Transfiguration Glitch
Today we encounter parallel stories of Moses and then Jesus having dramatic mountaintop interactions with God in all of their glory, and in doing so become totally transformed - or transfigured. The shapeshifting and literally uncontainable nature of God is well documented in our Holy Scriptures, which is always a nice truth to keep in your pocket for when you hear people preaching otherwise.
While we celebrate the feast day of the Transfiguration on August 6th, the story is told at this point in our liturgical calendar as the culmination of the season of Epiphany - this eight-week time that is focused on telling the stories of how Jesus is seen, known, recognized, and also importantly, NOT recognized. Epiphany is all about the light of the world moving out into the world and with its power, revealing both bright spots and shadows. And so it begins with the light of a single star, and ends with the full, unadulterated glory of God on full display; with Jesus centered as an indisputable part of that glory, fully human, and fully divine.
While I absolutely love this story, there’s also something about it that is just a little too much, a little over the top (no mountain pun intended.) But it’s weird to me that this story doesn’t always get the play time it seems to deserve - like maybe it’s just a little too hot to touch? A little too out there for modern sensibilities? It’s a difficult image to envision or comprehend.
One of my favorite icon writers, Kelly Latimore, has a version of the transfiguration that he painted in the traditional format: Jesus in the middle with Elijah and Moses on either side, and Peter and the disciples huddled down on the ground in front of them. Except when Kelly was uploading the graphic of the icon to his website, the image glitched. Remember in the olden days of internet (by that I mean the 90’s) when it took many minutes to download a photo, and it would download in pieces? Something like that happened with this icon, and so instead of a coherent picture, it turned into a whole bunch of little multicolored, scattered squares. Half of the colors have turned neon and it looks like a puzzle that was put back together the wrong way - a green eye over here, a purple sandal up there, chunks of halos all over the place. It’s really wild looking.
And Kelly decided to keep the icon like that, you can even buy a copy of it on his website. He recognized that the transfiguration was such an incomprehensible moment, too big of a download, that the best way it could be expressed was as this glitched image.
What a theological statement, right? Because there is something about the transfiguration that is just too much, a short circuit. Clearly it is for Peter: we like to tease him for his instincts, to take something so extraordinary and organize it for safekeeping in little tents and boxes so it’s contained. But what else can you do with that kind of power, when you get that close to it? We glitch out! And the fact that this particular story is given to us just three days before Ash Wednesday, and one week before the first Sunday of Lent - that’s not a coincidence. There’s something significant here about the connection and the contrast.
This year, I am wondering if Lent is a natural response to the overwhelming glitchiness of the transfiguration. It may be true that, like poor Peter today, our psyches and spirits are not quite evolved enough to comprehend or take on all that we bear witness to. We are living through a time where what we are exposed to and what is revealed to us, whether of God or not, is infinitely bigger than we have psychological or spiritual capacity for.
Every Sunday I want to get up here and list a long litany of everything happening in the world that is beyond belief, that is incomprehensibly large; just for solidarity’s sake if nothing else. And in this moment, it feels overwhelmingly not of God - war, storms, pestilence, fascism, corruption, phobia of anything that is other. I know that God is at work in all of this, even if it’s not obvious to me right now… but it’s also helpful to remember that when God does show up, it’s also beyond belief, it’s also frightening and too much. “A cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.” God’s love and creative power is fierce and bone-rattling; it is transformative.
So for me, there’s something here in the too-muchness of it all, of our stories and of our current reality. It’s too big, too much to comprehend, doesn’t make sense, and it can’t be contained in the necessary categories that we rely on for community, for survival. It’s no surprise that, like Peter, we glitch.
And so to be soaked in this story and then placed almost immediately into the middle of the desert, alone, is like a spiritual ice bath. And for the first time in a long time, I’m really looking forward to Lent. For the first time in a long time, I’m not feeling resistant to being dunked into wilderness, into spiritual solitude and a space to repent and turn inward towards God. I’m craving it.
This is not the same thing as checking out or ignoring what’s going on around us. We are, as disciples, required to remain vigilant in the face of evil. But we are also given the gift of this season that asks us to also go deep, go quiet, to go into the wilderness. A season that gives us a chance to process, to reconnect with God through prayer and loving service, and a time that relieves us of the illusion of control. Lent is not a time of inaction or paralysis, it's a time of deep and necessary preparation. As my wife said to me last night, “Jesus goes into the desert because he’s gonna do something.”
And so today is our day to take a big final soak in the glitter and glitchiness of God before we head out into the wilderness. Ineffable and excessive as it may be, the transfiguration is holy sustenance for what lies ahead. And let it be a beautiful edge that we tip over as we move into Lent, a time of deep attentiveness, courage, slow turning, and engaging in the underground preparation for resurrection.