to Sicily Island to meet us so I didn’t have to drive all the way to Natchez. Jesus was in two volunteers bouncing between our ongoing lives and making sure the stranger among us didn’t walk out of that detention center and find no one there to greet and help him. Jesus was in the whole thing.
And I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. How it is supposed to transform my life. I just know, poised at this moment between Epiphany and Lent, Jesus walks among us. Our own encounter with God is waiting.
Are we open to it? Are we willing to find God, not only in our Lenten pieties, not only inside this beautiful worship space, but even more compellingly disguised in the very brokenness of our world? Are we willing to be transformed by our encounter with the Holy in the most unlikely places?
In
the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
