Years ago, I talked to an elderly Irish woman who told me how she had survived the Great Depression. She had migrated to Portland, Oregon when she was twenty-something and single. She lived in a small damp room in the basement of an old house, and worked two jobs--one cleaning rooms in the local hospital, the other as a waitress on the evening shift at a local cafe. Long days on her feet doing menial work for little pay. A bleak time in her life.
Here’s how she survived. Each week she set aside a few cents from her paycheck for an annual matinee at the cinema. Sometimes she would go by herself, other times with a friend.
When she had finally saved enough, and the special day arrived, she would take her beautiful old long coat out of storage, let it hang out in the fresh air to get rid of the mothball smell. She would take her best shoes out of the box and polish them. She would iron her best dress. She would put on her makeup, take forever getting dressed. Then she would reach the top shelf of her closet and take down the large box that held her favorite hat. She would put the hat on, adjusting it just right with one of those long hat pins with a pearl knob on the end. Then she would put on her long white gloves and her long coat and head out the door and onto the trolley to the theater--one, I imagine, much like our beloved Castro Theater.
When she arrived and paid for her ticket, a handsome man in a long green coat opened the big brass door for her and she stepped into another world, onto the thick red carpet of the theater lobby. She stopped at the concession stand for a small popcorn with extra butter, then entered the magnificent auditorium with all its gold and statues and paintings of ancient Greece. She found her way to her seat, upholstered in soft, rich velvet.
Soon a hush fell over the crowd and the Mighty Wurlitzer emerged, playing songs like “Begin the Beguine”, and ”Over the Rainbow’’ and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”.
The lights would dim, the curtain would rise, and the movie would begin--perhaps a comedy or a romance, perhaps with Clark Gable or Mae West, Mickey Rooney or Joan Crawford. She would sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, sometimes be startled, raising her hand to her lips.
Then the lights would come back on and the curtain come down; the show was over. She’d get up from her seat and head home, put her long coat back into storage, her gloves back in the drawer, her hat back on the closet shelf, her best shoes back in the box. She would put on her waitress uniform, tie her apron around her waist, put on her jacket and head to the cafe for the evening shift.
Back to normal. But not really. Because, as she explained, for weeks after that day at the matinee, she saw the world differently. A truth that had escaped her in the humdrum of everyday life had once again become vivid--that the world is full of so much music, laughter, romance, and beauty. And she also saw some truths about herself, truths she had forgotten--that she was not simply a drab working girl from a poor family, but someone truly beautiful, elegant, classy.
It was a transformative experience. She and her world had been transfigured.
Welcome to Transfiguration Sunday which is about a matinee of a special kind, and so much more.
This gospel story was written when the early church was facing persecution from the Roman Empire under Nero. It was written to prepare the early disciples for a price they would likely have to pay as followers of Jesus.
Prior to this point in the story, the disciples have been getting the message that Jesus, far from being the glorious, victorious, rock star messiah they had expected, would be executed on a cross as a criminal, and that following him would mean taking up crosses of their own, losing their own lives to truly find them.
It was sounding pretty bleak. They were bummed.
Time for a Transfiguration moment. It’s a different kind of space the Teacher leads them into--not a theater, but a high mountaintop where Jesus enters a loving communion with God.
The imagery of this story is mystical and poetic and spectacular. It leaves the disciples dazzled and confused. Peter doesn’t even know what to say.
Jesus’ inner communion with God radiates a white light from his inner core outward, through his mind and body, and his clothes become dazzling white. The white light at his center transfigures his entire being.
And there are more spectacular things: Moses and Elijah appear, a cloud descends. The sense of mystery and transcendence deepens. They are as close as humans get to the divine and still live. A voice from the cloud reveals to them “This is my Son, my Beloved.”
This moment is about an overpowering love, a love at the very center of the universe. It reawakens them to what their own journey has been about. It gives them new eyes to see what otherwise might have seemed humdrum at best, bleak and hopeless at worst.
Did they know the power and beauty of the journey they had been on with Jesus? Do we?
For example, do we know the power and beauty of what we do here each week at this table? We call it Holy Communion, and this gift of Jesus on the night before he died has powerfully transformed and sustained our spiritual ancestors for millennia--from Mary Magdalene to Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King, from Julian of Norwich to Desmond Tutu. Do we know what we have here in this meal?
This is our mountaintop, our moment of privileged Holy Communion with God.
We say that here bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and that is powerful stuff. But even more powerful and miraculous is the transfiguration meant to take place inside each of our hearts.
Because buried inside each of us lies a power and a beauty, a love, a deep faith given to us by the One who made us. And like the young Irish woman I mentioned, in the humdrum everyday-ness of our lives, we can lose touch with that power and beauty and love. But gathered with each other at this table, in this Holy Communion, we reconnect with it, and we remember who God made us to be.
And as with Jesus on that mountaintop, so also with us. Our own inner communion with God is meant to radiate outward, transforming our minds and bodies, radiating out into the world--into caring for our kids and our aging loved ones, working for justice, stopping the violence in our neighborhood and in our world, resisting the racism and the forces that crush peoples spirits and make them lose hope, creating beautiful music and art. This Holy Communion, when we reconnect with that power and beauty and love that God has placed inside us, is our moment of transfiguration.
The poet Annie Dillard chides us churchgoers. She writes, ”Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches,” she continues, “are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”
If we knew what we are up to by telling the dangerous story of Jesus and gathering at this table for Holy Communion week after week, “...we should all,” as Dillard writes, “be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”
So, welcome once again to this table where you do what you have probably done so many times before, what Jesus’ followers have always done--gathering in all our rich complexity and wildness--with rich and poor; black, brown, yellow, red, and white; gay and straight; cisgender and trans; male and female; old and young--for Holy Communion, remembering the amazing creature you truly are, reconnecting with the powerful truth the Creator has placed at the very center of your heart, letting it shine into a sometimes dark and joyless world.
It is the moment of your very own Transfiguration. Welcome to this table.
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