Living in the Moment

Matthew 17:1-8

Mardi Gras Service

February 23, 2020

William G. Carter

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

I heard the story that a grown woman tells. When she was a teenager, her aunt took her to hear the great jazzman Louis Armstrong. He and his band were playing in an auditorium in a nearby town. The teenager didn’t know much about Louis or his music, so the whole evening was a revelation to her. As the music filled the hall, the crowd began to sway. The air was charged with energy. The crowd cheered and the band dug in even harder.

She remembers two things about the evening. First, there was a stack of folded handkerchiefs on top of the piano. As Armstrong blew his trumpet, his brow began to glisten. Drops of hard-earned perspiration were visible. Every so often, Pops would take a handkerchief, mop his scalp, and drop it on the floor of the stage. He would work up another sweat, wipe his brow again, and drop the handkerchief on the floor.

And now I wonder, what would that DNA be worth?

The second thing she remembers is the emotional consensus in the room. Everybody was feeling good, really good. Endorphins were high. Excitement was palpable. If joy had a taste, you could almost taste it in the air. By her description, everybody in that auditorium was thoroughly, completely alive.

So that’s how my mother describes the first time she heard Louis Armstrong jazz up a room. She never forgot the moment, and seventy years later, she tells the story like it happened last night.

It’s probably my pastoral inclination, but it sounds to me like a spiritual experience. Certainly her own spirits were lifted, if that’s one of the benefits of such an experience. But it was far more than an emotional moment. It was physical, too: one of her ankles was sore from tapping her foot, which she had done unconsciously throughout the concert.

It was also a communal moment, one of those rare experiences where people are brought together. Strangers were smiling at one another. Differences were transcended. No matter where they scattered after the conclusion of the show, they held about an hour and a half of music in common.

What’s more, the exhilaration in the air wasn’t merely happiness. The band played some sad songs, too. They lamented in the musical language of the blues. The room in that northwestern Pennsylvania town was filled with white folks, yet some wiped away a tear when Louis sang one of his signature songs, “My only sin is the color of my skin. What did I do, to be so black and blue?”

No, it was not a happy song. Yet it joined with all the other tunes to create an experience of being met, of facilitating understanding. It was as if somebody knew who was in the room and met them as they were. That, too, was part of the spiritual experience. It’s what she meant when she said everybody there was thoroughly, completely alive.

The second-century bishop Irenaeus wrote a famous line that’s roughly translated like this: “The glory of God is the person who is completely alive.” That has become one of my favorite descriptions of the spiritual life. My mother’s experience is that God’s glory can find somebody in a concert hall. Music can be released as incense in a room, and everybody has the potential to be transformed. If somebody in the audience arrived bearing a burden, these difficulties can be dropped to the floor like Armstrong’s handkerchiefs. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t real, but it does suggest there is more to life than pain and suffering. And in the moment, you are completely alive.

So one day, Peter, James, and John climbed a mountain with Jesus. When they ascended and stood closer to heaven, suddenly something happened. Jesus began to shine as bright as the sun. Matthew and the other Gospel writers don’t really have the words to describe it. Quite possibly, one of them made up a word – “transfigure” – to describe what they experienced. Jesus changed, or he was revealed for who he truly is, or he was transformed somehow. It’s hard to say, especially since none of us were there to see it.

What we do know is that even though Jesus changed, his three friends could still recognize him. In the thick of his transfiguration, he was suddenly joined by the two holiest men in Israel’s memory – Moses the lawgiver, Elijah the prophet – and they can recognize him, too. Moses and Elijah appear and converse with Jesus, as if they were there all along. The Law and the Prophets are in conversation with Jesus.

Peter doesn’t know what to say. He stammers out something about enshrining the holy moment. But then God engulfs the mountain top in a cloud, quotes a psalm about the royal Son, and declares in an earth-making Voice, “Listen to him!” It drove those fishermen to their knees. And then Jesus came and touched them, and said “Don’t be afraid,” and it was over.

These moments come. Real moments. They come on mountain tops or shabby music halls. They might even come in a church. We don’t have the words to describe them. We can only point. In the words of one poet,

   . . . Each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. .” (T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”)

Or to translate: we don’t know what to say, but it’s real.

It was Madeleine L'Engle, the great author and holy Christian, who points us to the Transfiguration of Jesus and says it is a moment that we best approach through the creative arts. By this, she means poetry, paintings, music, drama, and storytelling, among other things. “As a child,” she said, “it did not seem strange to me that Jesus was able to talk face to face with Moses and Elijah, the centuries between them making no difference.” In the depths of imagination, it all fits. But by the time she grew up, the world had instructed her to parcel out life in different compartments: true and false, past and present, sacred and secular.

So: what if God comes to break down those barriers? What if eternity smashes all the clocks so that past and future are in this moment? What if God finds us in the places we would never expect God to make an appearance – like the mountain tops, the shabby music halls, even the churches? What if holiness just happened here, in a moment beyond words? It could be frightening.

So Madeleine writes: “We are afraid of the Transfiguration for much the same reason that people are afraid that theater is a "lie," that a story isn't "true," that art is somehow immoral, carnal, and not spiritual . . . We are not taught much about the wilder aspects of Christianity. But these are what artists have wrestled with throughout the years.”[1]

When these moments come, there are too all-too-human tendencies. The first is the attempt to explain them, as a way of managing them, or controlling them, or reducing them, or dismissing them. How many times has a brilliant sunset spoken to us and we shrug it off? Or we are given a glimpse of great glory and we try without success to capture it on our cameras or phones?

A second impulse is to try and capture the moment, which it sounds like Simon Peter wanted to do. “Lord,” he said, “let me build three monuments to this moment.” He was going to try that, until the dark cloud rolled in, spoke in holy thunder, and interrupted what he thought he could do.

We never quite capture the moments. I mean, there I was, at the edge of the Grand Canyon some years ago, and I tried to snap a picture of it. It turned out a lot smaller than it is. Or how excited to discover that a great concert that I had attended was recorded? And when I listened again, it didn’t have the same impact. Or to hear a wonderful speaker, and find a recording or transcript of what she said? Notoriously, it’s never the same. These are unmanageable spiritual moments, and they slip away, as all incense slips away.

But before we kick around old Simon Peter, let’s affirm that he gets it half-right. When he finds his voice, remember the first thing he says? “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” What a tremendous affirmation, in and of itself. Just stay with this. Don’t move on. Pause and savor. Let that be the blessing.

Earlier this week, my friend Kent Groff and I were talking about these matters, so he sent me a poem that he composed, called “There and Here.” It’s an affirmation of Simon Peter’s words. Here it is:

You can't get there from here.

Only if you stay with each here

and discover a way to embrace its fear

can you listen for the seed of hope

within the horror or the terror.

You can't get here from there.

By dwelling on a future place,

an outgrown year, you fail to be aware

in this space, this here, and

you will miss the seed of joy

within the anger or the languor.

You will find that living 

into the present--
the question this day, 

the struggle this moment,

you will inch your way

along into some amazing answer-

then serendipitously, miraculously,

you will discover that you are there.

But you will not see it along the way,

and even in arriving at your destiny

you will not find yourself saying,

"Now I am there"--but

only what you have been

practicing each day:

It is good to be here.

So the illuminating moment comes and then it disperses. That’s how such moments are. Yet even if they don’t linger, we linger. And quite possibly, God has changed us and brought us a good bit more alive. We can hope for that. We can pray for that.

And while we hope and pray, let me just say one more thing that I never want to take for granted: it is good to be here…with you…in the hidden presence of Jesus our Lord.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.