Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9
Entering the Cloud
Joy Douglas Strome
Prayer for Illumination:
There is enough light, O God.
Enough to light our way
Enough to burn a bit
Enough to break through this cold
and O, by the way, also the cold of our hearts
There is enough light, O God.
Glory be to you, O Wondrous One.
Amen.
Let’s leave out Aaron and Hur, Elijah, Peter, James and John…..the onlookers. With just Moses
and Jesus we have a starting place. Who in their right minds freely enters a cloud for direction? It gets
better. Who in their right minds goes up to the top of a mountain and then enters a cloud for
direction. Been to the top of the mountain and when clouds come, you sit tight. You wait for the
wind to blow over, you wait for the sun to break through, no one in their right mind tries to navigate
from inside a cloud. We’ve seen what happens. Too painful to name in these last months, the stories
of crashes on the highway. 5 young men from Gracie’s alma mater just this weekend, slipped into a
semi—three are dead and two seriously injured… Interstate 80 piles them up and an innocent trip to
Michigan becomes a graveyard. My friend’s husband is crushed between a pile up. And the
eyewitnesses, that might be an oxymoron, an eyewitness says you couldn’t see anything----like being in
a cloud….the fog, was so thick, you couldn’t see anything….What person in their right mind freely
enters a cloud for direction? In our world, we steer clear of fog, clouds, because our vision is
compromised in the midst of a cloud.
Not Moses and Jesus. Moses comes back with the 10 commandments. But not immediately.
First he has to wait six days for God to urge him on. And then the glory of the Lord was like a
devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Lord. Fire and fog? Really? Who in
their right mind? And Moses enters the cloud….and goes further up the mountain and is there for 40
days and 40 nights.
That’s a serious Lenten practice.
Jesus takes his inner circle, the elite leaders, and heads up to a high mountain. While Jesus is
transfigured, and Moses and Elijah appear---weird enough for one story---a cloud comes over them, a
bright cloud---and God’s voice comes to them….Listen to Jesus. If God were going to go to the
trouble to orchestrate this dramatic scene, some better, clearer lines would have been good. Moses
came out with 10 good, strong, clear commandments……the disciples? are just scared to death…Jesus
reassures them, get up (really it means rise up from the dead—the same words he said to Lazarus)---rise up, guys, don’t be dead, I mean afraid---its just God talking from a bright cloud and Moses and
Elijah came along for effect. What kind of person in their right mind would follow Jesus after this?
Learned folk call these theophanies---encounters with God that one lives to tell about…or as
WB describes it: theophanies are an attempt to narrate inscrutable encounters with the divine presence
that in fact defy description. (textweek: Odyssey) Another way to say “glory”. Something significant
happens that cannot be adequately captured in words or a Rembrandt or an iPhone. It is bright and it
is foggy at the same time. It is fiery and it is frightening and it won’t be contained in a children’s song
with hand motions. Remember the sign for glory----it glitters, and flitters. It is fleeting and on the
move. It is headed upwards and dissipates quickly. It has you scratching your head and ducking for
cover all at the same time….the bible calls this glory. And the glory, the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed. It is musical, yes, but not just any music. It is tricky and complicated and breaks open some
place inside of us…..glory. What kind of person in their right mind believes in glory? We are
scientific, remember? We need data, not old scrolls with fanciful stories handed down, probably full
of errors and mis-translations…What kind of person believes in glory?
We love to be sure of ourselves and this text is asking something so different of us. We are
being asked to suspend logic and reason and suit up to enter the cloud. I heard an astro-physicist say
that without innovation we are lost. He said that most Americans, when hearing that an asteroid was
headed toward Earth would probably go to the grocery store and stock up on groceries. An
innovator—a person who can see beyond reason and logic…--would ask, how can we stop it? Chink,
a crack in the wall I’ve been systematically raising for us. Even science is headed into the cloud. What
kind of person believes in glory? Goes to a cloudy mountaintop for direction? Sees visions of dead
people for inspiration? Is immobilized by fear?
Well in the Bible, apparently most anyone. But we aren’t particularly comfortable with this
part of the Bible. Give us a good parable or teaching to argue about. Give us a psalm to set to
music. Give us a character that is messing up big time so we can chastise them.
Give us a good battle
to sort out. But these theophanies, they hurt our brain.
I tried my best to make some kind of parallel to this that would work for us today. I have the
picture on the cover of the bulletin of the iCloud---that agonizingly abstract abyss of all the words that
we can’t be bothered to store in any tangible form…..we send off all our precious words and papers
and trust that there is some space out there to receive them, that our files have travelled the internet
highway and end up in some database of mythic proportions, we send them there, our reports, our
pictures, our tweets and twitters, we send them out into this dimension that our hands cannot touch,
that our eyes cannot see, that we cannot go visit in our car or on our own two feet, we willingly do
this…and given the chaos of our physical files, and the transiency of our physical machines, we even
think this place is MORE secure than the cd we could hold in our hand, or the paper copy that lays in
a stack, or the book that has been signed by the author…..what person in their right mind enters this
kind of cloud? Into this iCloud we hand over our most precious thoughts and we go back there over
and over to retrieve them at will. We enter into the iCloud with a keystroke or a mouse click and our
virtual stash of important thoughts are quickly accessed….they are right there, unchanged, not
yellowed around the edges, no loss of efficacy or breakdown in potency…..all there, just the way we
left it.
But enter into a cloud with Moses and Jesus and we cannot, cannot say the same. We will
absolutely be changed, we will absolutely age, we will absolutely shift our thinking. BBT says that
biblical encounters like Moses and Jesus have just had…..have a way of breaking biblical people open,
of rearranging what they think they know for sure so that there is room for more divine movement in
their lives……certainties can become casualties in these encounters….those things can shift pretty
dramatically inside the cloud of unknowing, where faith has more to do with staying fully present to
what is happening right in front of you than with being certain of what it all means…..the
meeting….that’s the thing. (BBT-Day One)
What person in their right mind is looking for experiences that rearrange what we know for
sure? I don’t know what glory looks like. I’ve read these stories, I’ve studied them up one side and
down the other. I can tell you who wrote them and what kinds of stresses they were facing when they
put them down on paper. I can tell you about the people who heard the stories the first time and
who hear them today. But they are always going to be second hand glory. Someone else’s’
theophany, someone else’s’ religious experience. Second hand glory is better than no glory, don’t get
me wrong.
But sometime we all have to be willing to go into the cloud, to join the faint-hearted and the
folks who appear not in their right mind….those willing to be stretched a bit, who are willing to let go
of certainty for a minute or two to consider something new. Sometimes we have to head into the
cloud not to secure our belongings, but to let go of them. Sometimes we have to head into the cloud
not virtually, but absolutely with our entire being---body, soul, and mind. Sometimes we have to
enter into the cloud, and honestly admit we do not know a thing. Glory is foreign to me God---I
need a big Technicolor experience. Come on….bring it on.
And yes, I am so willing to rearrange
my thinking to make space for it…bring it on.
What? God might meet me at the deathbed of a
loved one? That’s a cloudy spot. What? God might meet me at the stock market exchange? That’s
a cloudy spot. What? God might meet me at the toll plaza? That’s a cloudy spot. I don’t get to
predict it or plan for it or look forward to it. I just have to be willing to entertain a theophany when
the clouds roll in and it looks like it’s coming my way.
New thought. New metaphor. Shifting the subject. Roadsigns. Think about an old-fashioned
clothesline. There are poles in the ground securely. Stretched between them in gentle arcs are the
lines that hold our clothing while it dries. The weight of the clothes might shift the angle of the arc but
the posts stay secure. Now extend this image and look at our liturgical calendar. If we look back,
one pole holding up the season we just left is the star of Bethlehem, shining in the
distance…..reminding us of God’s great entry into humanity through this baby in Bethlehem. Now
look in the distance the other way and see another pole, and it sits on the top of the hill at Calvary,
where we are headed…..and that pole? It’s on the hill, but just remember, it is an empty cross, it is
the Easter cross, it is the resurrection, bright sun shiny morning cross.
Holding up the clothesline in
the middle is this pole today---the one that Moses and Jesus hold up together---the cloudy pole in the
middle. It is strong and holds its share of the weight.
And the way to the Resurrection sunrise rise
goes right through this cloud. We move from one to the other in gentle arcs that lead us deeper and
deeper into a faith that will support the weight of our lives. We may not be in our right mind to go
there, but our minds will never grow until we do. Turns out, it’s probably not about right at all---it’s
about faithful. And faithful is the one who hears Jesus saying---rise up, do not be afraid, we have
some people who need healing….let’s move on. In between here and there are the days of
Lent….days that we’ve planned some specific ways for you to go deep. Join us and don’t be
surprised if a few clouds roll in along the way.…
There is enough light, O God.
Enough to light our way
Enough to burn a bit
Enough to break through this cold
and O, by the way, also the cold of our hearts
There is enough light, O God.
Glory be to you, O Wondrous One.
Amen.