Daniel 7: 13 I gazed into the visions of the night,
And I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven,
one like a son of manThe Feast of the Transfiguration is a contribution of the eastern church to the church calendar. Its origin in local celebrations became widely spread within the Orthodox tradition so that it was a fixture in the liturgical year before the year 1000. In the West, it was not regarded as a Feast until 1457 when Calistus III ordered it observed as a commemoration of the great victory over the Turks at the Battle of Belgrade, 6 August 1456. Its position within the New Testament is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Luke and Mark) with an apparent allusion in 2 Peter 1:16-18 although this latter reference could equally apply to Jesus baptism.
Recently it has made quite a different appearance in the revised church calendar and now appears as part of the manifestation festivals that begin in January with The Story of the Magi, Jesus Baptism and finally His Transfiguration. It is, as it were, the third part of a minor trinity the basis of which is remarkably similar. It consists of an event which is immediately surrounded by a series of allusions which lift it from its earthly ground to a story of cosmic significance. We travel on a panoply of words and metaphors to a realm where the final place of Jesus in the heavens is made clear. Along the way, we are treated to a liberal borrowing of references, often directly from the Old Testament as in our text.. It is probably these wings of metaphor that led the medieval church to celebrate, particularly in sculpture, the figure of the cosmic Christ.
I would also note in passing (and it really deserves more than this ) that a similar experience is said to have happened to the Buddha and what appears to be of interest here is the remarkable similarity in the language used to describe the occasion. It is also noteworthy that transfiguration figures as a somewhat regular part of higher forms of spiritual awareness within the Buddhist tradition. The sharing of such experiences between traditions with such widely separated origins is obviously of real importance and it is to the latter years of Thomas Merton that we owe much of current awareness to these and other similarities between the spiritual lives of Buddhists and Christians.
But for this morning my interest will go in a related and equally fundamental direction. I would like for us to think of the Transfiguration in terms of the sense of space it produces as well as what it seems to leave out. In order to accomplish this exercise ,it requires us to consider at the same time the role of language as the means whereby we are able to share a reality which is clearly beyond that of our own space and time.
I begin with an observation that seems to be true in general, namely the extent to which experience of the kind portrayed in the Transfiguration or by Daniel in our text lead us to look up. This is no doubt but an extension of the sense that heaven is up there and obviously so is God. I think I am not too far off to suggest that this tendency may be one which we have shared with many religious traditions that are very difference from the Judeo-Christian. One of the results of our cultivating this stance is that although we share (in the sense of doing something very similar) with others a common experience, we are essentially unaware that it is shared.
Having suggested that humans were inveterate star-gazers doesn't seems to mean much today because what really dominates our awareness is what happens as the result of our looking AROUND. In the past the reality which is important (in the sense that it presents the boundaries to our thought) was the extent to which we accepted the limits presented by the horizon. In this way, it is clear that the world for most of human existence has been not the globe but the horizon. The fact that the cosmic vision was indeed a shared one that extended beyond the horizon could not be appreciated. This is where we have the advantage of being followers of Copernicus and Newton, Orville Wright and John Glen in recognizing that inhabitants of one segment of the globe are now hard pressed to maintain an exclusive version of the cosmic vision. "The heavens are telling the glory of God" in an myriad of languages and in understanding the role of language as the vehicle for our religious experience the Transfiguration may open for us a way to capture the possibility of shared dimensions in this crucial part of human existence.
If we begin with the notion that there is no such thing as religious language as such - that all the words we use about God and his revelation are first of all words which have a very specific meaning that is grounded in a human experience that can be shared - there are no words which originate as exclusive to God and then are sent into our experience. Then, religion is the act of transforming ordinary words into revealing extraordinary heights and depths. In this sense, I suppose it might be possible to say that our religious vocabulary and its resulting spiritual life is a vast metaphor or symbol, grounded in that unique human ability to make and use language as the means whereby we relate to the world around us, including each other.
Of course language families complicate the picture sometimes to the extent that they make shared visions more difficult to imagine. We can therefore easily conclude that in the absence of an ability to communicate we can believe that the reality which we comprehend through our language is an exclusive one. The only way to share it seems to require one culture to absorb another and thus eradicate one vision and replace it with another. Differences between words then is the result of one human culture having a wrong/mistaken view of reality. The history of religious "missionizing" is based on the mistaken notion that there is only one right word to convey the result of our gaze into the heavens
It is sobering and exciting at the same time to realize that human kind beyond our horizon has gazed into the heavens and seen
coming on the clouds of heaven
One like the son of man.What we seem to have shared so far is the temptation of the disciples to want to pitch our tents and preserve the moment frozen forever in the grips of canvas and wood. Fortunately for us, they heard another voice which allowed them to be carried off on a flight of words which firmly grounded as they are in ongoing life are the real source of our vision of God.
The Rev. Roger A. Balk, Ph.d.