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 called them to do. The three went up caterpillars; they came down butterflies. Metamorphosis.
But not everyone who encounters God comes back as a butterfly. Take 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. Three times!
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 committed to justice that ended with John the Baptizer. When Jesus came down, he followed the path that led to Jerusalem, to his execution in the hands of the Romans, and, eventually, to the Empty Tomb!
To believe in metamorphosis is to believe in God's power to change the world, to transform caterpillars into butterflies, and to, eventually, remold even Peter!
To believe in metamorphosis is to believe that goodness will 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!
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*art, "The Transfiguration," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).
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