Glory High and Low

It was a sunny Saturday morning in January years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it. I was sitting in the risers by the soccer field watching (or rather trying to watch) my son’s game. This was proving hard to do because of the guy with his back to the game and his face toward me, who wouldn’t shut up.

His son was out there on the field, but instead of watching him, he was telling me his life’s story. That is to say, he was giving me the oral equivalent of one of those highlight videos you see on ESPN – the kind that shows one-handed catches, behind-the-back slam dunks, and super-human leaps over the left-field wall, all, of course, in slow-motion, with dramatic music playing in the background.

He began with his soccer career. His team went to the state finals two years in a row. Then he described his baseball exploits – the Little League World Series. He and his brother were teammates, he told me, and as good as he was, his brother was even better. I felt like the wedding guest in The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

I tried to avoid eye contact with this guy and did my best not to be rude. Like a Freudian therapist, I grunted now and then, and nodded my head, with the hope that he would grow tired of seeking validation from me for his entire life.

A real therapist once told me that, once they start talking, most clients "cannot not tell their story." As he was describing his winning goal kick in the North Carolina state semi-finals, the man stopped abruptly. "You know," he said, "In all those years, through all those games, my father never came even once to watch me play."

As he was talking, I watched over his shoulder as his son stole the ball, dribbled down the field, and made a brilliant pass to a teammate, who sent the ball whizzing past the goalkeeper’s fingers into the net.

The man turned around to face the field when the rest of us parents cheered. He’d missed the whole thing.

After the game his son came running up to him. "Did you see that, Dad? Did you see me do that?"

When a ten-year-old asks that question, his father needs to be there to say, "Yes, I did see! That was wonderful!" When a forty-year-old says it to an almost-total stranger, what’s the stranger supposed to say? The glory of that moment faded long ago. It cannot be recaptured.

Each year at this juncture in the liturgical calendar we re-visit the story of the Transfiguration of the Lord. I’ve never understood this story. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps it’s not meant to be understood if by "understood" you mean "explained, reduced to its essence, demythologized." Plenty of Biblical scholars have attempted to do just that, and when I was a younger preacher I used to try to do the same.

I would say things like, "This is a post-resurrection appearance story placed here by the Matthean redactor for the purpose of dramatic foreshadow."

That was a big hit amongst the farmers and shopkeepers of my first parish. "Boy," they’d say over Sunday lunch, "That young preacher sure went to seminary. Give him time. He’ll get over it."

Or how about this? "This pericope is replete with symbols transparent to a first-century audience, but obscure to the post-modern skeptics of the present generation." Impressive!

I try not to say stuff like that anymore. Not because you won’t understand, but because it makes me sound too much like Peter -- Saint Know-it-All, Saint Miss-the-Point.

Look at the setting of this story. Peter has just made his famous confession at Caesarea Philippi. "You are the Christ," he told Jesus, "The Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16).

Jesus has just made the first prediction of his passion, telling his disciples that "he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Matt. 16:21).

Peter has rebuked Jesus for saying such a thing, and Jesus has rebuked Peter for standing in the way of divine necessity.

Now is the perfect time in Matthew’s story to reveal to his readers that Jesus is indeed the chosen One of God, that his authority comes from God alone, and that he is on his way to suffer in Jerusalem. Instead of telling us all of that in boring, forthright prose, as I have just done, Matthew allows us to discover it for ourselves, as we read between the lines of this mysterious tale of light, cloud, and dazzling glory.

Through the clouds of glory, Matthew also shines a light into our own souls. He lets us see ourselves in Peter’s fumbling attempt to play host to Moses and Elijah, heroic figures from Israel’s past. Lord, it’s a good thing I’m here! " . . . if you wish, I will make three dwelling places here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" (Matt. 17:4). (What would you do, Jesus, without me?)

That impulse lives today. It’s what keeps wedding photographers and videographers in business. It’s the original "Peter principle" that motivates worship committees to draft policies to prevent services of worship from disintegrating into photo-ops. (Judging from weddings I’ve attended in other churches, the photographers are winning.)

All of these things may be true about this story of Jesus’ being transfigured before the eyes of his astonished disciples, and many other things about it may be true as well. This is, quite literally, a nebulous tale, which is the best kind for finding truths in, or, for that matter, reading truths into.

Whatever else may be true about this story, I suspect that its deepest meaning will not be found in the story itself, but in where it leads next -- back down the mountain, were the rest of the disciples are waiting, where the crowds are clamoring for miracles and the official keepers of religion are out for blood. The glory of this God-sent man, this Christ of God, is not revealed on high so much as it is in down low. His glory is revealed in the way he touches lepers and children and folks who long ago stopped looking for God on mountaintops.

Jesus shines most often in ordinary things: in stories about lost coins, lost sheep, and lost children; in conversations at table with the sort of folks you and I probably wouldn’t invite into our homes; in the forgiveness he offers to sinners and the impatience he shows toward those who fancy themselves righteous; in bread broken and wine poured out.

On the way down the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus warns his disciples, "Don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen up here. Not until later, after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead" (Matt. 17:9).

By that time, of course, the disciples would have an even taller tale to tell, a story that would make this one pale by comparison.

Coming as it does, as we head into Lent, as we walk with the glorious Son of Man along the decidedly inglorious road to Jerusalem, this story offers a glimpse of the glory Jesus laid aside in order become our Savior. It shows us how he turned his face away from the glory of that mountain and turned it toward Jerusalem.

And as he turns, he sees the grown-up children who still search for parents who never had time for them when they were young, and the parents who have begun to search for children who were lost before they realized what was happening. He sees the sick, the lame, the blind, the broken-hearted, the sinners who know they’re sinners and ones who think they’re not.

He looks into your face, and into mine, and sees into our hearts, were the broken places are, and the places where anger festers and resentments are so carefully nursed. He takes all these things that we’d be better off without and puts them on his shoulders, and carries them to Jerusalem, and finally, up a hill to Golgotha, to a very different kind of glory.

But before he does, he gives us bread and wine, and tells us to break and pour, to eat and drink, in remembrance of him – of the glory on the mountain, the glory in the valley, and the glory on the hill.