Transfiguration

We had a great men's fellowship meeting this weekend, discussing the Sunday Mass readings. I find my mind coming back to these readings:

We tend to live as if life is about reaching the mountain top. When we're told, as children, that we can do whatever we really set our minds upon (and let's not debate the degree to which that is completely true), we generally perceive some level of achievement that we can feel we've accomplished. Hard work and single-minded dedication will lead us to the mountain top, from which we will be able to survey the marvelous view and enjoy the fruits of our labor, whatever they might be. The mountain top is presented as our destination and goal, and we plan to reap the reward for getting there.

The Transfiguration of Christ paints a different tale. Jesus takes three apostles with him, and they are filled with awe - and fear - with what they see there. But Mount Tabor is not where they're ultimately headed. Rather, its purpose is more limited: to provide strength, vision, and means for the road that lies ahead. The Gospels don't tell us what transpires between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. We figure that this revelation had a purpose for these three closest disciples, to provide a reinforcement of the good news for which they were subsequently to be responsible. But I wonder if their was a purpose to this Godhead moment for Jesus, too, perhaps to sustain him, in his humanity, to persevere along the dark road which lay ahead of him.

God gives us mountaintop experiences, and everyone who studies this story understands the fundamental point that, for most of us, our mission is not on the mountain. Yet we still struggle to avoid making the mountain our goal. We must be on guard, too, not to mistake the touch of God's grace, as it illuminates our life in some dazzling way, for something that we have earned or accomplished. There is a vast gulf between "Look what God has shown me" and "Look what I've figured out!"

In today's first reading, Abraham and Isaac were on their way to a mountain, too. Abraham demonstrated that he trusted God more than his greatest desire, painfully obeying this distressing commandment. It seems to me that the idea of a child sacrifice might not have been completely alien to people of his day, and so God's sparing of Isaac - and the prosperity the family experienced after not sacrificing their son - might have been as radically new a concept among Abraham's contemporaries as Jesus' death and resurrection would later be. In each case, God provided a sacrifice in place of the death specified. Now, the Son of God takes the place of the sinful sons and daughters who will be gained by God through Christ receiving the punishment which would otherwise be theirs. St. Paul makes clear what good news this is for those of us who would have been left vulnerable to accusation and condemnation. Instead, because of what Jesus has done for us, his transfiguration prefigures our own, as his glory will eventually shine through us with equal clarity.

Our destination lies far beyond any mountain top.