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DEGREES OF DAZZLE (Mark 9:2-9)
SIX DAYS LATER, JESUS TOOK WITH HIM PETER AND JAMES AND JOHN, AND LED THEM UP A HIGH MOUNTAIN APART, BY THEMSELVES. 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; WHO WERE TALKING WITH JESUS. THEN PETER SAID TO JESUS, 'RABBI, IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE; LET US MAKE THREE HUTS FOR US TO BE HERE; LET US MAKE THREE DWELLINGS, ONE FORYOU, ONE FOR MOSES, AND ONE FOR ELIJAH.' THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO SAY, FOR THEY WERE TERRIFIED. THEN A CLOUD OVERSHADOWED THEM, AND FROM THE CLOUD THERE CAME A VOICE 'THIS IS MY SON; THE BELOVED; LISTEN TO HIM!' SUDDENLY WHEN THEY LOOKED AROUND, THEY SAW NO ONE WITH THEM ANY MORE, BUT ONLY JESUS. 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.
When were you last dazzled?
For me it was on my just concluded trip which included a visit to Luang Prabang in northern Laos. There I was dazzled at the temple of Wat Zieng Thong which is located in the heart of the city on a slight hill where the Mekong and Khan rivers. This wat, which was built in l560, honors Buddha and there are many beautiful, golden statues of the Buddha within it. But what dazzled me were the glass mosaics which decorate the interior of the main temple and the outer walls of two smaller adjoining buildings.
I have seen similar artistic decoration only in some palaces in India where they were always interior and thus experienced only in the gloom of darkened space. But at Luang Prabang the dazzle is extreme because the glass mosaics outdoors reflect the sunlight and the brilliance is magnified so much that the glitter of light on glass hurt my eyes.
When is the last time you were so dazzled that your eyes hurt and you had to avert your gaze, looking away from that which dazzled you?
The experience of being dazzled to this extent occurs now and then in the bible and there is a special word for it: theophany, meaning the light which breaks upon us when we are in the presence of the divine. Today's Old Testament and Gospel lessons present two of the great theophanies of the bible - the departure of Elijah from this life upon a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire utterly dazzled his disciple, Elisha; and Jesus transfigured in a whiteness beyond human comprehension. These are WOW experiences. They are dazzling. They are analogous to the experience, not recommended, of looking at the sun with the naked eye.
And, understandably, the onlooker can't take it for long! Elijah's disciple Elisha was moved to grasp his own clothes and tear them from himself. When is the last time you were so dazzled that you tore your clothes from your body?
And we are informed told the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration were terrified. When is the last time you were so dazzled that you were terrified?
Well, are seldom dazzled to any extreme degree. We often say we are have been dazzled, but in truth we are simply being taken in by worldly glitter. Glitter abounds everywhere in mundane culture. The fashion runway is often described as dazzling when it really is merely glitter on parade. A film star receives the highest accolade when called dazzling but he or she is really only made up and made over to look glamorous. Pop culture glows with glitter.
Today I don't want us to dwell on glitter and glamour. Let's talk degrees of divine dazzle. What we experience when we get a glance at God.
This raises in my mind these issues:
First, do we really want to be dazzled by God? I would suggest most of our religious experience leads us into quieter channels and away from dazzle. When I returned Friday, Drake Pike had forwarded to my e-mail an article from the WSJ of February l8 in which our church is mentioned and Colin Tan, and Anson Wang, and myself are quoted on religious practice in Hong Kong? How many of you saw the article? It's posted in the elevator.
According to Joanne Lee-Young, who wrote this feature article, international congregations like our own are growing in Hong Kong because folks are seeking "words of wisdom (ranging) from business magnates to discussions about the role of technology in our lives" and "something more creative, more 2lst century, something that would make worship enjoyable" and "a place to achieve some balance and perspective" where the pace of work "alarmingly fast" and "disorienting."
I agree that all of these are real and authentic motives for getting involved with religion but I don't find any hint of dazzle among the reasons given for more involvement in faith. Perhaps there's just a hint that we might be seeking some degree of spiritual dazzle in the closing quotation which comes from me: "People are looking to experience religion not just by hearing it, but through the other five senses too."
I admit that I had neither this sermon nor the concept of divine dazzle in mind when I gave that quote, but in hindsight I can now interpret it to mean that most of us are looking to be shaken up a bit in our spirituality, though I still doubt that we want genuine dazzle.
The reason is because divine dazzle involves this contradiction: the experience of God involves some degree of suffering and suffering is far removed from the effects of glamour and feeling good that we normally associate with brilliant personalities and experiences. Just before today's reading which opens chapter 9 of Mark's Gospel we have at the end of chapter 8 Jesus telling the leading disciples that he will suffer, be betrayed and die on a cross. He includes a promise that he will be raised 3 days later, but I believe that addendum was lost on them because the disciples immediately argue with Jesus. Suffer! How can the Messiah suffer? God's chosen be excluded! What are you talking about, Jesus!
The linking of suffering with divine dazzle understandably confuses and disorients the disciples. It is one of the paradoxes of the Christian experience that the higher the degree of divine dazzle experienced, the higher the degree of suffering to be expected. Jesus is trying to wise up his followers in their expectations when he preps them just before the dazzle of the transfiguration with some basic talk about his coming suffering.
The writer Mark continues: "six days later" and we have today's story of the transfiguration. The story continues and the same disciples experience their Jesus in a moment of fantastic glory. Which turns out to be much more than they can handle at the time. The transfiguration dazzle terrified them. This is far from giving them the balance and perspective that the WSJ inform us we seek in religious experience; rather, it throws them completely off balance and they start to do some silly things like suggesting to Jesus that they build three huts to commemorate their dazzling experience of having seen him with Moses and Elijah.
In our other theophany the younger prophet Elijah gives us one of the classic responses to a dazzling experience of God; it is under statement through hyper-statement. Elisha cries out: "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!"
This cry is a wondrous exclamation calling to mind the totality of the Hebrew religious experience, and yet it hardly begins to express what I believe was Elisha's experience. It's hard for human articulation to express a theophany. Divine dazzle usually leaves us speechless. Elisha properly places his experience in the history of Hebrew spiritual experience: "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But there is the suggestion also of total disorientation and incomprehension of the divine in the same cry: "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" In its ambiguity and intensity Elisha's cry calls to mind another cry, that one from the cross: "Father, father! Why have you left me!"
Do we truly want to be dazzled by God when it must involve disorientation of who we are, what we are after, what we want to hold onto? As Jesus' own story shows, being touched by the divine must involve some degree of suffering. And the more fully one is touched by the glory of God, the more intense, as in the case of Jesus, is the suffering.
Another reason we may decide we want to eschew all interest in divine dazzle and settle for a religion which inclines toward the more quiet, reflective, and normal range of spiritual experience is because when God dazzles us he expect a commensurate response: much more than averting our eyes; dazzle demands obedience.
Moses is dazzled on Mount Sinai; even Moses, the holiest of humans, can not stand to look directly at the burning bush from which the divine speaks, but subsequently Moses is given the commandments and obedience is demanded. He is ordered down the mountain to be the moral guide of his people.
Elisha tears his clothes because he is overcome with the dazzling apparition of his mentor disappearing in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire, but thereafter he is charged to be the moral conscience to disobedient Israel.
Immediately after Jesus' transfiguration, the divine voice orders the disciples to "listen to him!" Obey Jesus is the expected response. Dazzle leads to obedience which connection distinguishes spiritual dazzle from worldly glitter whose end product makes no personal demands upon us but rather puffs us up with the conviction that we are better and blessed people because we have bathed for a moment in the presence of a glamorous and famous personality or participated in an emotional and reassuring mass experience. Faith without response, worship without obedience, are mild forms of religious experience which is why they are very popular. They are, however, not biblical and they may lead to prostituted spirituality.
Do you really want to be called to obedience?
There is this final reflection upon these theophanies: after all the dazzle which sets us apart from the divine there is in Christian dazzle the assurance of intimacy. On the occasion of another dazzling event, Jesus' own ascension, he promised: "And, look here, I am with you always, even until the end of the earth."
After the transfiguration Jesus leads the disciples down into the valleys and villages where together they spend many weeks and months in teaching, healing, living together. The one who dazzled them on the mountain continued accessible to them in daily relationship. Paul expresses beautifully this aspect of Christian dazzle in today's reading: FOR IT IS THE GOD WHO SAID, 'LET LIGHT SHINE OUT OF DARKNESS,' WHO HAS SHONE IN OUR HEARTS TO GIVE THE LIGHT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.
When we ourselves transcend those rare moments of dazzling appearances and reassurances of God with us, and really believe that Jesus is the One of God, really the Son of God, the inner light of faith switches on and we begin to experience in a more relaxed and continuing way that Jesus is still with us, available to us. The dazzle leads naturally to reassurance. He may shine like the sun and he is inner light friend who leads us daily. If we connect with the divine voice telling us "He is my beloved Son, listen to Him""we have a daily friend in Jesus.
Every communion is a little theophany: not a brilliant and dazzling manifestation of God with us like the disciples experienced at the transfiguration but an accessible and readily available fleshing out of Jesus' promise that he will always be with his own. In communion we have the post transfiguration recognition of the disciples in Mark 9:7: THEY SAW NO ONE WITH THEM ANYMORE BUT ONLY JESUS.
It's only Jesus, friends, so come to communion.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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