TO CELEBRATE the Feast of the Transfiguration without recalling the sombre eightieth anniversary of Hiroshima can be spiritual escapism in the acute. Mount Tabor rises in beauty and majesty amid a blood-spattered landscape of conflict and violence. An early reference to Tabor within the Bible is the story of Deborah driving a tent peg through Sisera’s skull. Visible from Tabor is Mount Gilboa, site of Saul and Jonathan’s slaughter; the Plain of Jezreel below was often a battlefield.
Today, Israeli jets screech overhead en path to bomb Syria or Lebanon. Pilgrims to the Holy Land encounter at every turn the discomforting, shocking juxtaposition of the holy and the unholy, the sublime and the ugly, the peace-filled and the violent. Sacred land becomes scarred and scared. The “little town of Bethlehem” suffocates behind a 30-foot high separation barrier; the Church of the Nativity is a mile from the teeming Dheisheh refugee camp. The River Jordan baptismal site is in a heavily mined militarised zone. The beaches of Tel Aviv lure sun-worshippers just 40 miles north of Gaza, where 17,000 children have been killed up to now 12 months.
The light-filled event of the transfiguration finds itself in a context of violence, and in a raw juxtaposition with human suffering. We are struck by the sheer brutality and terror of the boy encountered on the descent of Tabor: “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to talk; and each time it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. . . From childhood it has often forged him into the fireplace and into the water, to destroy him. . .
“When the spirit saw Jesus, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the bottom and rolled about, foaming on the mouth. . . After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it got here out” (Mark 9.14-29).
THE boy becomes a logo and representative of all victims of violence; of all who’re oppressed, denigrated, put down. He stands for individuals who cannot speak, whose voices aren’t heard. Correspondingly, the story challenges us as to how we would reply to such desperate need on this planet today. He is the kid of Gaza, of Sudan, of Ukraine. . .
We see five signposts from the mountain to the valley:
- Encountering majesty, above and below The author of two Peter 1 testifies of the mountaintop, “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Luke uses the identical Greek word to explain people’s response to the healing on the foot of Tabor: “All were astonished on the majesty of God” (9.43). Majesty is present in compassion. Jesus, elevated and aglow within the purity of divine light, now reaches all the way down to the kid writhing, face contorted, within the filth of the road. Jesus is rejecting fatalism, banishing despondency and the resignation expressed within the despair of the parent: “I begged your disciples to forged it out, but they may not.” Majesty is revealed within the dust of the road. Jesus is opening up a latest future.
- Discovering prayer, atop and below Luke tells us: “He went on the mountain to hope” (9.28). Entering the fray of human suffering below, Jesus says “This kind [of spirit] can come out only through prayer.” Prayer results in the vision of the Kingdom of God — whether glimpsed in radiant glory or within the agonised writhing of a baby.
- Mountain of prayer points to mountain of religion The mountain is a logo of reaching to heaven, of touching the transcendent. From the bottom, it’s a logo of something that seems unattainable, immovable, implacable — but faith can move mountains. Immediately after the descent from Tabor, within the midst of the pastoral crisis, Jesus says, “If you may have faith the dimensions of a mustard seed, say to this mountain [Tabor], ‘Move from here to there,’ and it should move; nothing shall be unattainable for you” (Matthew 17.19-20). We’re challenged to reply to the massifs of human suffering with a faith that may begin to shift them.
- Foretaste of resurrection within the midst of pain After the resurrection-type appearance on Tabor’s summit, the valley, too, gives us a foretaste of resurrection within the midst of suffering: “The boy was like a corpse, so that almost all of them said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was capable of stand” (Mark 9.26,27).
- Majesty meets betrayal “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. All were astounded on the majesty of God; amazed in any respect that he was doing. He said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man goes to be betrayed into human hands’” (Luke 9.42-45). Everything is interlinked. Disfiguration is just not removed from transfiguration. Here below, in Jesus’s experience and ours, the 2 appear to belong together. Divine light is just not confined to the mountaintop — it shines out, unexpectedly, within the midst of human brokenness and vulnerability, each time we allow the Kingdom of God to the touch us.
ON THE Feast of the Transfiguration in 1945, we saw the starkest juxtaposition between transfiguration and disfiguration, between two different expressions of cloud and dazzling light, because the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated above the people of Hiroshima, in a mushroom cloud and blinding light — not of glory, however the poison of radiation. The transfigured life is led between the paradox of transfiguring grace and disfiguring realities. Our challenge is to be an agent or witness bringing transfiguring grace into situations of disfigurement and dehumanisation. We seek to unleash the facility of the Kingdom of God in compassion and self-sacrifice.
The incarnation teaches us to expect juxtapositions, human and divine. This means that we’ll rule nothing out — living every day within the expectation that we’ll each see Jesus in “his distressing disguise of the poor” and glimpse possibilities for transfiguration. We is not going to confine the sacred to special times and places. We will train ourselves to discern the features of Jesus within the faces of those who are suffering. We will seek to come across majesty and mystery on the mountaintop of prayer and worship, but we will even be able to spot clues or intimations of splendor within the valley below.
We commit ourselves to responding to disfiguration with hope and faith. We will emulate Jesus’s response to the epileptic writhing within the dust — with decisive compassion and prayerfulness.
ON THE Feast of the Transfiguration 2025, as we approach the eightieth anniversary of VJ Day and the top of the Second World War, we would dedicate ourselves to working for reconciliation in situations of conflict, playing a component, nonetheless small. Where possible, we’ll accept the challenge to model forgiveness in situations of hate.
We might sharpen our resolve to work for those robbed of human rights, looking for their restored dignity. We can renew our commitment to supporting the abused or marginalised in our locality; to responding more courageously to the needs of the refugee, those exiled or made homeless. May the Feast empower our quest for transfiguration.
The Revd Dr Andrew D. Mayes TSSF was formerly Course Director of St George’s College Jerusalem, and Spirituality Adviser to the diocese of Cyprus & the Gulf.
This is an edited extract from Transfiguring Life: Unleashing the facility of paradox published by Wipf & Stock at £19 (Church Times Bookshop £17.10); 979-8-3852-4413-3.
