Transfiguration story: to take holiness, insights into the groaning cities - mediation on the second Sunday of Lent

National Catholic Reporter, March 2, 2001 by Joan Chittister

Second Sunday of Lent

Of all the questions with which the Lenten journey to the center of the soul confronts us, the one that emerges out of the gospel of the Second Sunday of Lent may be the most determining of them all. Once this question is answered, everything else falls in place, an uneasy place, perhaps, but in place, nevertheless. The question is a deceptive one, simple at one level, dangerously profound at another. The question of the second week of Lent is not "What should we do to make ourselves religious?" It is "What should we do to make ourselves holy?"

An ancient story from another tradition may make the point more clear: "Once upon a time," the story tells, "a seeker went from land to land to discover an authentic religion. Finally, the seeker found a group of extraordinary fame. They were known for the goodness of their lives and for the singleness of their hearts and for the sincerity of their service.

"I see everything you do," the seeker said, "and I'm impressed by it. But, before I become your disciple, I have a question to ask: Does your God work miracles?"

"Well," the disciples said to the seeker, "it all depends on what you mean by a miracle. Some people call it a miracle when God does the will of people. We call it a miracle when people do the will of God."

There is a tension in religion today that swirls around the struggle for authenticity. Is adherence to doctrinal purity the true mark of the committed Christian? Or is it deference to hierarchy? Or does authenticity lie in being citizen Christians whose intention to maintain the Christian world lies in fashioning into law and public structures the theology of one denomination or another: Enshrining the Ten Commandments in every courtroom, for instance, in a pluralistic society; maintaining a common Sabbath and a common religious calendar of holidays. Or does real spirituality lie in withdrawal from the fray into some kind of pious Nirvana where the cares of the day and the questions of the time touch us not?

The answer, I think, lies in our own story, this one from a scripture that is often translated as a glimpse of glow or a case for contemplative withdrawal from the chaos around us but which, I believe, is really an insight into the spirituality of courage. It is a call for the kind of involvement that changes things. It is a commitment to work miracles for the poor and marginalized rather than maintain them in the name of tradition and authority and good order.

The story that really makes a difference for us today, I think, is the story of the Transfiguration.

Mount Tabor, site of the Transfiguration, is one of those places that is not "on the way" to anywhere. It is steep and rugged and hard to scale. The path that leads to the top of the mountain is hand-hewn out of rock. It is also narrow and dangerous and long: a journey not to be made lightly.

Then, at the top, with the exception of the view of the vast, unending plain of Jezreel below -- there is nothing there. It's an out of the way place that has all the character of a dead end.

And it is bleak, isolated, stark Mount Tabor to which Jesus took Peter, James and John.

If we want to understand precisely to what kind of Lenten conversion we ourselves are being called on the Second Sunday of Lent all we need to do, I think, is to look at Peter, James and John on Tabor.

In the first place, Peter, James and John thought they had been called to go up the mountain to be with Jesus alone. So, the scripture says they "left the world" below and went off by themselves, prepared, apparently, to follow Jesus and find God, to become "contemplative."

But mountains in ancient spiritualities, Judaism included, were always thought of as points of contact with God since they were the places where earth touched heaven. To go "up to a high mountain" -- to which there are eight major references in the Judeo-Christian scriptures -- is always then to be seeking a very special relationship with God.

A pietist's dream

On this particular excursion up this particular mountain theirs was a very select group: No one else was with them and they had Jesus all to themselves. It was a pietist's dream.

And, sure enough, scripture records that a strange and wonderful thing occurred there. Up on the top of that faraway mountain, Peter, James and John got a new insight into Jesus. Up there by themselves, they began to see Jesus differently. And he was a great deal more than they had ever imagined: He was dazzling and intense and all-consuming. The idea was overwhelming. And very, very heady. It was also very, very disturbing. Because then and there, in a gospel that is apparently about the mystical, the privatized dimensions of religion we begin to see the perennial struggle between piety and Christianity, between religion-for-real and religion-for-show.

There, on the top of that mountain, right in front of their eyes, Jesus, the scripture says, became transfigured before them. He was radiant as the sun. And he was talking to Moses and Elijah. And that's the part of the story that makes the difference.