Transfiguration, 1500-1549 Victoria and Albert Museum
Saturday, December 14, 2024
Sirach 48:1-11
Psalm 80:1-3, 14-18
Matthew 17:9-13
In a March 9, 2012 article, Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer, New York Times travel writer, Eric Weiner discusses the lure of travelling to “thin places,”“locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine.” These places are disorienting, he says, precisely because they “transform us – or, more accurately, unmask us. In thin places, we become our more essential selves.”
In Matthew 17:9-13, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a “thin place” on a high mountain where Jesus is transfigured: His divinity is unmasked in the company of the prophets Moses and Elijah. Not only is Jesus transfigured in this instance, but Peter, James and John are revealed in their essential selves as being in a close personal relationship with this divine Jesus. Not unlike what our response might have been, the threesome is disoriented and collapsed on the ground with fear, at which point, Jesus touches them and says, “Get up! Don’t be afraid.”
This season of Advent clearly invites us to visit our own “thin places,” where, waiting in silence, we anticipate the birth of the divine Jesus in our lives. May your travels through your “thin places” this Advent enrich you with peace and inspiring wisdom!
– Cate McBurney
