Jesus alone

This is my homily for yesterday, the 2nd week of Lent, Cycle B.  Every year, one of the Synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration is proclaimed on this Sunday of Lent.  The readings for yesterday are here.

Today I’m going to put on my middle school literature teacher’s hat to talk about this story of the Transfiguration.  Full disclosure: I’m not really a middle school literature teacher.  A lot of teachers go to church here at St. Edna.  If any of you are middle school literature teachers and you want your hat back, you can see me after mass.    

Even though I’ve never actually taught middle school literature, I did sit through two years of middle school literature classes, back in the Jurassic Period, and I haven’t forgotten everything I learned.  Today I’m going to use an analytical tool I learned in those classes.  But I’m going to use it to make a spiritual point, so bear with me for just a moment.

The analytical tool I want to use is called the story arc.  The idea is: most stories have a particular arc – a particular shape.  The basic elements are: a story has a beginning; and then a rising action; and then the story comes to a climax (which for some reason I always think of as an explosion, a BOOM!; that may be a vestige of my 12-year-old middle school self's thinking); and then there is a falling action; and then the story ends.

I had this lesson of the story arc drilled into me a few times over the course of my primary schooling; and my recollection is that the teacher would draw a diagram on the board to illustrate a story arc, and the diagram was shaped like a mountain.  Which seems fitting for today’s story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, because in fact he and his three close friends really do go up the mountain, and then experience the climactic event, and then they come back down the mountain.  

Using the story arc, here is the way I think this story usually would be analyzed – certainly, this is how I have generally thought about it:

• Beginning: Jesus and the three apostles go up the mountain

• Rising action: Jesus is transfigured before them; and then Moses and Elijah appear; and the apostles are terrified, with Peter babbling something about making tents.

• Climax (the BOOM!): A cloud covers the mountain, and the voice of God coming from the cloud says, “This is my beloved son – listen to him”

• Falling action: Moses and Elijah are gone; and they all come back down the mountain; and Jesus warns them not to tell anyone what happened

• Story ends: the apostles try to puzzle out what is meant by “Rising from the dead”

Makes sense, right?  This Gospel episode is a classic story arc.  I think it’s likely that one of the reasons this story of the Transfiguration sticks so well in our minds is the classic arc: it conforms so well with our expectations of what a good story should be shaped like.

But – now I’m going to complicate the analysis.  Hey, what kind of a dilettante middle school literature teacher would I be if I didn’t throw in a twist to try to make you think a little?

My contention is this: the climax of the story isn’t the voice of God coming from the cloud.  I’m going to suggest that the voice from the cloud is actually part of the rising action: it’s another in the constellation of spiritual wonders that the three apostles experienced – it’s of a piece with Jesus being transfigured, Moses and Elijah, and so on.

I’d like to propose that the true climax of the story is a little detail that comes and goes so quickly, you may never have fastened on it before; I know I never really caught on to it until recently.

That climactic point is: “Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them”.

Jesus alone!  BOOM!  That’s the explosion - that’s the true climax of the story: it all led up to Jesus alone.  

And when I say, “it all led up…”, I don’t just mean, “what happened on the mountaintop that day led up…”.  I mean, “it *all* led up…”: everything in salvation history up to that point, led up to this moment.  And in fact, that constellation of spiritual wonders encapsulates salvation history up to that point.

To a Jewish person of that time and place, like Peter and James and John, who experienced this event, or who had this tale told to them, all the elements, that constellation of spiritual wonders, would be recognizable to them: the mountain would recall Mount Sinai, where God gave the 10 commandments and made a covenant with his people.  The cloud covering the mountain, and the voice of God coming from the cloud, is exactly how God gave the Law and made the covenant that day.   Any Jew of that time and place hearing a story with those elements of mountain, cloud and divine voice would recognize immediately what event it was pointing to, just as any Christian hearing a story with a woman giving birth in a stable and placing the babe in a manger, would immediately think of the birth of the Christ child.  These are foundational stories that are firmly planted in believers’ imaginations.  

The reminder of Mt. Sinai is further strengthened by the appearance of Moses, who was the one who received the law and made the covenant with God on that mountain; and Elijah, the great prophet who also had been on Mt. Sinai.  

Jews like Peter, James and John would immediately get that what they were witnessing was a privileged, divine encounter.

And what do these foundational Jewish elements lead up to?  They lead up to the climax of the story, the BOOM: Jesus.  Jesus alone.  

Because Jesus is the new element introduced into all these familiar elements: Jesus transfigured; Jesus in conversation with Moses and Elijah; Jesus’s identity revealed by the voice of God; Jesus alone.

All of these elements – mountain, cloud, divine voice, Law, covenant, prophet: they all lead up to, point to and culminate in the person of Jesus.

Jesus encompasses the Law given to Moses, which he told us himself he had come to fulfill.  And Jesus is the one whom the prophets like Elijah foretold, and the one whom they prepared us to get to know.  

Jesus, alone, is whom we need to live as God wants us to live.  If we don’t want to be apart from God anymore, if we want to draw closer to God, and be loved and cared for by him, then let us draw closer to Jesus.  He’ll lead us up the mountain.  He is the way – to God.  He is the truth – the truth that God loves us and wants us to come back to him.  And he is the life – the everlasting life of living in communion with God.  Jesus alone is the way.  Jesus is the BOOM! in today’s Gospel story.  Let him be the BOOM! in our lives.