Transmogrifier and Transfiguration

Transmogrifier and Transfiguration

If you have read much Calvin and Hobbes, the comic, you may recall the great transmogrifier.  It was a device (upside down cardboard box) that could change you into anything you wished, instantly, if you climbed inside.  In addition to the great potential for many hilarious episodes of Calvin and Hobbes, the transmogrifier is the dream of many on a spiritual journey.

How many with a terrible hangover have lead to a promise to “never” drink again, and felt they truly and instantly became a person who would never make the mistake of partaking of too much beverage?  How many in crisis have attempted to make the deal, “If you will save me, I’ll never miss another Sunday of church (or some other dramatic promise) with the belief that they can fulfill that promise?  How many have simply desired enlightenment and chased every fad or trend in a quest for instant results?  

It is not only diet pills that offer immediately change.  We seem to be vulnerable to many a quick fix.

This coming Sunday is known by many on the planet as Transfiguration Sunday.  My church will be reading from Luke 9:28-43.  Jesus and a select few disciples travel up a mountain where Jesus is seen with Moses and Elijah (who are both long ago religious heros and both passed onto to heaven) and Jesus is “transfigured” appearing in sparkling white.  That is the very quick version.  I encourage you to read the text from the Bible.

I find it easy to become obsessed with the “moment” of transfiguration.  It reads as if in a flash that Jesus’ divinity is revealed, that he is changed from whatever he was before into a something even more glorious and spiritual.  In truth, it might have taken a long time on top of the mountain.

What I do know is that my obsession with the immediacy of the moment of transfiguration distracts me from the long climb up the mountain.  Skipping an academic discussion of which mountain it might have been and the true height of that mountain, I want to lift up that all mountain tops require a climb to reach.

My experience of spiritual renewal, personal improvement, church revitalization, relational restoration, systemic reconciliation is that they require a journey of many small steps, trips, dances, and sometimes pure slogging through the muck of brokenness.  

Very true that there are opportunities for leaping and skipping when great distances can be traveled in few moments.  The opposite is of course true.  And if this were a linear process we might be able to find an average and maybe even a quick fix.  However this is not a linear process.

I am reminded of a recent conversation with a new friend colleague where I referenced some work by Dave Ramsey.  Ramsey made the reflection that money is never static but always in motion -- growing or becoming debt.  I believe the same is true of our quest for change, improvement, wholeness.

Fascinating how many of us think the perfect vacation is the beach.  I assume from listening that it is a holy place of rest.  And yet, it is a place of continual change as surf alters turf, tides both hide and reveal.

My reflection is not that life is hard so buck up.  My reflection is that life is full of potential for amazing experiences of God and God’s love with God’s people - again demonstrated in the transfiguration of Jesus.  Would the story be remembered had not friends traveled with him up the mountain to witness the glory?

What is your favorite mountain top experience?  What did it take to get there?  How much was your effort, the effort of others and or pure happenstance?  Life is continual motion.   A stick in the mud suffers the tide and a suffer rides the wave.