by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

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Readings

Matthew 17:1-9

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

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The ancient Tao Te Ching states, “The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao, that is what gives her her radiance.” We see an important example of one who becomes one with the Tao, the uncreated life force that gives rise to everything, in Christ – who not only says as much throughout the gospel, “I and the Father are one,” but who also literally shines like the sun when his inner self is revealed. Further, we as living beings are also invited through many traditions to become a shining one at one with the Tao, one with the Master, the Buddha, with the Christ who is one with the Father. But we might ask, “The Tao is dark and unfathomable, how can it make her radiant? Because she lets it.”

We might feel a bit let down by this, one of the Tao Te Ching’s explanations as to how we become one with Divinity, the Tao, God, but the more we reflect on these words I think the clearer and brighter they become (if we let them). Key here, is something that Christ often uplifts and that is also quoted from the Tao Te Ching above – leaning into the unfathomable nature of God and giving up our own will for Her will.

“Dark and unfathomable” are important words here, because often we think we know exactly what God wants: our own will. And yet the scriptures tell us again and again, that projecting our own cravings, attachments, and aversions onto God is a major pitfall. One that we see play out in the worse tendencies of religions in history: rejecting outcasts, oppressing the disadvantaged, damning the stranger, and twisting the text to worship ourselves or something less than Divinity. No, we’re told that we must give up our own fathoming and allow God’s transcendent, mysterious will to make us radiant.

Funny enough, we’re often told that part of this is to allow all of our thinking, our fathoming, and our yearnings to subside so that we may be quiet enough to feel the pull of God’s will in our being. This is perhaps what prayer and meditation are all about, and why we’re tasked with praying “unceasingly.” This doesn’t mean stomping out our thinking and desiring, however, but relaxedly seeing these things as they come up and allowing them to subside naturally without our identification with them, as well as opening ourselves to the compassionate light and will of God. When we obsessively follow and attach ourselves to our thinking, yearning, and doing, there’s no room to “allow God to make us shine” and we lose the thread of our birthright as living beings: peace, wisdom, and compassionate awareness.

As God with us (Jesus) tells us, “My burden is light,” and so we are tasked with letting go of our baggage and our defensive hoarding of thoughts, mindless habits, hurtful feelings, and physical things – while accepting God’s love, God’s oneness, and Her all-embracing awareness, presence, and Divine will. And “daily picking up our cross and following Jesus” seems to have a similar meaning: we must become aware of our inner suffering, distractions, and disconnections in order to accept, carry, and transcend them, finding the strength and mindset of the shining Christ already within ourselves.  

I enjoy our reading today from Matthew because it paints a pretty thorough description of this process for us as well, and points to some of the major lessons we must learn in order to let God shine through.

Interestingly, the transfiguration story starts by saying, “After six days.” As we’ve explored, the parable of scripture uses imagery to point to greater spiritual things, just as Christ was said to always do. And it also conveys literal truths that speak to us on an earthly level but can be easily misconstrued without an eye toward their deeper and contextual meanings.  At the beginning of this story I think we have an inescapable reference to the metaphor of the Creation Story, which ends in the birth of humanity and then a state of rest called the Sabbath Day, “after six days.” If this connection rings true, we should see marks of this wholistic, transcendent, peaceful state in the rest of this story – which we do!

Swedenborg describes the meaning of the Sabbath Day as the transcendentally aware, peace-filled state we are led to as we become truly aware of our oneness with God and put God’s will and love at the heart of our lives after our process of “six days.” Similarly, our reading today describes Christ taking Peter, James, and John to a high or transcendent place: on top of a mountain, right where the metaphor fits. Here Jesus shines like the sun, just as He shines through us when we become a Sabbath – relaxed in our deeper awareness of God and acting in the flow of God’s will.

It’s not until some of Peter’s old, divisive (in this case, literally dividing), and conceptual line of thinking creeps in do we see an obscuring but bright cloud descend and hear the voice of God reiterating the point of this vision: to highlight the transcendent, radiant state of listening to the will of Christ our God, embodying his love, and letting go of our divisive thinking. Fearful of this command, the disciples fall to the ground, and the group soon descends the mountain tasked with not sharing such a profound experience to others “until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

In this, I can’t help but see parallels to what comes after the Creation Story in Genesis. We read of humanity’s need to lead itself while conceptually dividing and separating (naming everything and requiring a separate partner), instead of seeing the oneness of creation. And we witness the resulting yearning, fear, and ultimate descent out of the Garden of Eden – tasked with doing work in a state of painful, egotistical “knowing,” and unable to again recount the true, mysterious root of life that we experienced in that intrinsically aware, paradisical, and peaceful state of accepting our oneness with all things and God. At least, until we allow God to rise in us again – like the sun.

As we’ve seen, shining like the sun from this mystical point of view involves letting go of our false, distorted conceptions of ourselves and the world, and finding God shining within through compassionate awareness. This allows Divinity to radiate from us as we hold space for others in the warmth of love and the light of awareness and truth. Further, we find true rest and our own intrinsic humanity as we become attuned to the transcendent will of God (no matter our religion), and, like a sun, empower the life in others.

Warmth and light to you,

Rev. Cory

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