Pastor Hugh's Monthly Meditation
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Transfiguration:
Groping Towards the Light
Matthias Grunewald, c. 1511.,
An Apostle from the Transfiguration, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden
This piece is by Matthias Grunewald. Drawn with black chalk on brownish paper with a little white to create highlights, Grunewald depicts one of the three apostles who accompanied Jesus on his journey up the mountain of Transfiguration. Whether this is Peter, James or John, I don't know. It seems like an artist's sketch made in preparation for the actual work itself.
The drawing is stark. It depicts the moment immediately following God's command echoing from the overshadowing cloud, "This is my Son, the Beloved listen to him!" We know that the apostles all had the same response to those words—they fell to the ground in terror. It portrays that fear.
Yet I see something more than mere fear resulting from an awesome (in the true sense of that word) encounter with the divine. I see a kind of struggle, perhaps even a crawling forward. The apostle seems to be reaching for something. (Or is he trying to ward off something terrible, to defend himself from something unknown and unknowable?) He looks to be groping around blindly. It's hard to say for sure.
Epiphany is the season between Christmas and Lent. It is intended as a time of growth—spiritual growth. It is a season of light and enlightenment. It begins with the celebration of the journey of those unknown wise men who were drawn to the light of the newborn King of kings. It ends in the blinding light of the Transfiguration. It is all about the manifestation—that is, the making visible, real and known—of the "true Light that was coming into the world."
How do we make the light of Christ shine in our lives? How do we manifest the love and reality of God to those about us? Most of us, and I include myself here, grope about for meaning and understanding in a world too complex to be fully understood.
Perhaps the answer is that we begin by groping and reaching and yearning for fuller understanding. Paul reminds us in Romans 8:26 that "the [Holy] Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."
We search in the darkness of our ignorance, but we are never alone in that search. If we ask, our Lord will indeed reach out, touch us gently, calm our fears, lift us to our feet and guide us into his light, love and life.
I think I now know what the apostle is reaching for—Jesus' own outstretched hand.
Hugh R. B. Haffenreffer
Pastor
February 2006
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