St Bede says there are fourteen ways to divide time. He mentions all the ones you know—such as minutes and weeks and days. But the interesting thing is he gives us several units that are bigger than ours and several that are smaller.
How many ways can you divide time? I mean, what units of time are available to you—minutes, hours, months?
St Bede says there are fourteen ways to divide time. He mentions all the ones you know—such as minutes and weeks and days. But the interesting thing is he gives us several units that are bigger than ours and several that are smaller.
For example, there is the moment—which for us is just a vague time word but for Bede is precise—it is the amount of time your eyelid rests when you blink. Then again there is the age, which lasts several centuries.
The smallest unit of time is the atom—Bede says this is a unit of time just as it is of matter because the entire universe is made according to a consistent master plan.
And the largest unit of all finally is the world. I do mean mean finally—that is, when to use St Paul’s words time will be entirely full.
In other words time in Christian thinking had a beginning and will have an end, as will everything else in the world. This is not forever. For a Christian, to have all the time in the world means to have only so much time. You must remember this.
We see time differently from the way the world sees it. The world sees time going by in relentless but dull little ticks. The worldly sense of time T. S. Eliot got it right for his man of the world: he measures out his life in coffee spoons—one equal little bit after the other. For us, Time is one of God’s creations, one of God’s works of art. Our time has a shape, it has contours and textures and colors—just see how different time feels this Wednesday as you begin your Lententide seriously here with the imposition of ashes. Our time slows down and it speeds up: just as our most poetic scientist, Albert Einstein, proved it does in fact. And sometimes, for us, Time telescopes. I mean, sometimes, Past, Future, and Present converge.
I this is a good way to think about today. On this Last Sunday after the Epiphany, as we hear our titular story again, the story of Christ’s Transfiguration.
What then was the present moment? The historical story, the literal? The now of this Gospel is Jesus of Nazareth and the three men retreating to the mountain. Why are they doing that? Well, since these disciples are James John and especially Peter, I doubt that they could answer that question. They have become rather used at this point to not exactly reading the Master’s mind. And Jesus seems never to explain himself, letting what he does convey his meaning. So the three probably sense only that this is a retreat for prayer, for they know he often retreats to lonesome places to pray. And that something strange certainly might occur—not that they could possibly guess what, but the theme of meeting God on a mountain is a universal human motif. That motif recurs again and again in the Hebrew Scriptures, which those three know the way you and I, or at least they way you and I should know our Testaments. Mountains are strange in just the irresistible way God is strange—lovely and dangerous, a terrible beauty.
But Jesus knows what is happening. I don’t mean in a magical fortune-teller omniscient way, because I do not believe he had that—that was one aspect of his divine character that the Incarnation erased. I mean in his intuitive way—for if there is one psychological strength the Gospels all give him it is a profound capacity for intuition—he always seems to know what people are thinking and what people might need. He knows, in a word, what the time is. I believe at this point in Time Christ knows this is a hinge moment, a moment when a gate is about to swing, a door about to open, his path about to take a new turn.
So just as he withdrew to the Desert to pray before he began his journey, now he retreats to the mountain to meditate before he begins its last stretch.
And what happens next? The Past arrives. The Past telescopes into the moment in the persons of Moses and Elijah. By the way—how do James John and Peter know who these are? They have never seen a picture of Moses in their lives, and they would be startled to see the ones we prominently display right there at the focal point of our worship. My guess is they knew because they were in dream mode—in dreams, we recognize people we have never met.
In dream mode God sends us visions. Not hallucinations—an hallucination is seeing what isn’t really there. Visions are seeing what is really there but normally you could not see. And I believe Moses and Elijah really are there.
Why? My Bible commentaries and footnotes and my classes when I was here before tell me they symbolize the Law and the Prophets. And that’s fine and valid but I am guess there is more to it than that. I think we have here two famous men who had close and startling encounters with God on mountains: Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God turned away form hi so as not to kill him, and handed down to him the 600 commandments that were going to forge his people into the instrument he wanted to fix the world. Of which the second was the reason St. Peter never saw a statue of Moses. Elijah on Mt. Horeb, when God surprised him by not appearing in the usual media—fire, earthquake, wind—but in that still small voice, the whisper of the Spirit.
Now they were with Jesus on Mt. Tabor, and the disciples got to witness this fold in time. Wouldn’t you like to be the seventh person on that spot? Three men of God on the Mountain.
And now I do think I might be able to read Peter’s mind. For that is all he sees—three men of God on the Mountain. Surely the two from the past have come to suppo0rt the one in the present? Surely they are there to help him do what they did—to have a close encounter with God in the high place?
And so Peter makes his offer: let us honor the three of you with three shrines, one for each of the holy men.
One of my students this week had to translate this line from Cicero; ex erroribus meis hominibus iter bonum demonstrare possum, which means out of my own errors, I can show others the right way, and that could practically be a motto for St. Peter.
Moses and Elijah are not there to help a fellow prophet encounter God. They are—as are James John and Peter—already encountering God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.
And so God sends the cloud—one more medium God seems to like—and then God identifies Jesus; this is my son the beloved: listen o him.
And with that the recent past is folded in, for where have you heard that before? You heard it just four weeks ago, at the Baptism of Jesus, that’s when. Moses and Elijah are not there to support but to confirm: this is the one who comprehends in his being the Law and the Prophets.
Now. You probably have noticed that I have left one thing out—one very big thing. The Transfiguration itself. From the moment they achieve the top of the mountain Jesus is transformed—his face changes, Matthew’s account says it shines, and his clothing becomes dazzling white. Here is the reason I have saved it for last: when have you seen Jesus of Nazareth looking that way? When he rises from the tomb, when he ascends into heaven, when he sits at the right hand of the Father in Glory, that is when.
The Transfiguration itself, you see, is the future Christ telescoped into the present moment. So effectively that some modern rationalist scholars say it is simply a mixup on the Evangelist’s part, a simple foreshadowing. I think foreshadowing sounds rather murky to label what is going on here. Here we have the glory of the future folded into the present moment on the mountain.
But there is more to the future of the Transfiguration of course than that. The moment of Transfiguration is timeless, or outside of time, it is an eternal now moment.
And that means us. You and I. John and James and Peter are the present; Elijah and Moses are the past. We are the future. We are all in this together.
By we I mean all sacramental Christians who are listening to the story around the world this morning. But especially I do mean us, who have that parish name. I am strange enough to think that we should take names much more seriously than most of us do. I think the people of St Thomas and St. James up the street should really believe in their special relationship with those apostles, and the same for our Sts. John and Luke in the Village and St. Mary midtown.
You and I meanwhile have a special relationship to the transfigured Christ.
I said that a vision is not seeing what is not really there—it is seeing what is really there for the first time. Thus it is with the Transfiguration. Because past, present, and future are telescoped today, we stand with the other disciples and witness the Christ as he really is. The only thing left is to follow the command from the cloud—this is my beloved Son: listen to him.
For example, there is the moment—which for us is just a vague time word but for Bede is precise—it is the amount of time your eyelid rests when you blink. Then again there is the age, which lasts several centuries. The smallest unit of time is the atom—Bede says this is a unit of time just as it is of matter because the entire universe is made according to a consistent master plan.
And the largest unit of all finally is the world. I do mean mean finally—that is, when to use St Paul’s words time will be entirely full.
In other words time in Christian thinking had a beginning and will have an end, as will everything else in the world. This is not forever. For a Christian, to have all the time in the world means to have only so much time. You must remember this.
We see time differently from the way the world sees it. The world sees time going by in relentless but dull little ticks. The worldly sense of time T. S. Eliot got it right for his man of the world: he measures out his life in coffee spoons—one equal little bit after the other. For us, Time is one of God’s creations, one of God’s works of art.
Our time has a shape, it has contours and textures and colors—just see how different time feels this Wednesday as you begin your Lententide seriously here with the imposition of ashes. Our time slows down and it speeds up: just as our most poetic scientist, Albert Einstein, proved it does in fact. And sometimes, for us, Time telescopes. I mean, sometimes, Past, Future, and Present converge.
I this is a good way to think about today. On this Last Sunday after the Epiphany, as we hear our titular story again, the story of Christ’s Transfiguration.
What then was the present moment? The historical story, the literal? The now of this Gospel is Jesus of Nazareth and the three men retreating to the mountain. Why are they doing that? Well, since these disciples are James John and especially Peter, I doubt that they could answer that question. They have become rather used at this point to not exactly reading the Master’s mind. And Jesus seems never to explain himself, letting what he does convey his meaning. So the three probably sense only that this is a retreat for prayer, for they know he often retreats to lonesome places to pray. And that something strange certainly might occur—not that they could possibly guess what, but the theme of meeting God on a mountain is a universal human motif. That motif recurs again and again in the Hebrew Scriptures, which those three know the way you and I, or at least they way you and I should know our Testaments.
Mountains are strange in just the irresistible way God is strange—lovely and dangerous, a terrible beauty.
But Jesus knows what is happening. I don’t mean in a magical fortune-teller omniscient way, because I do not believe he had that—that was one aspect of his divine character that the Incarnation erased. I mean in his intuitive way—for if there is one psychological strength the Gospels all give him it is a profound capacity for intuition—he always seems to know what people are thinking and what people might need. He knows, in a word, what the time is. I believe at this point in Time Christ knows this is a hinge moment, a moment when a gate is about to swing, a door about to open, his path about to take a new turn.
So just as he withdrew to the Desert to pray before he began his journey, now he retreats to the mountain to meditate before he begins its last stretch.
And what happens next? The Past arrives. The Past telescopes into the moment in the persons of Moses and Elijah. By the way—how do James John and Peter know who these are? They have never seen a picture of Moses in their lives, and they would be startled to see the ones we prominently display right there at the focal point of our worship. My guess is they knew because they were in dream mode—in dreams, we recognize people we have never met.
In dream mode God sends us visions. Not hallucinations—an hallucination is seeing what isn’t really there. Visions are seeing what is really there but normally you could not see. And I believe Moses and Elijah really are there.
Why? My Bible commentaries and footnotes and my classes when I was here before tell me they symbolize the Law and the Prophets. And that’s fine and valid but I am guess there is more to it than that. I think we have here two famous men who had close and startling encounters with God on mountains: Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God turned away form hi so as not to kill him, and handed down to him the 600 commandments that were going to forge his people into the instrument he wanted to fix the world. Of which the second was the reason St. Peter never saw a statue of Moses. Elijah on Mt. Horeb, when God surprised him by not appearing in the usual media—fire, earthquake, wind—but in that still small voice, the whisper of the Spirit.
Now they were with Jesus on Mt. Tabor, and the disciples got to witness this fold in time. Wouldn’t you like to be the seventh person on that spot? Three men of God on the Mountain.
And now I do think I might be able to read Peter’s mind. For that is all he sees—three men of God on the Mountain. Surely the two from the past have come to suppo0rt the one in the present? Surely they are there to help him do what they did—to have a close encounter with God in the high place?
And so Peter makes his offer: let us honor the three of you with three shrines, one for each of the holy men.
One of my students this week had to translate this line from Cicero; ex erroribus meis hominibus iter bonum demonstrare possum, which means out of my own errors, I can show others the right way, and that could practically be a motto for St. Peter.
Moses and Elijah are not there to help a fellow prophet encounter God. They are—as are James John and Peter—already encountering God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.
And so God sends the cloud—one more medium God seems to like—and then God identifies Jesus; this is my son the beloved: listen o him.
And with that the recent past is folded in, for where have you heard that before? You heard it just four weeks ago, at the Baptism of Jesus, that’s when. Moses and Elijah are not there to support but to confirm: this is the one who comprehends in his being the Law and the Prophets.
Now. You probably have noticed that I have left one thing out—one very big thing. The Transfiguration itself. From the moment they achieve the top of the mountain Jesus is transformed—his face changes, Matthew’s account says it shines, and his clothing becomes dazzling white. Here is the reason I have saved it for last: when have you seen Jesus of Nazareth looking that way? When he rises from the tomb, when he ascends into heaven, when he sits at the right hand of the Father in Glory, that is when.
The Transfiguration itself, you see, is the future Christ telescoped into the present moment. So effectively that some modern rationalist scholars say it is simply a mixup on the Evangelist’s part, a simple foreshadowing. I think foreshadowing sounds rather murky to label what is going on here. Here we have the glory of the future folded into the present moment on the mountain.
But there is more to the future of the Transfiguration of course than that. The moment of Transfiguration is timeless, or outside of time, it is an eternal now moment.
And that means us. You and I. John and James and Peter are the present; Elijah and Moses are the past. We are the future. We are all in this together.
By we I mean all sacramental Christians who are listening to the story around the world this morning. But especially I do mean us, who have that parish name. I am strange enough to think that we should take names much more seriously than most of us do. I think the people of St Thomas and St. James up the street should really believe in their special relationship with those apostles, and the same for our Sts. John and Luke in the Village and St. Mary midtown.
You and I meanwhile have a special relationship to the transfigured Christ.
I said that a vision is not seeing what is not really there—it is seeing what is really there for the first time. Thus it is with the Transfiguration. Because past, present, and future are telescoped today, we stand with the other disciples and witness the Christ as he really is. The only thing left is to follow the command from the cloud—this is my beloved Son: listen to him.
