In C.S. Lewis’ book Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, the British author and Christian thinker picks up a metaphor about life many readers first encounter in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—the thought that life is a stage on which all our dramas play out.
Shakespeare’s treacherous king sees this comparison as a sign of life’s futility—“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”—but Lewis pushes his readers to think about the roles all of us play in life; the ways in which relationships and expectations shape us and our efforts to manage how others perceive us.
In doing so, Lewis beautifully and creatively describes prayer as the gift given to us to elevate our status from poor, strutting, fretting players to complete and fully realized children of God.
It is prayer, Lewis states, that helps us understand who and whose we really are.
He writes,
I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self—this clown or hero or super—under his grease-paint is a real self with an off-stage life…[In] prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but—what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance? (Letter 15)
According to Lewis, prayer is an exercise in finding one’s own voice—finding one’s real voice—through communication with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
“The prayer preceding all prayers,” Lewis writes, “[the prayer that is the beginning of prayer] is “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”
The story of Jesus’ Transfiguration is about reality, about life as it really is.
Who is Jesus, really, what does it really mean to be his disciple, and what difference does it all really make?
Questions like these filled the air as Jesus and his disciples climbed the mountain on which the story of Transfiguration unfolded.
You see, the early chapters of the Gospels tell us that once Jesus entered the public arena, he quickly developed a reputation as a powerful teacher and healer in his home region of Galilee.
He demonstrated a special concern for his society’s outcasts—the lepers, the sick, and the poor, among others.
He showed a tremendous willingness to challenge traditions and attitudes that separated religious observance from doing good to others.
And Jesus established himself as a rabbi—as a teacher—by calling disciples to follow in his steps and to learn from his wisdom.
The Gospels also tell us how those disciples began to spread their wings by ministering throughout Galilee in Jesus’ name. They developed their own reputations as teachers and healers, took Good News to the poor and outcast, and, along the way, they began to realize that they were following an extraordinary Master.
In fact, immediately before the events recorded in this morning’s Gospel lesson, one of the disciples, Peter, confessed how extraordinary he believed Jesus was.
Matthew describes the scene like this.
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)
Peter’s proclamation that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah of God’s People was a turning point in their ministry.
It closed one chapter and opened another, the horror and beauty of which Peter could not imagine, but a chapter that Jesus immediately began to write.
It was, then, as Peter’s words still echoed in their midst, that Jesus spoke, for the first time, about his own death and resurrection.
And as all that they had heard—the magnitude of Peter’s confession and Jesus’ response—settled over the disciples, Jesus pointed them in a new direction–the Way of the Cross.
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16:24-26)
What happened next was a real cliffhanger.
A week passed about which we know nothing.
None of the Gospels tell us about how the disciples responded to Jesus’ new approach.
Did they go home for a while to think things over—talk things over with their families?
Did they go sailing or fishing to clear their heads?
Did he really say that following him would require them to carry a cross? Really?
Truthfully, we don’t know what happened in the silence of that week.
All we know is that Jesus’ ministry was at a crossroads as his followers came to terms with the reality of discipleship’s cost.
That’s how the Gospels set the stage for the verses that are before us today.
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. (Matthew 17:1-2)
On that mountain, Jesus shined like the sun, Elijah and Moses appeared at his side, and the disciples were dumbfounded.
Like them, the Transfiguration catches the eye of even the most casual observer because of its special effects—Jesus’ face became radiant, his clothes flashed like lightning, and God’s voice thundered from on high.
This is obviously a story about something very special happening to Jesus.
But the Transfiguration also captures the imagination of more serious disciples not simply because of the accompanying light show, but because it’s such a crucial moment in Jesus’ life story.
This is the bridge from Jesus’ early ministry to his final ascent in Jerusalem—his crucifixion and resurrection.
Because of its wide appeal, it’s not surprising that people of faith through the generations have had a lot to say about the Transfiguration.
It’s a manifestation of Jesus’ divinity—like his baptism, and something that the disciples remembered for the rest of their lives—like the Sermon on the Mount or turning water into wine.
It’s a moment in Jesus’ life that teaches us something about God’s glory.
It says something about holiness and beauty.
It tells us about God’s power, Christ’s mission, and his unique role in the story of salvation.
The Transfiguration was a defining moment in Jesus’ life. That’s why we celebrate it every year on this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday.
But for all the things that it teaches us about heady spiritual matters, I believe there’s a very practical lesson to be learned today from the Transfiguration as well.
It remains true that time spent with Jesus sets the stage for revelation and transformation.
With everything else that happened that day on the mountain top, with all the questions about crosses and whatever was going to happen next still hanging in the air, it’s so easy to forget that this is really a story about what happened one day when the disciples went away with Jesus–to be with him, to pray, to, in the words of the the old hymn, “walk with him and talk with him.”
And because he still comes to us, and walks with us, because Jesus “is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you,” because we still pray, we can lift up the Transfiguration as a story about reality—the reality of a loving God who takes us to mountain tops and walks with us through life’s valley.
“[The invitation to walk with Jesus and to be a people of prayer,]” concludes Lewis, “is, at every moment, a possible theophany [--a visible manifestation of God]. Here is the holy ground: the Bush is burning now.”
We can also say that Jesus shines with heaven’s light right now.
He meets our questions and doubts with grace right now.
He desires communion with you and me, he offers healing and compassion, he empowers us to be our real and true selves right now.
Friends, the Gospel invites us to be real so that our eyes may be opened and God’s own self revealed in our midst.
According to C. S. Lewis, prayer is an exercise in finding one’s own voice—finding one’s real voice—through communication with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
“The prayer preceding all prayers,” Lewis writes, “[the prayer that is the beginning of prayer] is “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”
May the time we spend with Jesus on this Transfiguration Sunday spark just such a new beginning for every one of us and for his Church.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Image: Walsh, George. Kingdom of God, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.
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