Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up the mountain to pray. In Kyiv, for days now, thousands of women, men, and children went down underground, seeking shelter from Russian mortar shells and rockets. Many of them, no doubt, praying for the attack to end, praying for courage for their defenders, praying for their leaders who refused to leave them, praying for the lives of their loved ones. We find ourselves somewhere between that mountaintop and the underground, praying for them, praying with them. Amid the turmoil of our anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, grief, and rage, we pray. May there be a swift and peaceful end to the conflict. May hardened hearts be softened. May the brave citizens of Russia who speak up and stand up against Putin’s war find their resolve strengthened. May refugees be greeted with love and welcome. May our own hearts be cleansed of fantasies of imperial dominance. May we all learn that cooperation is a better path than domination and control. And divided as we are in this country and in other countries, may we stand united for democratic values, democratic institutions, human rights, and an international order based on the rule of law. The Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA invited us to pray with them, “Send your heavenly legions, O Lord, commanded by the patron of Kyiv, Archangel Michael, to crush”— and this is where we’re easily tempted to fill in words like ‘the enemy,’ or ‘the invaders,’ or simply ‘them’ but the prayer asks God to crush “the desires of the aggressor whose desire is to eradicate our people.”[1] Crush the desires of the aggressor. Three days from today we will observe Ash Wednesday, and once again we will pray with words from Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”[2] As much as we pray for a change of heart for others, we pray that our own desires and the actions flowing from them may be just and kind, steeped in God’s deep compassion.
In one of Brian Doyle’s many marvelous essays, he takes us back to a dining-room scene at home, many years ago.
I was sitting at the dining-room table. My dad and my mom and my sister were sitting there also. I believe it was lunch. My brothers were elsewhere committing misdemeanor. I believe it was summertime. The room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. I believe the meal was finished, and my mother and sister were having tea and cigarettes. My father mentioned casually that our cousins were coming for dinner next Sunday or something like that. … I shoved my chair back and whined and snarled and complained. I believe this had something to do with some vague plans of my own that I had of course not shared with anyone else as yet, probably because they were half-hatched or mostly imaginary. My father said something calm and reasonable, as still is his wont. I said something rude. My mother remonstrated quietly but sharply, as still is her wont. I said something breathtakingly selfish. My sister said something gently and kind, as still is her wont. I said something cutting and sneering and angry. My mother slowly put down her tea. Odd that I would remember that detail, her cigarette in her left hand and her teacup in her right and the cup descending slowly to the table. The table had a blue cloth, and just outside the window the yew hedge was the most brilliant vibrant green. As I remember it was just as my mother was putting her teacup on the table, just as the smoke from the cigarettes was rising thin and blue and unbroken …, just as my father put his big hands on the table and prepared to stand up and say something calm and blunt to me and cut the moment before it spun out of control, that I realized I was being a fool. It wasn’t an epiphany or a trumpet blast or anything epic. It was an almost infinitesimal wriggle of something for which I don’t have good words even now. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed, though I was embarrassed, later. It was more like for a second I saw who I actually was rather than who I thought I was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think I was. I understood, dimly, for an instant—I believe for the first time in my life—that I was being a fool.[3]
I’ve had a few moments like that over the years, and I thank God for them. Brian Doyle called his biographical story, A Fool’s Awakening, and blessed is the fool who needs to awaken only once. I’m not one of them, and I’m grateful for each moment when I got to see who I actually was rather than who I thought I was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think I was. I believe that’s what I’m getting, moments of awakening, when I ask God to create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within me. And I hope God will give Mr. Putin one of those moments very soon, if he hasn’t had one already, for it seems to me, he’s been awfully wrapped up in who he thought he was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think he was.
Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. I imagine that their feet were sore, and their legs, weary. They had been all over Galilee, following Jesus who proclaimed the good news of God’s reign. Once on the mountaintop, Jesus must have been doing all the praying; the other three could hardly keep their eyes open. But before sleep could overcome them, they were startled: Jesus, who must have reached the summit just as sweaty and dirty as they did, shone with the very light of heaven. They were tired, very tired, but they saw Jesus, their master and friend, talking with Moses and Elijah, the great prophets who themselves had encountered God on the mountain, and here they were speaking with Jesus about his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. They were talking about his death on that hill outside of Jerusalem, but they did not use the word death. And they did not speak of it as something that would happen to him, but something he would accomplish. The word translated as departure is exodos, and with Moses right there, in heavenly glory, perhaps the pieces were beginning to come together for the three:
He had told them, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”[4] Jesus would go to Jerusalem, and through his death and resurrection he would lead God’s people from bondage to freedom. In this exodos the great opponent wouldn’t be Pharaoh, but all the powers that keep humans in captivity, all that keeps us and all of creation from being fully alive. Jesus’ suffering, rejection, and death would look for all the world like defeat, but it would be an exodos, with Jesus laying down his own body to part the waters, and rising on the other side, the firstborn from the dead.
The three saw the glory of God shining forth from Jesus. They were witnesses as the great prophets appeared in glory and affirmed the way of Jesus as the way of redemption. The moment was awesome and holy, and they wanted it to last; everything was beautiful and clear, bathed in the light of heaven.
“Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Don’t let this end. Let us mark this moment and make it last. Don’t let this fullness, this glorious beauty, slip away.
The weary disciples were given a glimpse of Easter, a glimpse of life redeemed from the power of sin, a glimpse of creation shining with the glory of God. But then a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified. In that darkness nothing dazzled, nothing shone. Whereas before everything had been exceedingly clear, now they were completely in the dark without any sense of place or direction. They were terrified. And in the darkness they heard the voice: This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.
Just one commandment: Listen to him. Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory and on the brink of death.[5] Listen to him, all that he has said and all that he will say. He will say all that is needed. Listen for dear life.
The three didn’t say a word about what they had seen. They followed Jesus down from the mountain, down to the plains and the valleys of life, down to where a great crowd was waiting. And there the silence was broken by a father who cried out, “Teacher, I beg you, look at my son; he is my only child.”
The father’s cry was like an echo of the voice they had heard on the mountain, only here it was filled with pain and helplessness. And how many times is this parent’s anguish being echoed in Afghanistan and in Yemen and in Kyiv, in the underground, and on train stations all over Ukraine where mothers and fathers have to turn around because there’s no more room on the train to Romania, no more room on the train to Hungary, the train to Poland. This is where we long for transfiguration: in the lightless plains where life is threatened, violated, wounded; down here where dreams of freedom are crushed under the boots of soldiers in Ukraine and Myanmar, in Hongkong, and lest we forget, in El Salvador and Guatemala and in Chile; down here where a little man with dreams of greatness and an arsenal of lies and other weapons has furbished a nation’s fear of foreign invasion into the rationale to invade another nation with a long history of invasion and foreign control—what a perverse, deadly dance. This is where we long for transfiguration, down here where for many hope is hard to come by. Down here is where we encounter God’s Chosen One, calling us to follow him on a journey that doesn’t take us out of the world into realms of lofty, spiritual splendor, but deeper into the world. He takes us with him, and we stumble along behind him, because we trust him. Because Peter, James and John trusted him, and Mary, Martha, and Susanna and all the others trusted him, and those first followers have told us how, with the wondrous light of the resurrection shining in their hearts, their eyes were opened to see themselves truly and fully, and to see every person and recognize them for who they actually are, made in the image of God, beloved, chosen. We stumble along in the company of Jesus because his journey is about our transfiguration and the transfiguration of the world.
[1] https://uocofusa.org/news_220124_1
[2] Psalm 51:10
[3] Brian Doyle, “A Fool’s Awakening,” Christian Century, February 19, 2014, 12.
[4] Luke 9:22
[5] Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment,” The Christian Century 124, no. 3 (February 6, 2007), 16.