Just when things have calmed down, and we are pretty sure that Jesus is an itinerant first century rabbi/teacher who we can follow as a source of common wisdom, and we can really discount any miraculous supernatural stuff, we get to the middle of Mark’s gospel, and the transfiguration story.  Mark has three stories about the heavens being torn open.  The first happens at Jesus baptism, and the last at the crucifixion.  And right in the middle of the gospel – this story comes to us.

It’s called the transfiguration story, because the story includes a descriptive account of Jesus changing in appearance right before the very eyes of the disciples.  Okay – that could be an optical illusion – but nevertheless one with symbolic value that imbues the encounter with meaning and changes the disciples’ point of view about Jesus identity.  And that fits the definition of transfiguration:  a change in form or appearance; a metamorphosis.

The whole idea of Moses and Elijah showing up is a little harder to explain if we are to take the story literally.  But I don’t think that the gospel writers then, nor the spirit of God that continues to inform our understanding of scripture now, particularly invite us to linger long with historical factuality and metaphysical theory.  They are wholly inadequate categories for assessing the meaning of this story.

That the disciples are hard pressed to explain what happened, and stretch the relationship between language and reason to do so does not mean that something worth reporting did not happen.  Something did happen.

It would be easier for us modern people to deny this story – to file it away as a story telling device used to make a theological point.  But I think the gospel writers wanted to invite us into the Jesus story more deeply.  This story is here not to be examined, but to be experienced.  There is mystery, and a transcendent reality, and if we are acquainted with Jesus, we are going to catch glimpses of it from time to time – enough to finally let us live moment by moment with the awareness that though we cannot always see mystery, it is always there.

There is a divine presence, power and possibility that is more than we can possibly imagine.

Some people are able to see it, and reveal it, often through art.  Tonight when the Academy Awards are presented, it is considered likely that a movie called “Slumdog Millionaire” is going to be the big winner.  It has all the buzz – and it is an extraordinary movie.

It is based on a book, and a story that cleverly uses the common human quality of greed to expose something far more valuable than the stuff that greed covets.  Using the game “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” (doesn’t everybody?); the story reveals the difference between the value of money and the value of love.

The story is not about the game.  It’s about the life paths of two brothers; Jamal and Salim and their childhood friend Latika, who live in the garbage dump slums of Mumbai.

One brother follows the pathway of corruption and deceit – he stops being the victim only to become the victimizer.  The other brother follows a light…his love for his childhood friend, Latika.  One brother looks down from a high rise at how construction and graft and greed have replaced the slums with high rises, displacing the people who had made their lives there.  The other brother takes what he has learned from life in the slums and transforms it into a victory that lifts the hopes of millions of others.

The movie is visually compelling, and the story is incredible.  What I find most interesting is the filmmaker’s choice for the ending scene.  I’m not going to give too much away that would rob the film of its emotional impact if you haven’t seen it, but I do want to say this:  The brother who chooses love shows us a transformed world.  And it doesn’t have anything to do with urban renewal or accrual of the accoutrements of wealth.  In the final scene, those who are saved – and you’ll have to see who and how this occurs – are not secluded behind security gates in their mansion, enjoying the accoutrements of wealth.  Instead, the filmmaker chooses to place them at a busy train station, teeming with people, where eventually, everybody there joins them in joyfully dancing with abandon.

The heavens have been torn open – and a transcendent life is available to all of us.  But it’s not on the mountain top.  Jesus comes down from the mountain.  Insists on it.  Transformation does not happen at the top.  Transfiguration may happen there.  We might, in our mountaintop experiences, find insight and understanding and a kind of “aha” moment, that changes our life.  But we have to live it out down at the bottom.

You may have noted in recent weeks the death of a man named Millard Fuller.  He was a law school graduate who was a millionaire at age 29.  His wife Linda, fed up by his obsession with money left him.  As Time Magazine described it in their brief obituary for Fuller, “during their eventual reconciliation, the couple decided to sell their possessions, donate the proceeds and move to Koinonia Farm, a Christian commune in Americus, Georgia.”  Eventually, the Fullers founded Habitat for Humanity, and a few years ago, the Fuller center for housing.  Fuller once said, “There are sufficient resources in the world for the needs of everybody but not enough for the greed of even a significant minority.”

Transformed by a life changing crisis in his marriage, Millard Fuller came down off the mountain.

There is an archbishop in Uganda who has been transformed.  Uganda has suffered from civil war for 22 years.  The church – in all its various configurations-from catholic to Pentecostal- has filled the human services void there.  In Northern Uganda, children would walk every evening from their villages to the town of Gulu to avoid being kidnapped by Joseph Kony’s army and conscripted as child soldiers or forced into prostitution.  In Gulu, where the children find safety at night, they were called ”ants” since they were always underfoot.  Catholic Archbishop Odama organized Orthodox and Anglican bishops to walk with the children, and sleep on the street with them.  When concerns for his safety were expressed, he replied, “My security is linked with that of my people.”

Archbishop Odama came down off the mountain.  And he has been able to broker a fragile peace between the rebel army and the Ugandan government.

We are getting ready to enter into the season of Lent.  There is a temptation to go straight to Easter.  It’s more colorful.  It’s prettier.  It’s hopeful.  But it is all of those things only when the context for it is set by Good Friday.  Transfiguration in Mark’s gospel gives us a glimpse of where we are going.  But there is dark stuff to go through before we get there.  Just like in our lives.

Taking up the work that awaits at the bottom of the mountain is life changing.  There is life in the slums – that’s part of the message of “Slumdog Millionare.”  There is life in the streets with children in Uganda.  There is investment return on people who haven’t found a place on the economic ladder of success, and who want to help build their own homes.

For too long we have embraced a vision of success and achievement that has left us morally bankrupt – and now threatens to leave us economically bankrupt.

Lent invites us to give up things that we don’t really need, and take up the work of Jesus in the world.

No matter how difficult each of our lives are right now – and some of us are in difficult situations – no matter how difficult – there is something we can do for somebody else.

This is what we have got to see:  God so loves the world that the heavens are torn open, and divine love is willing to come down off the mountain and walk in solidarity with those of us who are ants at the bottom.  The moment or transcendent mystery comes when we lift up our eyes to see that the whole world is full of the glory of God.
In train stations.
Where simple homes are being built.
Among the children of the slums everywhere.

There are worse places to live than in the slums.
It doesn’t matter where we live if we are not able to see that what transforms the world is love in service of neighbor.

At transfiguration, the voice from heaven speaks to disciples everywhere and at all times:  “Listen to him.”

Lent is a time that invites us to listen to Jesus.  To walk alongside him.  And to get to know ourselves better.  What keeps us from living transformed lives?  What keeps us enslaved to our ego, our achievements, our possessions?

More importantly – what frees us?

Jesus wants to pull us out of the slums in which we live…and so he comes to live in them with us.  To transfigure the life we are in so that mystery isn’t that unusual at all.  This story is a transcendent glimpse into this truth:  There is a divine presence, power and possibility that is more than we can possibly imagine.

When Elisha was about to receive Eliljah’s mantle – he asked for a double portion of Elijah’s gifts.  Not to be greedy, but to be equipped for the difficulties he would face as a prophet of God’s justice.

What’s stopping you, me, us, from coming down from the mountain and asking for a double portion of possibility.  What is it that God has for you to do, for me to do, for us to do, down here at the bottom of the mountain?