It’s the Transfiguration. Jesus, Peter, James, and John are up on the mountain. During a time of prayer, the Lord’s appearance begins to change. His face and his clothes. Jesus becomes dazzling white. Two other men appear out of nowhere. It is Moses and Elijah who show up there with the resplendent Jesus. They show up with their own glow. We’re told they were talking about his departure which would happen at Jerusalem, which means they came to talk with Jesus about his suffering and death. Peter wants to build three booths, one for each of the radiant figures. “It is good for us to be here” he proclaims. It’s all good. While Peter was enjoying the moment a cloud comes in and completely engulfs the mountaintop conversation. Out the cloud comes a voice, “This is my Son, My Chosen; listen to him!” With the sound of the voice still hanging in the air, the other two who had their own shine to them, they were suddenly gone. Jesus was found alone. Alone there with Peter, James, and John. They dared not say a word. They kept silent.

            It’s the Transfiguration. And pretty much everything about it is beyond our comprehension. Everything about the Transfiguration is outside the realm of our experience. Everything about it is a challenge to the imagination. A countenance that suddenly has a shine that words can’t really explain. A conversation of biblical proportion; that Hall of Fame meeting of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. A fast-moving well timed cloud that covers just about everything and everyone. A mysterious voice that comes from, or in, or above, or all around that cloud. Then as suddenly as it all started, it all goes away. And plain old Jesus is left there with the three disciples who have no idea what to say.

            Of course they kept silent. It’s all such “bible-ly stuff”, the Transfiguration. It’s all that strange world of the bible where voices come from clouds and from burning bushes, where water comes from a rock and manna falls from heaven, and a star in the sky stands at attention as a baby is born, where Jesus walks on water or feeds a few thousand with just a few loaves and few fish or calms a raging storm. Ah, the Transfiguration, it’s one of those bizarre, has little to with us, kind of stories from the bible. Everything about it just goes a bit too far!

            Everything except one part. Everything expect one small part that only comes up when Luke tells us about the Transfiguration. It’s all so beyond us, except when it comes to falling asleep. Peter and his companions are falling asleep. Peter, James, and John, according to Luke they were weighed down with sleep. They couldn’t keep their eyes opened. They were nodding off. They just couldn’t stay awake. Talk about something we can all understand!

            A long time ago I was preaching a sermon on one of the Letters of Paul. During the sermon on the high school kids in the church stretched full out on the pew. His name happened to be Paul. Paul and I had actually spend quite a bit of time together. I guess he didn’t think I could see him laying down in the pew. Though I see everything during a sermon. So without missing a beat, right in the middle of my sermon, I leaned toward the microphone and I said, “Paul, is this really all just about sleep.” Well, Paul sat up, and lucky for me, he did come back to church week after week. Actually, many more in the congregation thought since his name was Paul, that I was somehow referencing the Apostle Paul in my sermon. Paul and sleep. Sleep crosses over, I guess.

            Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep. This wasn’t the metaphorical use of the term, as when Jesus said to his disciples in the gospel of John, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep” (meaning he had died.) This wasn’t a use of term that was theologically and poetically overflowing with double meaning, as when Jesus was about to raise the daughter of Jairus and he said to the crowd, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” Luke is just talking about sleep here, heavy eye lids, bobbing head, mouth open, drool starting, snoring soon to come sleep. The kind of sleep every single one of us can relate to.

            As in the Acts of the Apostles when Eutychus was sitting high up on the window sill as Paul just kept on preaching and preaching and preaching. Euthychus was, as recorded in scripture, “overcome with sleep.” He fell three floors and was picked up dead, they say. But there’s no symbolism there. It was sleep that got him first. Sleep might be the only thing you and I can relate to when it comes to the Transfiguration. And only Luke includes that part about sleep.

            Of course the disciples fell asleep that night in the Garden of Gethsemane too. Luke describes that as a sorrowful sleep. Luke says they were sleeping because of grief. It was not just some after dinner, way too much food and drink, I can’t even stay awake for a friend in need kind of thing. For Luke it was a sleep that came with baggage. The sleep of avoidance. The sleep of fear. The sleep of a weary and heavy-laden heart. A stop the world I want to get off kind of sleep. That night in the garden the disciples were exhausted with sorrow. That kind of sleep has resonance to it, doesn’t it? Some know that kind of sleep all too well.

            But up there at the Transfiguration, up there amid the miraculous and the mysterious, up there amid all the symbolism of Moses and the Law and Elijah and the prophets, up there with that refrain from heaven that started when Jesus was baptized by John, only to be reprised in a cloud,“This is my Son, my Beloved, listen to him!”, up there at the Transfiguration it just seems like it was ordinary, every day (or every night) kind of sleep. Peter, James and John were weighed down by the most ordinary, day by day kind of reality that you and I can imagine. They were falling asleep. So much so that some scholars suggest that Peter blurted out the stuff about three booths in a rather incoherent way like someone who speaks nonsense just this side or that side of sleep. “He didn’t know what he said” Luke defended him.

            Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep. Who can’t relate to that? They were weighed down with sleep. But since they had stayed awake, Luke points out, since they stayed awake, or when they woke up, or when they were fully awake, they saw his glory. There is a bit of give in take in the text; a bit of ambiguity in the translation. Did they hang on and just barely stay awake or did the elbow of God nudge them (like someone there in the pew nudging her husband who has this nasty habit of falling asleep at just the wrong time)? Did they fight through the urge or did God shake them a bit to wake them up just in time. Either way, they saw his glory.

            They saw his glory. Not just his changing face or his dazzling white clothes. Apparently that wasn’t enough to hold their attention. Not just the two Old Testament characters who came to discuss an exit strategy for the Son of God. Their entrance alone wasn’t enough to keep the disciples awake. Nonetheless, they saw his glory. His glory. It must have been more than a light show, more than vision, more than the indescribable holiness, more than the awesomeness of God. His glory. Glory described in John’s gospel as the glory as of a father’s only son. Glory that was full of grace and full of truth. Glory that in one instant brings teacher and prophet together there in one Lord. Glory that in that moment stretches from his birth, to his baptism, to his death, and to his resurrection. Glory that kind of shrinks time together; so that the one who told them to love their enemies, and the one who allowed the sinful woman to bathe his feet with her tears, and the one the who would teach them how to pray saying “Our Father”, and the one who would tell  them about the Good Samaritan and the one who would  call Zacchaeus out of the tree and the one who would heal the crippled woman and the one who would be crucified and yet would rise again, that kind of glory where all of that is smushed together in one person, in one time, in one place. Since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory. They saw Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Savior of the world...since they stayed awake.

            Our entree to the Transfiguration is the burden of sleep. Every one of us knows what it means to be weighed down by the most ordinary, everyday kind of reality that we can imagine. The stuff of life that is as regular and predictable as a night’s sleep. The mindless routines and the chores that come with such a mind-numbing rhythm or pace. The all-encompassing treadmill of a week that takes every ounce of energy there is to give. Weighed down, not by sorrow, or suffering, or the issues that divide us, or the darkness of the world’s violence, or despair about the future, or fear of what tomorrow may bring, but weighed down by just the nitty grittiness of the day and of the night. Like being weighed down by sleep, until your eyes fall shut and your head nods, and you collapse into a heap of indifference. Is there a greater threat to the walk of faith than our inability to stay awake?

            Pastoral conversations are very rarely predictable. But I have learned some responses and developed some listening skills over the years when it comes to someone being angry at God, or someone who feels let down by the community of faith, or someone who disagrees with what I have preached or prayed, or someone who asks really good questions about important things, or someone who expresses doubt when it comes to the things of God, or someone who is fed up with the institutional church, or someone who wants to talk about being an agnostic or an athiest. Where I have more trouble is in conversation with someone who just doesn’t seem to care, or someone who never finds the time, or someone who has just drifted away, or someone who just fills life with other things, or someone who did the faith thing and has moved on, not out of malice or really some intentional decision-making, more like entering the next phase of life, “Oh year, I used to do that sort of thing.” When I try to respond I often sound like a priest giving absolution or a recruiter trying to spark interest in the institution. Both of which probably miss the point, about the invitation, the promise, the privilege, the purpose, the joy, the salvation that comes when you see his glory.

            It’s the Transfiguration. Dazzling colors. Guest appearances from the Old Testament. A great cloud. A heavenly voice. But what it comes down to, is staying awake!

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