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.

Transfiguration. The original word, transliterated, is metamorphosis.

Not everyone who encounters God come back as butterflies. 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.

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!

Metamorphosis.

My friends, to believe in metamorphosis is to believe in God's power to raise Gaza up from the rubble, in God’s power to bring down empires, in God's power to transform caterpillars into butterflies. Yes, eventually even Peter. And, yes, even you and me.

To believe in metamorphosis 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!

*art, "Transfiguration" (2008) by Mary Jane Miller (taken from her book "Life in Christ 2021, Knowledge of God made visible in Jesus the Man"). Image from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.