Holiness Shining through Humanity
Mark 9:2-9
Illustration
by Scott Hoezee

Frederick Buechner muses on the Transfiguration this way: In the Transfiguration it was the holiness of Jesus shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it that they were almost blinded.  Even with us something like that happens once in a while.  The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July.  Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing" (Whistling in the Dark, Harper San Francisco, 1988, p. 108).

In one sense Buechner here is maybe rendering the actual Transfiguration of Jesus a bit too mundane, a bit too much like what could happen to us on most any given afternoon while riding the bus or walking down a sidewalk.  But on the other hand, he may be on to something, and I would add to his musings this one:  Even on all kinds of days when the disciples and Jesus were by no means having a mountaintop experience and when dazzling garments whiter than white were nowhere to be seen, even then when Jesus smiled kindly at lepers, looked pained to see a "sinner" being shunned by the Temple establishment, or looked winsome after telling a hurting prostitute to go in peace because her sins were forgiven, there was sense in which the disciples were seeing the face of the divine transfigured in also those ordinary moments.  They were seeing hints of glory.  They were seeing true God of true God, vividly and surprisingly and, yes, dazzlingly on display in God's One and Only Son, full of grace and truth.

Comments and Observations, by Scott Hoezee