A Time of Transfiguration

Second Sunday of Lent Homily
Rev. Dr. Beverly Bingle
February 28, 2021

There are wide-ranging interpretations of today’s Gospel,
everything from literal history to an incident of fortune-telling.  

It’s known as the “transfiguration,” a change in appearance that shows a person moving into something more beautiful or elevated. 

It’s also called a “theophany,” an appearance of God to a human. The Bible has lots of theophanies, stories of God showing up and talking to someone, like today’s first reading where God first tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and then tells him not to. 

The book of Genesis has at least eight theophanies, and Exodus has God talking to Moses in the burning bush. 

That’s just the beginning—God talks, among others, to Samuel, Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. 

Angels speak, again and again, as messengers from God. 

Scholars point out common elements in these theophanies: a high place like the mountain, the response of witnesses, and signs like the dazzling white garments, the cloud, and the voice. 

Anthropologists have an explanation for what’s going on in theophanies, saying that they are a universal human phenomenon, experienced in a wide variety of forms by all human beings. 

Studies show that 90% of 488 societies from all parts of the world routinely have this kind of experience. 

They call it “an experience of alternate reality” or “an altered state of consciousness.”

Anthropologist Erika Bourguignon says that “societies which do NOT utilize these states clearly are historical exceptions to be explained, rather than the vast majority of societies that DO use these states.”

These experiences of alternate reality change lives. 

In the scriptures, theophanies show individuals understanding that God is commissioning them to some new role and status. 

Back on January 10, Mark’s Gospel for the Feast of the Epiphany told us about the theophany—the voice of God— that prompts Jesus to his new life work. 

Mark says that voice of God sent Jesus out into the desert to struggle with his experience and come back to spread the good news that the reign of God is at hand.  

Today, at the midpoint in Mark’s Gospel, we hear another theophany, where Jesus is inspired to make his way to Jerusalem.

Most of our own growth in life is slow-paced and subtle, but I suspect we’ve all had those transforming moments when we see with new eyes, where a new vision takes shape in us. 

Sometimes they come when we are faced with impossible choices like Abraham in the first reading. 

Sometimes they’re mountaintop experiences like Jesus and the disciples in today’s Gospel reading. 

And sometimes they’re something in between. 

We feel them as important, as insights, as points from which we can’t go back to who we were or back to what we used to do, points where a new path calls us to change our direction. 

So we ponder, and we pray, and we struggle. 

We look at where we are and what we’re doing. 

Like Jesus hearing the voice of God telling him to go forward, we see new purpose, understand the consequences, and accept the new way. We change our minds. We change our lives. 

And how can we talk about that? 

Jesus’ friends told the story of Jesus that end up as our Bible. 

Our friends and family, the people who know us well, may see the change—the difference in us. 

It’s a transfiguration—maybe a new-found confidence, or a shift in priorities, or a happy glow. 

We feel different, and people notice.  

They talk about the aura around us, the glow of certitude in our new life direction. 

Peter, James, and John experience the change — the transfiguration — in Jesus. 

They want to stay there in the glow of the moment, but they understand that they have to go forward with him, that they have to remember the experience of knowing Jesus as the beloved child of God, that they must heed the command to “Listen to him.” 

And so we hear the story, and like those first followers, we hear the command to listen. 

Lent gives us time off, especially during this pandemic, to do that. 

We can ignore the altered states of consciousness that we are experiencing. 

We can complain about the isolation and the distancing and the masks. 

Or we can listen and walk new paths. 

It’s up to us. 

Thanks be to God!