Change [Last Epiphany B]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Mark 9:2-9

Change

Don’t let the Gospel fool you: Peter knew exactly what he was saying and why he was saying it.  I have no doubt that he was awestruck and terrified, and so I can concede that perhaps his response to the Transfiguration was not terribly well thought out.  But then that probably just means his response was actually honest, not pious, not guarded, but the honest expression of his heart.

The word “transfiguration” comes from a Latin word that means a “change of form.”  And so I believe Peter’s response to Jesus’ transfiguration was a very natural human response to the change he witnessed, to change in general: don’t.  Don’t change.  After a lifetime of fishing for something, Peter found meaning and purpose in Jesus and change was threatening that.  Change reminds us that nothing beautiful can be frozen in time.  Each moment brings a change with it that transports us into the next changing moment; and those moments carry us right up to the final moment.  Ever constant, change always moves us in the same direction, relentlessly – and always in the direction of death. 

Peter’s blurted out sentiment is no different than our own tendencies.  It is inside each of us.  It is that thing that makes us take pictures; that drives us to shoot videos; that saves old love letters and keep journals.  Because the change of life will drive us further and further away from our treasured memories.  And so we find ways to hold onto the most beautiful, precious moments of our lives.  We try to keep them alive in two dimensions. 

And in our hearts, in our minds, somewhere, we believe that if we can just hold on to those moments, it will make the rush of time and the pain of loss a little bit more bearable.  It seems impossible to believe that every moment fades into the past as quickly as it appears.  And it is hard to admit that we can never get them back.

Change is indiscriminate. It violates the best and the worst moments of our lives.  It is true that sometimes change is a blessing – trading trauma for healing and injury for pardon.  But that is not the change we struggle against, is it?  The change that hurts lives in this moment of Transfiguration – a moment that Peter watches dissipate right before his startled eyes.

It is the pain that drips from today’s Old Testament lesson from Second Kings.  Elisha is watching it slip away and he is powerless to stop it.  He doesn’t want to think about the loss he is about to experience, but everything reminds him of the unwanted change around the corner.  He tries to quiet the voices, to block them out, but there are reminders everywhere.  And he cannot seem to silence them.  He walks through the water just to be near Elijah, to be close enough to touch, to reach, to hold onto.  But he cannot stop the momentum any more than one can defeat gravity.  The future is like a vortex pulling us into its center.

One moment he is there and the next he is gone.  And Elisha is left alone – stuck in a moment filled only with absence.  One moment his mentor Elijah was there but change brought a new moment into the present and Elijah was gone.  And the most painful thing about change is: it cannot be undone.  And so, like Peter, Elisha reacts, perhaps not in the most composed way, but in the most human way: he tears his clothes in two and weeps because things were perfect but then they changed.

Even our happiest moments carry with them a hint of grief.  It is not right or wrong, it is just built into the system.  We are finite beings.  We carry change in our cells and death in our genes.  And we know it.

I watch my children grow and learn and I am so proud, but also I miss who they were, when we first fell in love.   And I look at my dad; I met him a couple of weeks after his 23^rd birthday; he was so young and there was so much life ahead of him.  And now thirty-seven years have changed him.  And thirty-seven years have changed the way I see him and the way he sees me.  And I look at myself in the mirror, and in this middle age, I can no longer decide if I am young or if I am old.  I suppose it depends on the day.  And I think about all that has changed in my life and in me.  I think about all I have forgotten; all of the perfect memories that have slipped through my fingers, lost to time.  And then I think about all that is before me, change that will happen, and I am confronted by my mortality, a confrontation I never asked for but was given anyway.  Some days I am Peter and I just want it to stop, to pause the film, to get stuck in a perfect moment and build a house there.  Because I know how this story ends – for me and for everyone I love.  And I am not quite ready for the ending.

That is why Peter wanted to build the dwellings: to live in that moment.  It was the only way to keep it, to hold onto something beautiful.  If you can pause the moment nothing changes.  And if nothing changes, nothing dies.  We’ve been trying to hold off the pain of change forever.  Some things never change.

It is hard in some ways to imagine that there could be pain in the moment of Transfiguration – such a perfect, beautiful moment.  But that’s the thing, right?  Even our happiest moments carry with them a hint of grief.  Because we are always aware, even as it is happening, that the moment is fading into the past – and there is nothing we can do to stop it. 

They had to walk back down the mountain.  Change was in the air.  And grief, you see, was appropriate.  It wasn’t just that the vacation was over and they had to go back to work.  It was much more existential than that.

They were falling down the mountain into Lent.  And into Holy Week.  And into Good Friday.  Gravity always wins.  And that is why you stay on the mountain, that is why you grasp for the moment.  This is where change leads.  Change keeps changing until it reaches its final destination. It is not right or wrong, it is just built into the system.  We are finite beings.  We carry change in our cells and death in our genes.  And we know it.  And so also we carry some grief in our hearts.   

If you can pause the moment nothing changes.  And if nothing changes, nothing dies.  But if nothing dies, there is no resurrection.  And so, because of our Easter God, sometimes change is not so much a threat as it is a promise from the One who loves us through eternity with a love that will never change.