Exodus 34: 29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43a
There’s a line in the first season of the television show Babylon 5. After a particularly horrific event, one character remarks that “Nothing’s the same anymore.” There are moments in life that are markers, historic road-markers that identify a before and and after. Moments like that happen to us collectively (The assassination of JFK, The Challenger disaster, 9-11, The Columbia disaster) and personally.
Not all of these events, of course, are negative. Nothing has been the same since the Civil Rights movement, for instance. And I know in my own life there are many events that have been life-changing for the good (meeting my wife, getting married, going back to college).
This week is the Last Sunday after Epiphany, the Sunday where we commemorate the Transfiguration of Jesus. It’s an incredible event (so incredible that it’s marked here and on 6 August) More than a week after the confession that Jesus was the Messiah (according to Luke’s account), Peter, James, and John follow up the mountain. And up there they encounter the amazing, indescribable event known as the Transfiguration.
Over in Exodus, we have a different type of transfiguration story. The story of Moses coming down from Sinai with his face aglow comes amidst the longer (and dream-like) story of the time the Israelites spent at the foot of that mountain. To say that this moment was a metamorphosis—a synonym of transfiguration—is a bit of an understatement.
Nothing, after these events, was the same anymore. Perhaps it is even better said that no one was the same anymore after this. No one who was there that day at the foot of the mountain and saw Moses could ever truly doubt that they had encountered the Divine. And come what may (and did) to those disciples who stood upon the mountaintop with Jesus, nothing could have ever fully shaken their belief in who they felt Jesus was.
Of course, life-changing events don’t always change everything. There is still racism even after the words of Dr. King were spoken. The Israelites proceeded, rather quickly, to forget Whom they’d encountered—both at the foot of Sinai and in the years wandering in the wilderness. And Peter, James, and John were all dumbfounded by what was waiting for them at the foot of the mountain.
I can’t say that I’ve had a theophany—God’s revelatory moment—on the order of magnitude that either Israel or the disciples experienced. Yet, I doubt it would matter. If the wonder of the night sky, the love of my family, or even the memory of the small voice that I’ve heard once or twice can’t remind me constantly that nothing, in fact, is the same anymore, I doubt anything would.
As we approach Lent, let us think about how life-changing the story we tell and hear really is. And then let us pray for the courage to live with Paul’s “great boldness.”
God of changes, your love has changed my life. Help me to live into that love: living without fear and despair, but with boldness and hope. And remind me, when I come down from the mountain, just what I heard and saw there.