Monday March 21, 2011

Matthew 17:1-2

"After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light."

So the question on my mind all day (besides, well, the ten thousand that popped up around this semester's all day thesis festival) was - six days after what?

Well, apparently, six days after telling them that any who follow Him will have to take up their cross, and that some of them will not taste death before they see the coming of the Son of Man.

Which is another tricky little bit I've never quite reconciled. Jesus really seems to be promising, there, that His second coming will be during their lifetimes. I'm sorry, but that's how I would have heard it and it's still how I read it now. What was He saying there?

But that's just my current question for the universe - or you, Father Dempsey!

The description here of how Jesus was transfigured certainly sounds like how you would write down, so long after the fact, how your friends bumblingly tried to explain what it was like. And you didn't want to just recreate the "it just-He was-transfigured guys!" so you latch on to the words they managed to eek out, the words that were fighting and struggling to contain what they really meant and failing miserably - you could tell that much from the light in their eyes and the strain in their voices as they tried to make the words hold the truth.

I wonder why John never tried. If it was because he knew he would never be able to do better than that. Or I wonder if he was asked to explain more, describe it, all the time and he knew that there were other things that needed to be said. That the message was more important and he was, in that way, following the injunction of God, "Listen to Him" rather than describing how it felt to be in that presence.

Because that's not something you could ever describe anyway. It sounds stupid, silly, when words try to wrap themselves around it. They weren't meant to do that, they weren't meant to go there, so they just flail about looking foolish and trying to convince you that you're the one who's silly and foolish and incomplete in some way.

I wonder if it was such a small group, too, because at a certain level of group size it starts to need a structure or to take one upon itself. It can't be a personal event happening to you, it's an event at which the crowd will respond in some way.

Perhaps that last part is bollocks.

I don't know. I think my brain is tired from the day so I'm not being very profound. And I love this story. But, well, all the words are foolish, when you're talking about this part - about the Transfiguration itself. What it was like and how it looked and sounded and how it felt to be there. So I dance rings around talking about the other things - and I try not to let the words sound so foolish that it stops me from speaking, from singing in joy and praise.

What a glorious sight that must have been. How indescribable - God Almighty in His glory while maintaining His human form. The man you have admired and followed and believed in revealing the even more wondrous truth to you on a mountaintop. The great consolation for the next hill, and the presentation of the spotless lamb before the sacrifice and the display of something more beautiful, a truth shocking and gorgeous and loving - that would not be fulfilled our understood until after the death and resurrection. God allowing death to touch Him, in order to defeat it, yes, but forevermore stained with death. No longer beyond death. Here, Jesus was recognizably Himself, unlike immediately after the Resurrection (always a detail that's interesting - because it's a risk to put that sort of thing in there for the sceptic to catch on so it must have been important to them). Because God was about to let Himself be changed forever - and for us to understand that, we had to see the original form.

We don't have words for how Jesus looked on that mountaintop. We've made ourselves words for how He looked on the other. But we don't really have a true comprehension of either. That love is too unfathomable and too deep. Too magnificent for us to fully understand. At least for now. So our words must try, in the hope that they, like everything else in our lives, have the hope of bringing up closer to the truth of God.

Dear Lord, help me to reach for Your truth about all others. May I always seek You and a way to find You in all that I do. May I find the words that will share my journey with others and allow me to share in others' journeys. Bring me someday to see Your glory, I beg of You, and be with me however You will it until then.