Transfigured

M Night Shymalan was acclaimed for his 1999 movie “The Sixth Sense.” You may remember the plot: a little boy who claimed, “I see dead people” is seeing a therapist. The therapist, played by Bruce Willis, listens to the boy tell of seeing the spirits of deceased people who do not know they’re dead. Meanwhile the psychiatrist is struggling with his own sense of estrangement from his wife, who does not speak to him and turns away from him when he’s in the room with her. The twist in the plot is the therapist ultimately discovers, to his dismay, that he himself is one of the dead people that the boy is seeing, and that his wife’s apparent silence and distance are expressions of her grief at his demise. This change in perspective allows the viewer to see everything that has gone before in a new way. The viewer who thought he or she was watching events unfold according to one pattern, found themselves at the end of the movie remembering these same events from a very different perspective.

In Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 9:2-9) Peter, James and John find themselves in a plot line that could come from one of Shymalan’s movies. You could say that it even involves the disciples seeing dead people. Peter had just declared his insight that Jesus was the Messiah – but then Jesus had disappointed Peter and the others by foretelling his suffering and death, that Jesus would be a very different Messiah than they expected. We’re told that six days later, Jesus led Peter, James and John up to a high mountain, away from the other disciples. Then Jesus was transfigured before them – “his clothes became dazzling white, whiter than any bleach could make them.” On either side of Jesus were Moses and Elijah, who spoke to Jesus.

What are we to make of all this? It’s certainly interesting to read about long-ago mountaintop experience, but what does that have to do with us?

I suspect many of us, maybe all of us, have had what could be called mountaintop experiences, times when, even if only for a few minutes or even a few seconds, we were seemingly lifted up out of our normal routine and given a moment or two of transcendence – moments when we could see beyond the normal daily humdrum and business to feel a sense of the big picture, a sense of connection with everything around us, a sense of knowing and being known, perhaps a sense of the eternal significance of the ordinary acts of love and caring that are part of our daily routine. Celtic Christians had a phrase – “thin places” – for their experiences of finding the veil separating earth and heaven seemingly thinner than usual, so that they could almost glimpse beyond time into eternity. These brief mountaintop experiences can provide perspective and renewed passion to help us slog through the muck and mire of our daily lives.

Our time in worship can sometimes be a mountaintop experience. Occasionally God breaks through the routine of familiar hymns and Scriptures to touch us directly. The words of a hymn go right to our souls, and we well up with tears of gratitude. Notes from organ accompaniment or other sacred music may seemingly reach right in and touch and heal our broken hearts. A Scripture strikes us as if God had written those very words just for us and just for the circumstances we’re going through. Perhaps a sermon illustration helps us see a nagging longtime frustration in a new light.

We can carry with us the memory of those mountaintop moments, those times when God seemed especially close. They can give us the perspective of eternity – the perspective that we’ve never had an ordinary, meaningless day in our lives, that no such thing as an ordinary day exists, that God is in us and in our neighbor, that God can use our most seemingly throwaway conversations and meaningless acts to bring about salvation, to usher in the Kingdom of God. As Christian writer C. S. Lewis put it,

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

May God transfigure our perspective on our neighbors, on our lives, and on the many gifts that God bestows on each of us – that every waking moment contains opportunities for service to God, that every encounter with another human being contains the potential for a life-changing encounter.