Mt 17:1-9
Gen 12:1-4a 2
Tim 1:8b-10
focus: Our life is a process of transformation.
function: Holy Scripture and the memories of “our Tabor experiences” can help us.
The wood carvings made by the Makonde people in Tanzania, East Africa, continue to be an attraction for our visitors and guests at St. Benedict Centerand, across the road, at the monastery. Some draw more attention nowin our new displays. Creating art out of wood is an essential element of the Makonde people’s traditional culture. Most often they work with the black ebony. It’s amazing how these artists are able to handle this very hard kind of wood with their primitive tools, with knives, and perhaps a ripping chisel. Usually the carver looks at a block of wood; and in his imagination he sees in the wood the motif he wants to carve. Then he starts to shape the material; it can take months or even years to complete the work of art.
This process of transformation, which happens with ebony under the skilled hands of the Makonde carvers, is an image of the transformation process that takes place in our own lives.
Today’s gospel is the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. Jesus takes three of the apostles with him. He leads them up a high mountain and they have an unforgettable experience. In Holy Scripture, mountains are places of encounter with God and of God’s revelation. The disciples view Jesus transfigured into Divine light. They see him together with the greatest personages of God’s people in the Old Testament: with Moses who was the lawgiver; he was supremely the one who brought God’s law to the people. And Elijah appears who was considered Israel’s eminent prophet. In him the voice of God spoke to the people with unique directness.
It’s interesting to pay attention to the details in the Evangelist Matthew’s version of the story. In Matthew, the heavenly voice from the cloud says: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” This is a combination of three quotes from the Old Testament. Jesus is God’s Son. He is the one who speaks in Psalm 2: “The LORD said to me: You are my son!”
Jesus is the successor of Moses. He brings the Law of Mount Sinai to fulfillment: “A prophet like me,” Moses says in the book of Deuteronomy, “will the Lord, your God, raise up for you … to him you shall listen” (Dtn 18:15).
And in Jesus the prophecy about the Suffering Servant of God comes true about whom we read in the book of Isaiah, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am well pleased” (Is 42:1). Thus, into this one sentence, the evangelist wove three quotes, which represent the whole Old Testament: the Law (Deuteronomy), the prophets (Isaiah), and the Writings (the Psalms). Jesus is the fulfillment the Old Covenant in its totality!
In all three gospels, which report the event of the transfiguration, this story marks a turning point: Jesus starts to announce his upcoming suffering. The “vision” that Peter, James and John see on Mt. Tabor prepares and strengthens the disciples for the hard reality of Jesus’ suffering and death.
We, too, are Jesus’ followers. “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God,” St. Paul writes to Timothy; his word is spoken also to us.
Dear sisters and brothers, our life is a process of transformation. In the midst of the processes in which God works on us and forms us a bit similar to the way a Makonde artist carves a wooden block into a beautiful piece of art, as we experience this being formed and transformed, which sometimes is painful, today’s gospel tells us that there are two things that can help us:
One help is the word of Holy Scripture, which is fulfilled in Jesus’ teaching and in his person and which is available to us at all times, in good times and in difficult ones. When the carving and the forming is happening with us, it’s especially important to listen to God’s Word, which first and foremost wants to tell us not what we ought to do, but rather that God is Love and that we, like Jesus, are God’s beloved sons and daughters.
Another help for us are our own smaller and greater “Tabor experiences,”our “God moments!” When and where did we see God’s grace at work in our lives? It’s good to look back time and again and to recall people through whom God guided us and moments when we understood important things more deeply, when we got glimpses of God’s glory, of the eternal behind the transitory.
Perhaps we can agree with a man named Fra Giovanni who wrote in 1513, “The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, there is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see. And to see, we only have to look. I beseech you to look.” Amen.