Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
November 15, 2021
The Invitatory
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Praise ye the Lord.
The Lord's Name be praised.
Reading: Matthew 17:1-13
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’ And the disciples asked him, ‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ He replied, ‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Beloved, Toni Morrison’s spellbinding novel, transforms history into a powerful and intimate story. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. In just a few words Morrison captures how the work schedule to which slaves were beholden distorted even the most intimate of the relationships they were permitted. Reflecting on her marriage to Halle, Sethe observes that for years, they saw each other in full daylight only on Sundays. The rest of the time - they spoke or touched or ate in darkness….So looking at each other intently was a Sunday morning pleasure. Their time together, spent mostly in darkness, may have caused misperceptions and misjudgments of each other that stunted the growth of their marriage - or prevented each from seeing the other more fully or truly.
Even when able to see others every day fully, in the daylight, I have found myself struggling to describe what another person looks like. All too often I have to refer to someone else to calibrate the description of one or more features. She has longer hair than so and so or his eyes are a lighter brown than his brother. One wonders if it is at all possible to express what another person truly looks like. This difficulty, however, does not prevent us from recognizing someone familiar to us. This isn’t the problem of the transfiguration.
The account of Jesus’ transfiguration seems strange to the minds of those of us who have been influenced by these modern times to give credit and legitimacy to the “great god Fact.” With the questionable exception of those who hold that the Bible is credible on all accounts, few of us escape the insistence of our science-bound culture that sacred texts too should conform, so far as possible, to “normal” empirically provable truth claims. Whether we admit it or not, even those of us who think ourselves especially open to mystery, we may feel somewhat uneasy in the presence of texts like this.
To be sure, at one level of perception the experience of transfiguration is not entirely beyond the knowledge of most sensitive people. Who has not known moments of surprised illumination when, through some apparent ordinary act, episode or fragment of conversation, someone we thought we knew fairly well is suddenly revealed in a completely new light. And that seems to be the very point. If Jesus is the revelation in flesh of God, how could the disciples and we possibly possess the ability to recognize one who is entirely mysterious, unique, without any comparable? That would render God subject to human creation, a direct contravention of God. The transfiguration is given to us to prevent our overreaching of God’s divinity. It is a necessary corrective, even a gift, that offers us the possibility of greater discovery.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
