Probably my favorite piece of writing of all time is the essay “High Tide in Tucson” by Barbara Kingsolver. The whole essay is amazing. But my very favorite section is from near the end. And I’m just going to read it to you, because I think it’s beautiful writing.
Kingsolver writes: “Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it’s impossible to think at first how this all will be possible… In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.”
I love that second part especially. In my own worst times, this essay itself has been for me that single glorious thing, helping me to see more glorious things, a good meal with good friends, the freedom of running, the bittersweetness of the wine on my tongue at communion, until I too have again learned joy.
Kingsolver is a secular writer, and for her those moments of connection are about the experience of being human. But as a person of faith, for me they are more than that. I would label these single glorious things as in-breakings of the Kingdom of God. They are what the scripture calls “revelation,” where the veil between earth and heaven is pulled aside revealing to us the infinite. Celtic spirituality refers to these as “thin place” where the distance between heaven and earth is tissue paper thin.
What I think Kingsolver gets so completely right is this idea that these revelations, these thin places, these single glorious things, where the presence of God is revealed, these things are all around us. I won’t say they’re ordinary, for what, if you think about it, is ordinary about the radiant color of a geranium or the enthusiasm of a child, but they are present. The challenge, the trick, is to notice them, to name them for the miracles that they are, and to allow those miracles to change us. Which is hard. In a world full of competing ideas, images, and values, a world that seems convinced that the way to be noticed is to shout the loudest, these single glorious things, profound as they are, can easily be overlooked.
This is why the church gives us Lent. Lent got a bad reputation at some point of being the season of somber music, wallowing in our sinfulness, and giving up all the things we like. But that’s really more reflective of the medieval church than it is Lent itself. Because the reason the church started practicing Lent was as a time of intense preparation for people who were preparing to join the faith through baptism on Easter. It was meant as a time for putting aside all the external distractions of the world to focus solely on getting ready to be reborn in the waters of baptism. And what is more glorious, more life-giving, more hopeful, than being about to enter into the family of God. We could think of Lent as like cleaning out a room in your house to make space for someone you really really love to move in. It’s work, it’s a bit tedious, and it means you have to go through all of the stuff that has cluttered up over the years and get rid of some of it, and that can be painful. But there’s also a sense of joy to the work, because you know at the end of it, this really great thing is going to happen.
The other gift of the season of Lent is that it teaches us that those times when “it’s impossible to think at first how this all will be possible,” what Kingsolver calls our “worst seasons,” are just that, are seasons. And seasons have an end. Lent’s somber purple, always, always, always, gives way to Easter. Never once, in the whole two-thousand year history of Christianity, or in the infinitely longer span of the presence of God, has darkness not eventually given way to light. As resurrection people, we confess that new life always follows death, Lent gives us a chance to practice that promise.
But before the gift of work that is Lent, Jesus gives us another gift. And that gift is this morning, the Sunday of the Transfiguration. “Six days later,” the Gospel reading for this morning tells us, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain.” Just in this opening sentence, you may have felt a tinge of familiarity. Peter, James, and John are among Jesus’ earliest disciples; they were present for some of his greatest miracles. And “a high mountain” is reminiscent of Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. Already, we get the sense something big is about to go down.
And sure enough, verse three: “And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses,” two huge heroes of the faith, “who were talking with Jesus.” And Peter, good old Peter, immediately was like, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Because, as verse seven said, he didn’t know what to say. I mean, what are you going to say when the person you’ve been traveling with is transfigured before you, and two legends from the past suddenly appear. Where else could you possibly go that would be better?
But as soon as Peter stopped talking, a cloud overshadowed them, a voice came from heaven, and “when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus. [And] as they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
The purpose of the Transfiguration, for Peter, James, and John, and also for us, was to give them a single glorious thing, so that they would know what to look for when the way got hard. Because from this mountain of revelation, Jesus and the disciples made their way to Jerusalem, and eventually to the cross. As people who know how the story turns out, we know to look for Jesus on the cross; we know that the cross is what glory looks like, is where love dwells. Bu the disciples, who were living the story, didn’t have that privilege. The transfiguration gave them a lens to look through, a hope to work towards, the promise that with them on this journey was God’s Son, the Beloved. For the disciples, the transfiguration was a foretaste of the coming feast, a glimpse of resurrection hope.
The other good news of this transfiguration story is that Jesus is on the move. As soon as Peter tried to stay in one place, a cloud overshadowed them and the story moved forward. What this reminds us is that God too is moving, in our lives, in our church, in our world. Sometimes it feels like things are moving too fast, but this story encourages us to view that as a good thing, because Jesus himself is moving, off the mountain, to the cross, to death, and on to resurrection. To be in motion, to be changing, however reluctant, places us in the good company of Peter, James, and John, now free to share what we have seen, since the Son of Man has already risen from the dead.
And so, let us go forward, dear sisters and brothers, into this new season. And as we go, let us be alert for the glorious things that are reflections of the transfiguration, foretastes of the resurrection, glimpses of the kingdom. Let preparation be your Lenten discipline. And whether you find that preparation in giving up chocolate, or taking up a new prayer practice, or calling your grandkid on the phone, I encourage you this season to find ways to practice joy, to prepare yourself for Easter.
Let me finish with a last quote from Barbara Kingsolver: “And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another—that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty.” That is the great mystery of our faith, that a voice is more powerful than a fist, that an infant king outshown the kings of Rome, that peace has more strength than violence, that God’s love for us is most clearly known not in power, but in weakness. God did not destroy death through might, God destroyed death by giving up might, by slipping God’s divinity into frail human flesh, walking among us, and even being killed, and in that seeming display of weakness is contained the infinite power of love, for in that seeming display of weakness, we find life. Amen.
Quotes from:
Kingsolver, Barbara. “High Tide in Tucson.” High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1995.
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