The Nearness of the Holy

Transfiguration

I used to sit on a hillside at the Music Inn in Lenox, MA, overlooking the Stockbridge Bowl at sunset as the colors in the sky reflect off the ripples in the water, a silent breeze whispers through the pine boughs above me, a stillness gives way into a vision that transfigures all that this world is created to be, to become as the God of Elijah, Moses, Elisha, Jesus and Paul speaks into existence, shimmering, peaceful, at rest. The nearness of the Holy. Surely, if the world can look like the lake below now looks we can do better and somehow be transfigured ourselves.

Or, we used to pack-up our instruments for the night, a light drizzle of rain suggesting it will be yet another night not to sleep under the stars in Acadia, but rather another night to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island so we can wait and watch, for it won’t be long, around 3:00AM, as the first sunrise in America begins to unfold first with purples, blues and greens far off at the edge of the ocean’s horizon, over hours and hours until some golds and reds soften into pinks and shades of brilliant white as the Sun begins to show itself, when all of a sudden a parade of cars circles its way up the mountain disgorging the day’s tourists, cameras whirring and clicking, for perhaps a few minutes, “Oooing and Ahhhhing,” then back in the cars, down the mountain to town for blueberry pancakes having missed nearly the entire show, the transfiguration of the entire eastern seaboard that had once again lasted three or four hours of silent waiting, watching and mysterious wonder at the unfolding nearness of the Holy.

There is a film, Excuse Me America, documenting a visit from the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara as he meets with figures like Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, examining and comparing poverty in America with that in Brazil, and finally with Caesar Chavez as the United Farm Workers are just organizing, and there is this room, a barn, filled with those who pick the fruits and vegetables we rely on for sustenance and good health, and Dom Helder addresses them, my future Bishop who ordained me a deacon George Nelson Hunt off on stage-left, and musicians come out on the stage leading the assembly in singing Amazing Grace, and the music is playing, the people are singing, the room is swaying, and the camera comes in close on Dom Helder’s face under the bright stage lights, eyes looking up, the brightness of the smile on his face, the tears running down his cheeks, tears of joy and hope and peace and justice, his face transfigured into the face of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, Bishop Dom Helder Camara who one said, “In the Father’s house we shall meet Buddhists and Jews, Muslims and Protestants—even a few Catholics too, I dare say … We should be more humble about people who, even if they have never heard of the name of Jesus Christ, may well be more Christian than we are.” The moment passes, we are back in the barn with the people, people now energized with hope and power to become the beloved people God has created them to be, and it’s time to return to the fields to seek a living wage having been touched, transfigured, by the nearness of the Holy.

Transfiguration, noun: A complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state, often accompanied by light, by brightness, by radiance. Like Jesus atop snow-capped Mount Hermon, like Moses on Sinai with the cloud of the presence of the God of the Exodus, God the freedom fighter, God the giver of Torah lessons for living together in peace and justice for all people, Jesus whose clothes Peter, James and John see suddenly turn dazzling white – his inner being as Son of God shines outwardly [Mark 9:2-9], shines as a light in the darkness, the darkness of oppression, the darkness of military occupation, the darkness of being debt-ridden, over-taxed and brutalized by Caesar’s Empire of Endless Exhaustion, talking with Elijah AND Moses! The Law and the Prophets. Peter, forgetting Jesus’ announcement of his suffering and death to come wants to establish a cult of admiration, a shrine. But the cloud of God’s presence overshadows the whole scene and the voice from his baptism in the River Jordan returns once again: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” As the vision glorious vanishes, listen, to him. Do we listen? Do we now sense the nearness of the Holy?

Paul saw him and listened to him. “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Paul, who says the gods of this world blind us to keep us from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus, “who is the image of God.” The gods of this world, says Paul,  conspire to blind us from seeing the light, from experiencing the nearness of the Holy.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, a place for remembering those who perished in the time of deep darkness, of genocide, there is a memorial for the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished from this world, each one of whom represents a poem never written, a painting never painted, a symphony never composed, a child who never grew up, we enter this memorial as if entering into the depths of the earth itself, and it is dark, and there is only one candle shining light in the darkness, but there are mirrors that reflect that one flame into 1.5 million living flames, while overhead a voice recites the name of each child, 1.5 million names, it takes over a year to recite these names, and when we emerge back into the daylight outside there is not a face in our Jewish-Christian group that is not streaming down the very same tears as Dom Helder in California, as Jesus at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, as 3 million parents in heaven above, or those who survived without their children, must be weeping to this day.

Just one candle, a flicker of a flame, light shining out of the darkness, like those righteous gentiles who helped some escape the deep darkness of those days, the Light of Christ, the Light of the God of the Exodus, sometimes the revolving beacon of a lighthouse searching the darkness, other times the gradual strengthening of rays at sunrise, sometimes a flickering candle, and still other times an overwhelming, brilliant, dazzling Light such as on that mountain top where Peter, James and John saw Moses and Elijah, Elijah who flew up in a chariot of fire with horses on fire as his devoted apprentice Elisha looked on in wonder and fear until “he could no longer see him,” and was then empowered with the spirit, the ruach, twice the spirit of Elijah, which is the wind, the breath, the ruach of God blowing across the darkness of the chaotic waters as God declares, “Let light shine out of the darkness,” to reveal the  closeness of the Holy.

This is the essence of Transfiguration. This is what we are called to be – light in the darkness. Gazing upon the transfigured image of Jesus on the mountain top reveals the nearness of the Holy, empowers us with the spirit, the breath, the ruach, of our creator, and to be light wherever darkness prevails, to glow with the very ruach of Christ like Dom Helder, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, Caesar Chavez, like the sunrise and sunset, like a candle in the whirlwind, like so many others who have become light in the darkness, beacons of God’s Hope and God’s Love, proclaiming that yes, there is and always will be light, that yes, you are God’s Beloved, that yes, you can see the nearness of the Holy, you can be the light that shines in the darkness, if only we will stop to see all the moments of transfiguration before us every day, the nearness of the Holy, and reflect the light for all to see, to give hope, and life, and the knowledge of the Belovedness of all people, all of us. Surely, we can do better and somehow be transfigured ourselves. Amen.