Mount of the Metamorphosis

 Last Epiphany B      February 15, 2015

1 Kg 19:9-18      Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 Mark 9:2-9

 Lectionary Link

       How many of you remember one of the most exciting words which you ever learned in elementary school science class?  That word is metamorphosis.  And you remember the context.  It was the stages of the life cycle in the life of a butterfly or moth.  We collected the caterpillars and kept them under glass and fed them fresh grass and we waited and waited for them to die and become the lifeless cocoon and then came the exciting moment when the butterfly or moth broke out of the cocoon and got its wings free and dry to fly away.

  In this whole cycle of metamorphosis, which stage is the favorite stage?  Well, it's always nice to see the birth of a butterfly and see it in full flight, and even better if it is a beautiful Monarch.     What a delightful observation of a law of life and living.

   Metamorphosis; this is the Greek word for Transfiguration, and we usually just associate it with the shining face and the special effects light show on the Mount of the Transfiguration.  We read this account on the last Sunday before Lent begins to have a mountain top experience before we descend into the 40 days of Lent in the wilderness to be tempted by Satan and by all of the ungodly things of life.

  Just as we may favor the breaking out of the cocoon of the newly birthing butterfly, in the story of Jesus, we may prefer some events and stages in the life of Jesus more than others. We love Christmas because it is about baby Jesus.  We love the resurrection of Jesus because it is about Jesus being freed from the cocoon of death's tomb.  We are not sure about like Good Friday or the placing of Jesus in the tomb.  We are not sure about his forty days of temptation in the wilderness alone or his being hassled by lots of opponents or his being followed around by the 12 disciples who seem more like Snow White's seven dwarfs at times.  We like his miracles, his healings, his walking on the water and his story-telling but our preferences do not matter, we get the entire metamorphosis cycle of the life of Jesus.

  And the purpose of the writing of the Gospels was to present the process of spiritual metamorphosis in the lives of each disciple using the presentation of events in the life of Jesus to correspond to the metamorphosis which is happening within our lives as we experience the life of the risen Christ to be born and growing within us and taking us continuously through this never ending cycle of spiritual metamorphosis.

  I say this because the Gospels were written after the spiritual practices of the Pauline churches had been developed.  The success of the message of the spiritual practices of the church required a teaching method to make them available in a discipleship program which could be taught within various gathered communities.  We think of books as being public and open to all; the Gospels as they were first used were spiritual discipleship manuals to provide orientation and initiation into the Christian faith using the story re-presentation of events in the life of Christ.  The Gospel stories provided the subject matter onto which the people who were being initiated into the Christian faith communities could project their own lives and in their projection upon the characters in the Gospel stories one could facilitate with insights  the inner dynamics of spiritual progress for one's own life.

  The goal of the Gospel writings was the transformation of one’s life.  The Gospel writers proclaimed that if one had the risen Christ born within one's life, then one had become aware of a program of the grace of God which is available to all in this life, but it is a program of grace which needed to be tended to and developed in one's life so that one could progress in a program of excellence called Abundant Life.  For the Gospel writers there was ordinary life and within that ordinary life there was the ability to discover Abundant Life.

 We moderns, have taught ourselves to read the Gospels wrongly.  We like to treat them as eyewitness historical records of the life of Jesus but they were written long after Jesus was gone and they were written after spiritual practices had become successful in transforming the lives of many Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ.  When something is successful, it needs teaching methods to make it accessible and teachable to those who were drawn to the abundant life which was happening within those early Christian communities. 

  The Gospels were precisely the methods used to promote spiritual transformation for the candidates of the Christian faith.

  Metamorphosis is about a repeatable cycle and for the butterfly we names the stages; eggs, larvae, caterpillar, pupa/cocoon, butterfly.  The stages have the appearance of being the same in that all cocoon look similar,  even though each occurrence and manifestation of a stage is new and fresh and a first time experience.

  Metamorphosis as a spiritual principle means that our lives change as widening conical spiral and we return to familiar places but on a different level of understanding.

  In the event on the Mount of the Metamorphosis of Christ, we find a teaching about spiritual metamorphosis within the history of Salvation.  The Gospel writers were trying to show how the process of spiritual metamorphosis was a part of the tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus then was a further manifestation of this tradition of spiritual metamorphosis.  At creation God said, "Let there be light and there was light."  There was the external light of the sun and there was the internal light of the spirit which had been breathed into the life of humanity.  During night time or extended clouds we lose sight of the light; there are times when it has seemed that the inner light of the spirit has been lost or covered up or left undiscovered.  The man Moses went up on Mount Sinai and got so close to God with insights that his inner light surfaced to make his face shine when he brought the Law down to his people.  Moses had a death but he kind of had a missing body or unmarked grave; so the apocalyptic writers assumed he was a traveler between heaven and earth.  Elijah was the great representative of the recovery of the prophetic light to God's people.  He did mighty deeds; the light of God in him was a still soft voice which spoke to him.  Elijah did not die; he rode the famous chariot of fire into heaven and so he too was regarded by the apocalyptic writers to be a traveler between inner space and outer space.  And sure enough, these two space travelers met with Jesus on the mount and the face of Jesus shone as an indication that another stage had occurred in spiritual metamorphosis.  Another butterfly event in the process.  There is so much being taught in this event.  First, the past is not in conflict with the present, it is in fact the very support for the present to have occurred.  Jesus rested upon the shoulders of Moses and Elijah and they are happy to see him and affirm him.  Second, the event happened a mountain; the site where heaven meets earth; the site where inner space meets outer space; the site where the collective unconscious marks life by coming into events of word and language so that spiritual orientation is given.  Third, the disciples are clumsy and fidgety.  We don't always know what to do with the truly holy event in our lives; it can make us feel awkward because it is new territory.  It is so fascinating we want to stay in the exhilaration of the event.  We often only want to be in the butterfly phase of metamorphosis; we don't want to be the fuzzy caterpillars and the cocoons of spiritual process.  But we cannot stay anywhere, we must submit continuously to the process of spiritual metamorphosis.  Lastly, the event of the metamorphosis of Jesus is an event of clarity and insight.  It is a spiritual high.  Jesus is declared to be a very Unique Son of God, and we are privileged to witness this, even as we in those moments humbly accept our basic familial identity, as sons and daughters of God, unique in our own quirky ways but not as Unique as Jesus Christ.

  Let us accept today that we have been initiated into baptismal life of Jesus Christ.  The risen Christ has been born within us by the power of the Spirit and we are in this conical widening upward spiral of spiritual metamorphosis.  We are being changed from glory to glory.  We are ever being challenged to live up to and integrate the insights from our moments of profound awakening.  We are ever challenged to accept all of the terrain of life's journey....on the glorious mountain top today; tomorrow in the demon-possessed valley in being vulnerable to some of the worst events in life.   We are ever challenged to love butterflies, tiny little eggs, larvae, fuzzy or slimy caterpillars and silken and dead cocoons. And the Gospel challenges us to have faith to accept and integrate all of the phases and states of spiritual metamorphosis.

  You and I are on this continuous cycle of spiritual metamorphosis.  Hang on for the ride and let us remember today, that we have seen Jesus in such a shiny and unique way, that we can be sustained by this wonderful insight of the Light of Christ in our hearts.  Amen.