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“A lamp shining in a dark place.”
“I’ve been to the mountaintop,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said shortly
before his murder. From there, on the privileged heights, he saw the promised
land of great transformations—another way, another hope, another kingdom.
It was not the shadowy world of night’s clashing armies, but of the bright dawn
of justice and peace.
The mountain is the place of visions. There we find a lookout over distant realms.
The mountain manifests beatitudes, eternal covenants, solitary confrontation
with the most holy and high.
It was on the mountain that Jesus became transfigured before his apostles’ eyes,
his human and familiar face now dazzling as the sun, the ordinary clothes shimmering
in light. He was in conversation with the great ones, Moses and Elijah; and out
of clouds came the voice: “This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests.
Listen to him.”
Listen to him. Christ is a message sent to us from afar, the Second Letter of
Peter says, prophetic and reliable, a unique word from another world, not something
fabricated by human imagination or earthly construct. As the prophet Daniel dreamed,
the mountain of transfiguration became the throne of the promised one, who, before
the voice of heaven, would receive “dominion, glory and kingship. Nations
and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not be taken away; his kingship shall not be destroyed.”
On the mountain, our attention searches out the promise that shines over dark
places, the first streak of dawn, the rising morning star in our hearts. The
mountain is our Sinai, bearing our new Moses, our new law, which has the human
name of Jesus. It is our own Horeb, upon which walks the final prophet, so much
greater than Elijah.
Let us make no mistake about it. In these days, when voices advise us to entertain
other, more pliable gods and goddesses, we must decide to whom we will listen.
Who will win our attention and allegiance?
Will we be held in thrall by smoldering spirits of the earth and its murmurs?
Will we acquiesce to the lords of culture and those who manicure our surface
image? Will we obey the blind and uncaring laws of planetary mechanics? Will
we believe the pimps of ego who assure us we need listen to nothing other than
our impulse? Will we cling to cleverly concocted myth?
The readings for the eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time are warnings about the
illusions that beset us, the sounds of the sirens that lure us. The anxiety and
toil of Ecclesiastes, the idolatry and obsessions mentioned in Colossians, the
voracious greed portrayed in the gospel parable all clamor for our attention.
But the transfiguration scene reminds us that, as followers of Christ, a different
voice sounds in our hearts. It is the voice of the High and Holy One, spoken
from afar, but given human resonance. “This, this one is my beloved.”
Ours is a plain and crucial choice. On the mountain of transfiguration is the
holy ground of recommitment.
Who will be our God? Before what powers will we fall on our knees? If we go to
the mountain of the beloved and listen to him, he will call forth our slumbering
powers. “Get up. Do not be afraid.” And when we rise to our feet, looking
up and out, ready to descend the heights, may our eyes fall upon no one else
but only Jesus. |
