We are a few short days from the start of Lent, the dust-and-ashes season of preparation before Holy Week, when we walk through the last days of Jesus' life. But before we get ahead of ourselves like Walmart selling Cadbury eggs in February, we pause, this Sunday, for one of the strangest days of the church year: Transfiguration Sunday.
In the story of the transfiguration, Jesus takes three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, up onto a mountaintop alone. And then something weird happens. The Gospel of Mark describes it this way: "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, talking with Jesus."
Peter responds clumsily, saying, ""Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." The writer of Mark seems to almost apologize for him: "He did not know what to say, for they were terrified." And then they are swallowed by a cloud and chastised by a booming voice--"This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"--before, in a blink, it is over.
We don't hear anything about what happened after that, before they descended the mountain. Did they stand around staring at each other? Did James and John rib Peter for his stammering offer to pitch some tents when Moses and Elijah made their time-traveling visitation? Did the wine and sweat stains reappear on Jesus' clothes; did the hems become dusty again, or did he make out with a free dry-cleaning? Who spoke first, and what on earth did he say?
The next thing we learn from the writer of the story is simply this: they descended the mountain.
Transfiguration is located at the end of the season of Epiphany, which makes sense. Jesus' blinding white clothes and altered appearance (Matthew's gospel tells us his face was also aglow) were their own kind of light bulb moment, another revelation of who Jesus was. And in case we were as daft as Peter--thank God for Peter--the booming voice spells it out. "This is my son. I love him. Listen."
Peter, James, and John know Jesus. They have traveled and talked and eaten with him for many months. They have shared bread, swapped stories, griped. They have learned how Jesus acts when he's tired or hungry, when he gets a cold, and when his mother shows up. They know his best gifts and graces and his most maddening habits. And he knows theirs. But on the mountain, he changes. He is transfigured. And at once, they can see something new about him, a different, powerful, also-true revelation of who he is.
Sometimes I think parenting is like the work of spiritual disciplines. Not that I should know: I completely suck at spiritual disciplines. I don't just mean I get too busy making wholesome breakfast smoothies and appliqued shirts for my children and occasionally forget to do my morning devotion. I mean I suck at them. I practically reject them outright. For instance, when my husband, who is a pastor (and a good one), invites the church into a week or month or season of spiritual discipline--a prayer practice, for instance--I pretty much immediately think, nope. Long ago, I tried really hard to be spiritually disciplined. I had this mistaken notion that, in response to or because of my practice, something should happen. I should feel something or hear something or know something or change somehow. I didn't. And even though I know now that I was mistaken, I'm still oddly hurt that nothing happened. Nursing this hurt, and then ignoring it, has made me a tiny bit bitter. And so I don't like to try spiritual disciplines. The suggestion makes me want to run from the room, and then eat dark chocolate, and then watch reality TV.
But the work of raising children, I've found, seems like a kind of spiritual discipline, one a hell of a lot harder than the ones I was practicing in college. Every day, I have to take care of my kids, whether I feel like it or not. Every day, I have to dress them and feed them (more than once?!) and hug them and sing to them and put them to bed. Occasionally, I have to bathe them. Always, I have to work at the gestures and vocal inflections and attentiveness that assure them they are loved. And still there are a million, zillion other tasks: nose-wiping, teeth-brushing, toe nail-clipping, hair-detangling, cup-refilling, booger-disposing, vomit-cleaning, antibiotic-dispensing, question-answering, toy-retrieving, pacifier-finding, and so many, many more. People who heartily remind parents to "love every minute" should hang out for five minutes in my favorite Facebook moms' group, where a bunch of wonderful, honest, loving moms routinely confess to each other that, as it turns out, we just realized, we don't actually like kids at all, especially our own.
I think the work of parenting--the often mind-numbing, eyeball gouging work that can somehow wrack me with worry and bore me to tears in a matter of minutes--is like a spiritual discipline because it is what we do, again and again, like it or not, to form us into who we hope to be. We pray or fast or receive communion or go to church or read the Bible (or so I've heard, ahem) because we hope those practices will shape us in life-giving ways. We keep on caring for our kids because it is a practice of love, because it actually, we hope, makes us more loving parents who can better love our children. The work of parenting is what forms us into people capable of parenting.
And then. Then, because we have done the work of the discipline, because we have worked every day--even if clumsily and fallibly--at loving, we might be gifted with transfiguration moments. No guarantees; absolutely no one-for-one payoff. But maybe, after being present through days and weeks and months, we will be blinded by new visions of our children, moments of glory and grace that teach us something new and dazzling about who they are. A moment later, it will be over. And we will have to descend and get back to work.
The other day, my daughter was talking to my mother. She was in a silly mood, excited to talk to her Grams, and all of a sudden, she was a comedian, dead clever in a way I didn't know she could be. This afternoon, my son was playing with his beloved cars, as usual. But in a moment, I looked over, and he was driving the tiniest car down the "road" made by our coffee table's design. He was silent and focused, perfectly attentive to the smallest details of his work. He was an artist, crafting his own tiny, fascinating world.
My daughter got off the phone and whined all the way until bedtime; my son soon pegged me in the head with a puzzle piece and then cried because throwing it hurt his finger. So back down the mountain we went.
But like the disciples who saw Jesus in a new, brilliant way, I too get to carry the moments of epiphany as we head back into the streets and villages, as we get back to the hard, everyday work of learning to love.
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| The Totally Weird Transfiguration |
In the story of the transfiguration, Jesus takes three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, up onto a mountaintop alone. And then something weird happens. The Gospel of Mark describes it this way: "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, talking with Jesus."
Peter responds clumsily, saying, ""Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." The writer of Mark seems to almost apologize for him: "He did not know what to say, for they were terrified." And then they are swallowed by a cloud and chastised by a booming voice--"This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"--before, in a blink, it is over.
We don't hear anything about what happened after that, before they descended the mountain. Did they stand around staring at each other? Did James and John rib Peter for his stammering offer to pitch some tents when Moses and Elijah made their time-traveling visitation? Did the wine and sweat stains reappear on Jesus' clothes; did the hems become dusty again, or did he make out with a free dry-cleaning? Who spoke first, and what on earth did he say?
The next thing we learn from the writer of the story is simply this: they descended the mountain.
Transfiguration is located at the end of the season of Epiphany, which makes sense. Jesus' blinding white clothes and altered appearance (Matthew's gospel tells us his face was also aglow) were their own kind of light bulb moment, another revelation of who Jesus was. And in case we were as daft as Peter--thank God for Peter--the booming voice spells it out. "This is my son. I love him. Listen."
Peter, James, and John know Jesus. They have traveled and talked and eaten with him for many months. They have shared bread, swapped stories, griped. They have learned how Jesus acts when he's tired or hungry, when he gets a cold, and when his mother shows up. They know his best gifts and graces and his most maddening habits. And he knows theirs. But on the mountain, he changes. He is transfigured. And at once, they can see something new about him, a different, powerful, also-true revelation of who he is.
Sometimes I think parenting is like the work of spiritual disciplines. Not that I should know: I completely suck at spiritual disciplines. I don't just mean I get too busy making wholesome breakfast smoothies and appliqued shirts for my children and occasionally forget to do my morning devotion. I mean I suck at them. I practically reject them outright. For instance, when my husband, who is a pastor (and a good one), invites the church into a week or month or season of spiritual discipline--a prayer practice, for instance--I pretty much immediately think, nope. Long ago, I tried really hard to be spiritually disciplined. I had this mistaken notion that, in response to or because of my practice, something should happen. I should feel something or hear something or know something or change somehow. I didn't. And even though I know now that I was mistaken, I'm still oddly hurt that nothing happened. Nursing this hurt, and then ignoring it, has made me a tiny bit bitter. And so I don't like to try spiritual disciplines. The suggestion makes me want to run from the room, and then eat dark chocolate, and then watch reality TV.
But the work of raising children, I've found, seems like a kind of spiritual discipline, one a hell of a lot harder than the ones I was practicing in college. Every day, I have to take care of my kids, whether I feel like it or not. Every day, I have to dress them and feed them (more than once?!) and hug them and sing to them and put them to bed. Occasionally, I have to bathe them. Always, I have to work at the gestures and vocal inflections and attentiveness that assure them they are loved. And still there are a million, zillion other tasks: nose-wiping, teeth-brushing, toe nail-clipping, hair-detangling, cup-refilling, booger-disposing, vomit-cleaning, antibiotic-dispensing, question-answering, toy-retrieving, pacifier-finding, and so many, many more. People who heartily remind parents to "love every minute" should hang out for five minutes in my favorite Facebook moms' group, where a bunch of wonderful, honest, loving moms routinely confess to each other that, as it turns out, we just realized, we don't actually like kids at all, especially our own.
I think the work of parenting--the often mind-numbing, eyeball gouging work that can somehow wrack me with worry and bore me to tears in a matter of minutes--is like a spiritual discipline because it is what we do, again and again, like it or not, to form us into who we hope to be. We pray or fast or receive communion or go to church or read the Bible (or so I've heard, ahem) because we hope those practices will shape us in life-giving ways. We keep on caring for our kids because it is a practice of love, because it actually, we hope, makes us more loving parents who can better love our children. The work of parenting is what forms us into people capable of parenting.
And then. Then, because we have done the work of the discipline, because we have worked every day--even if clumsily and fallibly--at loving, we might be gifted with transfiguration moments. No guarantees; absolutely no one-for-one payoff. But maybe, after being present through days and weeks and months, we will be blinded by new visions of our children, moments of glory and grace that teach us something new and dazzling about who they are. A moment later, it will be over. And we will have to descend and get back to work.
The other day, my daughter was talking to my mother. She was in a silly mood, excited to talk to her Grams, and all of a sudden, she was a comedian, dead clever in a way I didn't know she could be. This afternoon, my son was playing with his beloved cars, as usual. But in a moment, I looked over, and he was driving the tiniest car down the "road" made by our coffee table's design. He was silent and focused, perfectly attentive to the smallest details of his work. He was an artist, crafting his own tiny, fascinating world.
My daughter got off the phone and whined all the way until bedtime; my son soon pegged me in the head with a puzzle piece and then cried because throwing it hurt his finger. So back down the mountain we went.
But like the disciples who saw Jesus in a new, brilliant way, I too get to carry the moments of epiphany as we head back into the streets and villages, as we get back to the hard, everyday work of learning to love.
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