Exodus 24:12-18 The Lord said
to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you
the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written
for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and
Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait
here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you;
whoever has a dispute may go to them.” Then Moses went up on the mountain,
and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled
on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he
called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was
like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of
Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on
the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
Matthew 17:1-9 Six days
later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up
a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly
there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then
Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will
make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While
he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the
cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased;
listen to him!” When
the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But
Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And
when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As
they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the
vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
+++
Yesterday started with some
dense fog that would not go away. I mean
that in the literal sense. I needed to
leave earlier than usual, as I had promised to drive someone to the hospital in
the morning. The sun was not quite risen
yet when I pulled out of the driveway, but I was not too concerned about the
short visibility. I assumed that the sun
would come out and “burn off” that fog soon.
But this was not the case, after all; and several hours later, driving
my patient home, we were still engulfed in the mysterious fog.
When the roundtable began
talking about the cloud of God that was present in both the Exodus and Matthew
passages, we thought of the cloud we had been walking and driving in just that
morning. You feel lost. You can’t see. In a cloud, we are in a state of unknowing.
It would seem incorrect,
though, to describe the cloud Moses enters as a state of unknowing, because
this is where he has communion with God.
And it would seem incorrect to describe the cloud that overshadows Jesus
and his disciples as a state of unknowing, because this is where the voice of
God speaks to them. And yet, there is
some continuity with the sense of unknowing we experience in the clouds.
When Moses steps into the
cloud he disappears from the others.
They no longer see him; they no longer have any knowledge of what he is
doing. He has become something “other,”
in a sense, as God is “other.” The experience of Jesus and Peter, James, and
John on the mountain is similar. As Jesus
is transfigured, he becomes something “other” as well. His disciples are left dumbstruck, gaping,
wanting to make meaning out of this utterly new thing.
To what can we compare such
things? I think of the Christian mystics
of whom I have read. Julian of Norwich,
in particular, who had one documented, incredible, mystical experience, which
she spent the rest of her life interpreting.
This morning I was reading
Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, and
was particularly struck by a passage where he mentions believers who express
feelings of sadness that they have never had a particularly intense spiritual
experience. Never to have been
overpowered by God. Never to have been
slain in the Spirit, as some say. I knew
what he meant. There was a time in my
life when I had that urgent longing to be just knocked off my feet by God. Every Sunday in worship I waited for it,
almost expecting it, but always disappointed.
As a Presbyterian, it wasn’t as though I was seeing it happen to others
around me, but I yearned for it, nonetheless.
To this sense of frustration, Wiman responds this way:
“Really? You have never
felt overwhelmed by, and in some way inadequate to, an experience in your life,
have never felt something in your life staking a claim beyond yourself, some
wordless mystery straining through words to read you? Never?”
Wiman gave me a different
way to see such “religious” experiences, by suggesting they are actually much
more ordinary than one might think. The
mere longing I experienced so many Sundays, for instance. Furthermore, he emphasizes, “Religion is not
made up of these moments; … Religion is what you do with these moments…”
I read and reread and
reread his words and found myself on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by the
meaning in them.
Each year I read the
transfiguration story and, once again, don’t know what to make of it. But each time, maybe I find some shard of
light that gives me something to work with.
This time, I notice that after they go back down from the mountaintop,
they encounter a man in desperate need.
He begs Jesus to heal his son, an epileptic. So it’s back to normal life for Jesus, and
what is becoming normal life for his disciples.
And this stuff of normal
life, the healing, the teaching, the blessing, is where all the meaning is
really made. But none of it would even
be, if not for the mountaintop – the moments of mystic sweet communion, however
we experience them.
The moments of awe and
wonder are fleeting, of course, and they will always elude comprehension. It is in the normal stuff of life, and the
choices we make, where the meaning may take form.
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