To Be Transformed

ONLINE REFLECTION, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY

AUGUST 5, 2020

TEXT:               Luke 9:28-36

OBSERVANCE: The Transfiguration (Transferred from August 6)

COLLECT FOR THE TRANSFIGURATION

Years ago, when I was in my first year of seminary, I was experiencing a crisis of faith, of sorts. It seems that one of the unintended consequences of academic formation of a priest is the dismantlement of preconceived notions built on sand, opening the way for the rebuilding of one’s faith on rock.

I was at the nadir of that process. My closest friend in seminary, Genie Hibberts, and I were seated on the steps of All Saints’ Chapel at Sewanee.  We loved to have deep theological conversations.  She was much brighter than I.

I voiced my frustration with my collapsing set of beliefs: “What is the point, Genie?”  She looked at me and said words that have rung in my ears ever since: “David, it is because lives are changed.”

In other words, people’s lives are changed by an encounter with the Risen Christ.  I needed to hear those words, and I did not yet know how true they were.

Today, I am exercising a little priestly discretion and observing, a day early, one of the great feasts of the church year – The Feast of the Transfiguration.

On August 6 each year, we remember Jesus ascending the mountain – likely Mt. Tabor in Galilee – with his “executive committee”, Peter and James and John.  They witnessed each dramatic moment of his ministry.

There, before them, Jesus was transfigured – his clothes glowing whiter “than any fuller could bleach them” scripture says.  His appearance recalls Moses’ descent from Mt. Sinai 1,200 years earlier.

But there’s more!  He is joined in that moment by the prophet Elijah and by Moses.  It is a brief moment – but it anticipated what was called “his departure from Jerusalem.”

It was a dramatic sight for Peter, James, and John.  We recollect it to this day because it testifies to God’s hand being very-much with Jesus in his ministry.  Jesus was transfigured.

That is an image, a metaphor that I hold on to.  No, we are not likely to be transfigured in the way Jesus was.  But we can be transformed by God’s presence at our side.

I have experienced that transformation by God’s love.  The world is made new.  Life and faith are no longer pointless.  As the hymn writer and former slave trader John Newton wrote in his hymn Amazing Grace, “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”

That same transformative power is available to you.