In many ways the story of the transfiguration is a bit mystifying
\nbeing \u201ctransfigured\u201d is ordinarily not part
\nof our daily discourse, or bucket list.
\nTo try to demystify the term I turned to a favorite source,
\nthe Oxford English Dictionary
\nwhich was actually less helpful
\nthan its accompanying thesaurus
\nThe thesaurus provided 10 synonyms for transfiguration
\nincluding: conversion, transformation, mutation, metamorphosis
\nand, my personal favorite, transmogrification:
\nwelcome to the feast of transmogrification!<\/p>\n
Besides the linguistic tickle that comes from just saying it
\nThe term transmogrification also triggered chuckles,
\nsince the only place I have encountered it before
\nis in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.<\/p>\n
Calvin invented a transmogrifier \u2013 an upside down cardboard box
\nthat allowed Calvin to turn Hobbes or himself
\ninto quite an array of critters.<\/p>\n
The only problem is that while Calvin & Hobbes
\nsaw themselves completely transformed,
\neverybody else just saw him as the same kid & stuffed toy;
\nso much for transmogrification.<\/p>\n
Most of us would probably be as frustrated as Calvin
\nif we went through our own transmogrifier
\nand people didn\u2019t see the change.<\/p>\n
If we spent all those hours at the gym
\nor in the library
\nor at the hairstylist
\nor at the computer<\/p>\n
and our sweethearts or teachers
\nspouses or bosses
\ndidn\u2019t see us any svelter or any smarter
\nany more beautiful or any more productive \u2026<\/p>\n
Matthew, however, gives us a different image of holy transformation,
\nthe firstborn of all creation
\nshining like the sun,
\nbut not just on today\u2019s mountain top
\nbut in so many ways in throughout the gospels,<\/p>\n
but often with a fate similar to Calvin
\nwhose transformation was not seen, understood
\nor fully embraced.<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 divinity momentarily shone to shepherds and Magi
\nbut was soon chased into exile by a Herod
\nwho wanted no one to outshine him.
\nJesus\u2019 prophetic gift glimmered from his hometown pulpit
\nbut his inspired word advocating freedom and justice
\nquickly triggered rage and rejection
\nin a community who believed they knew a better God.<\/p>\n
And in today\u2019s gospel he shines in the presence of Moses & Elijah
\nradiant as the new law giver, the new prophet
\nBut drowsy Peter, on cue, misses the point … again!
\nAnd hopes for a tent city in the glow of this amazing warmth.<\/p>\n
Maybe one of the ways to plumb the depths
\nof this transmogrifying gospel
\nis to attend to a central yet often overlooked character
\nin this mini-drama –
\nnot Peter or Elijah or Moses,
\ninstead the meteorologically elusive cloud & shadow.<\/p>\n
it was from the cloud that the divine voice emanated,
\nobscuring visual cues and distracting appearances,
\nclearly proclaiming the heart of the matter
\nas God\u2019s voice is usually wont to do.<\/p>\n
Yet while the cloud was a source of intimate revelation,
\nit also cast a telling, prophetic shadow,
\nprefiguring the descent down the mountain
\nand the long journey towards Jerusalem,
\nwhere storm clouds gathered on the religious horizon
\nleading to that most grim of transfigurations,
\nJesus on the jib of a tree in the place called Golgotha.<\/p>\n
Barbara Brown Taylor is a favorite poet and preacher. A couple of summers ago, my husband Ed and I went to Ireland. We both have roots there. It is that Celtic sense of place that is so appealing – of holy trees, holy wells, holy mountains – \u2018thin places\u2019 as the Irish call them – places where the veil between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through…<\/em><\/p>\n You can be walking down an ordinary country lane and all of a sudden see a footpath leading off to the left. Follow it for a couple of hundred feet and you come to a little mossy hole full of crystal clear water. It would be easy to mistake it for an ordinary little watering hole if it were not for the tidy bank of stones around it, set there hundreds of years ago by people who recognized a \u2018thin place\u2019 right there in the middle of a sheep pasture\u2026. you can sometimes feel it for yourself – a freshness that drenches you as thoroughly as a shower\u2026. Simply to stand near is to experience living water.<\/em>[1]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thin places abound, and not just in Ireland. A while back I received a letter from a young relative She has recently moved out of prison into a halfway house. On her first day going to work, she rode in a van Who ever imagined a van door as a thin space Thin places can be venues of holy revelation Thin places, however, can also open in the opposite direction, It seems like forever that we have been pondering our southern border Then recently, there was the sentencing of Robert Bowers And in the violation of that boundary Instead of pulling back the veil on the beauty of the beloved In 1997 Stephen Spielberg directed the movie Amistad. An epic legal battle ensued, The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, In a penultimate scene before the court case opens, John Quincy Adams:\u00a0<\/strong>Cinque, look.\u00a0I\u2019m being honest with you. Anything less would be disrespectful. I\u2019m telling you, I\u2019m preparing you, I suppose I\u2019m explaining to you, that the test ahead of us is an exceptionally difficult one.<\/p>\n Cinque: <\/strong>(speaking through a translator)<\/em>\u00a0We won\u2019t be going in there alone.<\/p>\n John Quincy Adams: <\/strong>Alone? Indeed not.\u00a0We have right at our side. We have righteousness at our side. We have Mr. Baldwin over there.<\/p>\n Cinque:\u00a0<\/strong>(speaking through a translator<\/em>)\u00a0I meant my ancestors. I will call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come and help me at the judgment. I will reach back and draw them into me. And they must come, for at this moment, I am the whole reason they have existed at all.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n On this Transfiguration Sunday In the terrible beauty of that ultimate transfiguration We are missioned to pull back the veil in such spaces, In this season of transformation, we are missioned For in truth, in this place, at this moment, Through Christ our Lord.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way <\/em>(Lantham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 58-9. In the transfiguration, the Only-Begotten hung in the thin space between heaven and earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":62041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[3119,3294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-plaza-new-ws","category-ars-praedicandi"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nIn her book Home by Another Way,
\n<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>she writes about those shadowy and cloudy spaces.
\nShe calls them \u201cthin places\u201d:<\/p>\n
\nThey are doors ready for opening \u2026 invitations to grace.<\/p>\n
\nwho has spent 20 years in prison for an accident she caused
\nwhen she was 19 years old \u2026 resulting in 3 deaths.<\/p>\n
\nWhile her letter was filled with firsts
\ne.g., the first automatic towel dispenser
\nthat completely startled her,
\nshe also narrated a small but touching vignette.<\/p>\n
\nsitting closest to the door.
\nShe wrote: \u201cwhen the van stopped, I just sat there.
\nMy coworker said, \u2018You can open the door and get out.\u2019
\nI didn\u2019t know \u2026 the prison vans are always locked
\nand they have to let me out
\nbut that day I opened the door
\nand from that point on I was free!\u201d<\/p>\n
\nand permission to open that door a graced veil pulling
\nan invitation into freedom?<\/p>\n
\nlike a mountaintop in Palestine
\nor a van door in South Carolina.<\/p>\n
\nand be portals to violence, even the demonic
\nrending the thin line between respect and disrespect
\nbetween humanity and inhumanity
\nbetween life giving and death dealing.<\/p>\n
\nas a \u201cthin space\u201d of grace and malpractice
\nwhere redemption is achieved, and dreams are dashed.<\/p>\n
\nwho five years ago gunned down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue,
\nan event that turned a house of Torah and teaching and prayer
\ninto ground zero for the increasingly thinning space
\nbetween tolerance and bigotry.<\/p>\n
\nwe witnessed not only the most heinous anti-Semitic attack in U.S. History
\nand the traumatization of a world religion,
\nbut the grievous wounding of humanity
\nboth in the killings
\nand then again in Bowers\u2019 death sentence.<\/p>\n
\nthis curtain was drawn on the ugliness of racial and religious arrogance.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was based on a true story of a slave ship in 1839.
\nWhen the Mende tribesmen who were being sold into slavery
\nrebelled and took control of their captor\u2019s ship,
\nthough they attempted to sail back to Africa,
\ninstead they were captured in U.S. waters
\nand imprisoned as escaped slaves.<\/p>\n
\nwith at least four litigants claiming
\nthat the slaves were their rightful property.<\/p>\n
\nwhere none other than former president John Quincy Adams
\ndefends the Africans.<\/p>\n
\nAdams tries to explain to the Mende leader, Cinque
\nhow difficult this process is going to be.<\/p>\n
\nChristians summon the first born of all Creation,
\nthe invincible son of justice \u2013 our life-giving ancestor
\nwho birthed us as church
\nas he hung on the cross
\nand blood and water flowed from his side.<\/p>\n
\nas the Only-Begotten literally hung
\nin that thin space between heaven and earth
\nwe the baptized were missioned
\nto inhabit every thin space,
\nespecially those where the vulnerable,
\nthe lost,
\nthe broken and the oppressed dwell,
\nwhether in a synagogue in Pittsburgh
\nor on death row in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\ndenouncing the arrogance of bigotry,
\nand the violence of capital punishment,
\nacknowledging every human being
\nas created in God\u2019s image.<\/p>\n
\nto uphold the belovedness of every Muslim and Jew,
\nHindu and Sikh, Buddhist and agnostic,
\nand so be the living presence of Christ in the world.<\/p>\n
\nChristianity itself can be imaged as a symbol
\nof why our divine Ancestor Jesus became human at all,
\nwhy the incarnation itself even occurred
\nand the pivotal way that transfiguring mystery
\nwill continue to be recognized
\nif only we pull back the veil of belovedness.<\/p>\n
\n[2]<\/a> https:\/\/cinema-fanatic.com\/2014\/04\/24\/movie-quote-of-the-day-amistad-1997-dir-steven-spielberg\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"