The Transfiguration of the Lord
Daniel 7:9-10,13-14 | Psalm 96(97):1-2,5-6,9 | 2 Peter 1:16-19 | Matthew 17:1-9
Travel can be a stressful time, bringing out the worst in us.
I rediscovered this during my just-concluded two-week trip, a medical-business-pleasure jaunt with my oldest friend and another friend whom we’ve both known for years. We both appreciate this other friend for her project management abilities, but she’s a harridan in face-to-face interaction, and not one to use ten words when she could come up with 10,000.
This is not the first trip the three of us have taken together, but it’s the first one that both of us blew up at her. I’m usually the peacemaker between the other two, but this time I found myself getting increasingly irritated at what I thought was irrationality and unnecessary volubility hitting all-time highs.
I finally lost my cool when I asked her for directions to the medical centre that I was driving her to…and she responded with a torrent of words that left both of us thoroughly confused as to where she wanted us to drop her off. We were in the middle of fast-flowing traffic, so I YELLED at her to get to the point.
That startled my buddy, who later explained that she was particularly edgy this year because she was deathly concerned with her steadily-increasing weight, despite all other medical checkups finding her in better-than-normal health for her age.
Cancer was not far from her mind.
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This Sunday, we recall the Transfiguration of the Lord, the moment when His interior divinity emerged with unquestionable glory, confounding the apostles with him.
We too experience many moments of “transfiguration” in our lives, in which our inner selves make themselves known in unguarded moments, despite our best efforts to hide them from others:
making a mess when we eat, and blithely leaving the detritus behind for the busy cleaners to deal with…
or respect the “please clear your table” signs and bus our plates and bowls…
briefly looking up on the train to see a senior citizen standing before us, then quickly looking down to pretend we hadn’t noticed…
or give them our seat and spend the next three stops standing with nary a load on our backs…
having second thoughts about the pair of jeans we picked out 10 minutes ago, and dropping them off on the nearest available shelf—among the pots and pans in the household section…
or head back down a floor and return the neatly-folded clothes to the place we found them…
What do these revealing moments say about us, and what we profess to believe?
Lord, open our eyes to our own moments of transfiguration, and help us understand how they reflect our own values and beliefs despite our pretensions to righteousness. May our words and actions always reflect the radiance of Your own Transfiguration, and lead others in our own small way to You and to our heavenly Father. Amen.