Two weeks after Christmas, we moved from our home of the past ten years in northern New York to southeastern Iowa. New York was where our three children had been born, the only home they had known. Iowa was a totally unknown place way out west, on the other side of the Mississippi. Kluane and the three children stayed behind in Albany with my mother while I met the moving truck and tried to get things unpacked and in some semblance of order for them. It was cold in both places. There was more snow in New York. There was more wind in Iowa. The afternoon the moving van left, I was alone in the new house surrounded by taped boxes and the strange scent of cardboard, packing tape, and road fumes from the moving truck. The sun was quickly setting and its dimming glow reflected off the hard ground. Looking out the back kitchen window, I saw a young girl playing in the back yard at the tetherball pole the previous owners had left behind. Perhaps she spotted the van and hoped some children her age would appear. She didn't stay long. Outside it was just too bitter.
I thought back to the previous fall, when I had gone with two fishing buddies on a fishing expedition. It was the end of the season, and the Adirondack foliage was at its peak on one of those perfect days that start out with a crisp breeze nudging the trees and later warmed up to the mid-seventies. I had mixed feelings, knowing it would probably be the last such trip I would ever take with these particular friends. We hiked down the streams, along banks of moss and ground pine still lush and green, with red and orange maple leaves falling upon us. In one sense, death was all around us, but it was o.k. For it was so beautiful that it was hard to be afraid. I sensed a voice telling me that it was a natural transition, both for the woods and for me. I somehow realized that such memories of this trip would give me the strength to live through the change and transitions that were ahead.
When I looked out to see a none too warmly dressed girl playing a lonely game of tetherball, I remembered that halcyon fall day. In that first Iowa winter when I would miss my friends, the familiar mountains, and never see anything but hard snow-dusted ground, I would remember it again and again. Yet I was not being called backward. I was being told to treasure what I had been given, and to expect to discover and use all the blessings I had been given and stored up in the past ten years. For God had a purpose for us in our move to Iowa and we would be given the support and resources to face whatever lay ahead. There would be new friends, and maybe even new fishing trips, however unpromising the terrain now seemed.
I suspect the transfiguration served a similar purpose for Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, James, and John. In the Gospels The Transfiguration is the bridge between the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, and the beginning of the final journey to Jerusalem. The disciples were affirmed that they were being prepared for a worthwhile task and they were part of Jesus' mission that was as momentous to people of faith as the journey of Moses or the call of Elijah. The transfiguration was a strange incident, like no other, in the border zone between heaven and earth, between reality and dreams, between the present petty and self-important kingdoms of worldly power and God’s vision of a new commonwealth for humanity. The exhilaration of the mountaintop, the vision of a triumphal meeting of Jesus with Moses the giver of the law, and Elijah, emissary of the prophets, was a foretaste of a grand banquet sure to be, when the lion would lie down with the lamb and no one would be sent away hungry.
By now Peter and the others had gained a sense that their future would involve a struggle and formidable testing. They left the mountain top with the memory that they, too, would be supported, as God had supported Moses, Elijah, and the long line of their faithful ancestors.
I suspect one of the reasons the story of the transfiguration is always read on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent is to remind us that the Holy Spirit helps us view the world in a different light, especially in the transitions we all eventually have to make. At the same time, the moving of the Holy Spirit among us usually happens on many occasions we don’t appreciate at the time. It begins just like a fishing trip or walk in the woods, like many others, or in the midst of people just like us and in the middle of utilitarian, even routine and dull tasks. Yet, they change us. We hold on to capture and mark their memory. We find that as we look back and gain strength from them we never look at people and the situations we find ourselves in, in the same way. We never are forced to accept the cold hopelessness of the world at face value. We are able to perceive the wonder of God in many mundane things and in the faces of our co-workers, store employees, and our neighbors. In the middle of winter and darkness, we anticipate spring, the coming of light, and picnics with those we love.
The transfiguration tells us that we have purpose to be here. God will support us, in transitions and in moves to new places where no one knows us. God does not lose us, even if we find ourselves in Iowa or Ithaca alone, in the middle of winter.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
