What’s the Meaning of This: Mark 9:2-9
In the play Cats by Andrew Lloyd Weber, Old Deuteronomy, the oldest cat says: “We had the experience, but we missed the meaning” . How often that is true. There is the experience and there is the meaning of the experience and we can very well go through life experiencing one thing after another and never think of the meaning. In this way life sometimes becomes for us a dull parade of events. We get bogged down on the details of living and never ask, “what’s the meaning of this?”
Theology can be seen as an attempt to give meaning to experience. Years ago, I attended some workshops conducted by the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago. One of the evening exercises was to watch contemporary movies and then struggle with the theological meaning of the movie. We asked questions like, “What message does this movie give about humanity”, “What does it say about who man is?” What does it say about women?” “What does it say about relationships?” “Where if at all in the movie was repentance? “Where was blindness?” “Where was broken-ness?” “Where was new birth?”, “Where was death?” ” Where is love?” , “Where was resurrection?”, “Where is God?” and so on. It was an interesting exercise because we became aware that these things that we spout off incessantly in Church and in the midst of worship are happening all around us in the world. When we can identify them in our lives and in the world we are given direction as to where to move and reasons to celebrate.
There are some people today who find a reason to celebrate in ordinary happenings They continually look for the meaning behind a simple experience. Some people are actually finding something to celebrate in a trip to the grocery store or a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. Life takes on new dimensions. The coffee shop that I visit regularly is much more than a place where I can get a cup of coffee. It is my resting place, my meeting place, my office, my confessional, my altar, my counseling room and much more. My coffee break is an experience but I hope never to miss the meaning. I remember an interview that Oprah had with Elie Weisel. Oprah asked: Does having seen the worst of humanity make you more grateful for ordinary occurrences? He answered: “ For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.”
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Keith Miller has written about how we miss the true meaning of things because a certain object or event seem so ordinary so there couldn’t be anything more to them . He says:
A FRIEND, who is a topflight management consultant and a very sharp Christian layman, went to Europe several years ago. He was excited because he had always wanted to visit the Christian shrines in England and on the continent. He went to Aldersgate Street where John Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed,” to Wittenberg and to Rome, where Luther s incisive turnings took place. But as he saw these places, which have become shrines for many Protestant Christians, he was frankly disappointed. He had expected to be inspired and awed, but these were just plain buildings and towns.
As he thought about his disappointment, he realized that these had been just ordinary places when the action had taken place which later made them important. In each case the thing that made these churches and cities shrines was that each was a simple setting in a man had made a decision concerning God s will for himself – a time when someone turned with his whole life faced God and chose Him over “things. – The events which followed were so significant that people now travel for miles just to see the site where the decision was made.
In considering this I realize that so often I have looked for a special place or dramatic circumstances in which I could do God’s will. I remembered a sermon another friend once preached about the places where faith can blossom and lives can be committed. He spoke of Moses and the burning bush, and called the sermon, “Any Old Bush Will Do.”
Keith Miller Habitation of Dragons Word Books, Publisher, Waco Texas 1970, p. 58,59
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I see the transfiguration of Jesus in today’s Gospel as a window into the meaning of Jesus’ life. They say that a picture speaks a thousand words and that is what we are given in today’s Gospel. The three disciples in the story had been through events with Jesus day by day. They had an experience with Jesus, but here in this picture they were given the meaning of his life.
They see him standing with Moses the law giver and Elijah the prophet. Certainly Jesus was a lawgiver and reiterated the greatest law of all, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself.” This is not only what he said. He lived it. It was the meaning of his life.
Jesus was also the prophet, who interpreted much of what was happening in the world at that time. He gave us tremendous insight into the things that motivated humanity, our destructive capabilities and that which could lead us to glory. He gave us understanding of the joyful mysteries and the sorrowful mysteries of life.
Jesus shone at the transfiguration as a true visionary. He was a vision throughout his life of what humanity was meant for, and what we could become. The picture speaks deep within us that this is God’s Son and we are all capable of being true children of God as well. We see in the transfigured Jesus, the human glory to come. It is a glorious vision – one to open your eyes to, one to listen to; one to follow.
Not only that, but the light falling on Jesus showed clearly the power of Jesus. John Spong, writing on the meaning of the transfiguration in his book Liberating of The Gospels writes:
When Christians came to believe that the life of Jesus was nothing less than the new dwelling place of God, and that Jesus had himself become the ultimate and final sacrifice that rendered additional Temple sacrifices irrelevant, they began to suggest that Jesus had replaced the Temple. This theme grew in intensity when the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. So the idea that the light of God had actually came to rest in Jesus expanded in the tradition. This was the background and origin of the story of the transfiguration, and into this story all of these elements were skillfully added. Jesus, like Moses, went up the mountain with three named associates. He, like Moses, entered the cloud of God. The Shekinah, or light of God, then came and rested on him. He was transformed, his clothes were translucent, and suddenly the Jewish Feast of Dedication had a Christian emphasis. This was not a literal story about a literal moment in the life of Jesus. This was a skillful midrashic and homiletic attempt to interpret the power of Jesus in terms of well-known Jewish symbols.
John Shelby Spong Liberating The Gospels HarperSanFrancisco, Harper Publishing N.Y. 1996, p. 80
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The Transfiguration of Jesus does not just takes place in Scripture. It can take place in your life at any time and almost anywhere : meeting with a group of people, alone at home reading, by the seaside, by a lake or a stream, on a walk in the city, in the country, in a forest, by yourself or with a partner, at the kitchen sink, right now. It takes place anywhere where you suddenly see the meaning of Jesus in your life, when his light and power overshadows you, when faith becomes alive, and you want to commit yourself to his vision.
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