METAMORPHOSIS

We love to call this Sunday’s story as the Transfiguration.  It is better called the Metamorphosis.

Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all experience mountain-top encounters with God. All three went through very trying and challenging times in their lives and their encounter with God enabled them to complete the tasks that God has called them to do. The three went up caterpillars, they came down butterflies.

Metamorphosis.

But not everyone who encounters God come back as butterflies. Like Peter. In the mountain Peter experienced something so special, so unique that we expected him to come out as a butterfly. He does not. He opposes Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. He eventually denies Jesus.

Everyone who encounters God in God’s mountain needs to come down. When Moses came down he led in the birthing of a people whose love for Yahweh was expressed in love for neighbor, especially the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers. When Elijah came down he continued the struggle against Israel’s oppressive kings and began a prophetic tradition that ended with John the Baptizer. When Jesus came down he followed the path that led to Jerusalem, to the cross, and, eventually, to the empty tomb!

Moses is alive. Elijah is alive. At the end of Mark, the young man who proclaims the resurrection tells the women to tell the disciples (the Ten) and Peter to meet Jesus in Galilee. Jesus is Risen! For everyone who offers one’s life for others, God will raise ten. For every ten, God will raise one hundred. For every one hundred…

To believe in the resurrection is to believe in metamorphosis; in God’s power to transform caterpillars into butterflies. Yes, even Peter.

To believe in the resurrection is to believe that goodness will always triumph over evil; that hope is stronger than despair; that faith conquers fear; that love is always greater than indifference; and that life will always, always, conquer death.