2nd Sunday of Lent

Mark 9:2-10

March 4, 2012

Today we join Jesus climbing another mountain with his closest friends.

We get to see Jesus’ true self: clothes dazzling white, conversing with long dead prophets—Moses of whom God said, “never have I had such a friend of Moses” and Elijah who could find God in the “still, small whisper” and who will return in the day of the Lord—

overshadowed by a heavenly cloud with a voice claiming him as a beloved Son giving directions to listen to him.

This reality is captured well in the novel The Shack, where we can hear Papa’s love and affection for Jesus, even though “he is a little clumsy on his mother’s side.” We are invited into an intimate reality that transfigured Jesus before the apostles’ eyes, that invites us into the loving circle so that we can find our true selves.

The mount of Transfiguration is a high hill in the Galilee of the Holy Land.

To approach the top today you must ride up in taxis and vans, not huge tour buses, because the switchbacks are very sharp.

Whipping around those corners, since the drivers are paid by the trip, it is easy to become nervous about your safety.

It is disorienting to see the hillside and the open drops at that speed.

But the view is worth the trip.

At the top you can see for miles.

You can smell the sweet fragrance of flowers and hear the lowing of the cattle just below the church walls.

In this peaceful setting it is easy to search deeply within and let the desire to be one with the Lord surely touch your heart.

Can we be transformed?

Can we be transfigured by the presence of Jesus?

When Jesus looks deeply into our hearts, what does he see?

Beyond the superficialities, deeper than the roles we play or the hats we wear, Jesus sees our real selves and loves us anyway.

He knows our temptations.

He knows what we are willing to sacrifice and what will be asked of us.

He stands with us when we are accused and the world, or at least the economy, seems against us.

His eyes can see the precious cloth of our lives.

When we are feeling stripped or naked, battered or bruised, Jesus will build a tent, or as they called them in the Old Testament, a tabernacle, and stay with us.

It is good to be here, at this shared table, before this tabernacle.

Here Jesus intercedes for us, listens to us, and lets his Papa-God call us beloved daughters and sons.

We are transfigured with Jesus today, clothed in royal robes listening for the voice that affirms who we really are.

Forty days of Lent is good.

Thirty days of Lent can be enough if we truly climb mountains with Jesus to get a better perspective, find our true self, and spend time in his tabernacle of grace. Jesus didn’t offer this tabernacle to Peter, James, and John, or even Moses and Elijah.

He offers to share it with us so that our eyes will be prepared for the Easter light.