Transfiguration of the Lord (Year 2, NL)

We are still learning what it means to be human, even as we learn who God truly is.

I love a good mountaintop experience. It’s a moment when everything changes. Insight flares up in the mind, illuminating the moment, the experience, the problem in a whole new way. You’re never quite the same again.  

One such moment for me happened in prayer when I was on a three-day silent retreat.

Let’s build shrines, Peter says. He doesn’t know how to respond to a mystical mountaintop experience, and he’s afraid.

The Transfiguration has a hundred sermons in it. But to me the most touching element is the subplot.

When did we stop taking church architecture seriously? Christians used to devote themselves to building projects that lasted over a hundred years. Not anymore.

As I read the headline yesterday, my heart began to pound and my throat closed up: “School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons.” This was a good story—ultimately a hopeful one—but all I could see was “school” and “gunman."

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how disturbed and saddened we’ve been by the hateful and decidedly unchristian words spoken by self-proclaimed Christian leaders in recent years. The examples are too numerous to cite, and each has its own agenda of hatred and division. I complained that it was so deeply unfair that such intolerant and offensive perspectives were being allowed to speak for me and all other Christians.

My friend offered a profound and simple response: “Chris, they only speak for you if you don’t speak for yourself.”

I can't fool myself into believing that I've gotten close to the kind of costly discipleship that Jesus is speaking of in Mark 8.

If the disciples hoped before that Jesus didn't know what he was saying, these hopes are now gone.

Jesus and Peter care about each other enough to call each other out.