Sunday 2nd March – Transfiguration A

MATTHEW 17:1-9
Reach the mountain top
breathe it in, see forever,
savour this thin place.

Up to such a place
the Teacher took his closest three
and there it seemed he was
for some dumbfounding moments
gloriously changed,
sunlike, dazzling,
in conversation
with Moses the lawgiver
who’d had a radiant moment himself
on the clouded mountain of God
long ago
and Elijah, prophet par excellence.

One of the Teacher’s three companions
perhaps wanting to preserve the scene
thought to erect three dwellings
– a suggestion cut short
by a cloud of mystery descending,
but taken up, in part,
by later followers
who built a church.
And in the cloud
a word from God
declaring the Teacher, Son,
commanding he be listened to.

But what goes up
must come down
and so
with Moses and Elijah
no longer present
the four descended to the plain
back to earth
with its sickness, brokenness –
and following
even to death.
         © Jeff Shrowder, 2014.
  More for Transfiguration A…