TO CELEBRATE the Feast of the Transfiguration without recalling the sombre 80th anniversary of Hiroshima would be spiritual escapism in the extreme. Mount Tabor rises in beauty and majesty amid a blood-spattered landscape of conflict and violence. An early reference to Tabor in 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 route 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 in the past year.
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 speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. . . From childhood it has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him. . .
“When the spirit saw Jesus, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. . . After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out” (Mark 9.14-29).
THE boy becomes a symbol and representative of all victims of violence; of all who are oppressed, denigrated, put down. He stands for those who cannot speak, whose voices are not heard. Correspondingly, the story challenges us as to how we might respond to such desperate need in the world today. He is the child of Gaza, of Sudan, of Ukraine. . .
We see five signposts from the mountain to the valley:
- Encountering majesty, above and below The writer of 2 Peter 1 testifies of the mountaintop, “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Luke uses the same Greek word to describe people’s reaction to the healing at the foot of Tabor: “All were astonished at the majesty of God” (9.43). Majesty is found in compassion. Jesus, elevated and aglow in the purity of divine light, now reaches down to the child writhing, face contorted, in the filth of the street. Jesus is rejecting fatalism, banishing despondency and the resignation expressed in the despair of the parent: “I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Majesty is revealed in the dust of the street. Jesus is opening up a new future.
- Discovering prayer, atop and below Luke tells us: “He went on the mountain to pray” (9.28). Entering the fray of human suffering below, Jesus says “This kind [of spirit] can come out only through prayer.” Prayer leads to the vision of the Kingdom of God — whether glimpsed in radiant glory or in the agonised writhing of a child.
- Mountain of prayer points to mountain of faith The mountain is a symbol of reaching to heaven, of touching the transcendent. From the ground, it is a symbol of something that seems impossible, immovable, implacable — but faith can move mountains. Immediately after the descent from Tabor, in the midst of the pastoral crisis, Jesus says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, say to this mountain [Tabor], ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17.19-20). We’re challenged to respond to the massifs of human suffering with a faith that can start to shift them.
- Foretaste of resurrection in the midst of pain After the resurrection-type appearance on Tabor’s summit, the valley, too, gives us a foretaste of resurrection in the midst of suffering: “The boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to 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 at the majesty of God; amazed at all that he was doing. He said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands’” (Luke 9.42-45). Everything is interlinked. Disfiguration is not far from transfiguration. Here below, in Jesus’s experience and ours, the two seem to belong together. Divine light is not confined to the mountaintop — it shines out, unexpectedly, in the midst of human brokenness and vulnerability, whenever we allow the Kingdom of God to 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, as the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated above the people of Hiroshima, in a mushroom cloud and blinding light — not of glory, but 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 power of the Kingdom of God in compassion and self-sacrifice.
The incarnation teaches us to expect juxtapositions, human and divine. This means that we will rule nothing out — living each day in the expectation that we will both see Jesus in “his distressing disguise of the poor” and glimpse possibilities for transfiguration. We will not confine the sacred to special times and places. We will train ourselves to discern the features of Jesus in the faces of those who suffer. We will seek to encounter majesty and mystery on the mountaintop of prayer and worship, but we will also be ready to spot clues or intimations of majesty in the valley below.
We commit ourselves to responding to disfiguration with hope and faith. We will emulate Jesus’s reaction to the epileptic writhing in the dust — with decisive compassion and prayerfulness.
ON THE Feast of the Transfiguration 2025, as we approach the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the Second World War, we might dedicate ourselves to working for reconciliation in situations of conflict, playing a part, however small. Where possible, we will accept the challenge to model forgiveness in situations of hate.
We might sharpen our resolve to work for those robbed of human rights, seeking 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 power of paradox published by Wipf & Stock at £19 (Church Times Bookshop £17.10); 979-8-3852-4413-3.
