Last Sunday, I went full science-nerd on you. Talking about particles and atoms and the interconnected, interrelated nature of everything. In light of the Transfiguration, let’s do it again!

I love Simon Peter. He’s my kind of guy. Always free with his opinion. Usually wrong. But he keeps at it. Today he’s with his fellow disciples, and his teacher and friend Jesus. Jesus who called him away from his fishing job. Jesus who healed his mother in-law. Jesus who intrigues Peter. It’s hard to figure out just where Jesus is coming from. Jesus messes with Peter’s categories and boxes.

Peter is on a prayer retreat on a mountain top. And something happens. It’s hard to explain. Jesus shines with light. Moses and Elijah talk to Jesus. Peter immediately wants to stay there. Peter’s view is transformed. Transfigured. He sees Jesus for who he really is. The scripture says that Peter, James, and John were terrified. They hear the words Jesus heard at his baptism.

The Greek word for “terrified” appears only once in the Bible, and it’s right here. “Ekphobos” is an adjective which combines “ek” meaning “wholly out” and “phobos” which we know means “fear” because it becomes “phobia.”[1] They were out of their minds. Peter is extremely fearful, but his response is hospitality. It must be why Jesus picked him. When push-comes-to-shove, Peter wants what’s best for his teacher, leader, and friend. His friend who becomes something else right before his eyes.

I’ve had these transfiguration happen on more than a few occasions. These moments are hard to explain. They seem so… complex and simple at the same time. It causes me to use broad brush strokes about people that I don’t think are initially helpful or understood right away. The best way to get at it is through science. The movie What the Bleep Do We Know?![2] talks about Quantum Physics  but what really floored me was an experiment that tried to determine if Light was a particle or a wave.

Particles are what we spoke about last Sunday. Little constantly moving things smaller than atoms that have bizarre qualities. Some scientists thought that light would be nothing but electron particles, because they’re so energized and fast. Think of sub-atomic marbles bouncing around. Those are the particles that can travel 47,000 times around a 4-mile circle in under a second.

When the scientists ran the experiment looking for light as a particle, that’s exactly what they got. Light behaved as a particle.

Yet some scientists believed that light would better be studied as a wave. Waves are dynamic disturbances… energy that moves along a wavelength and has a velocity. These are different from the subatomic marbles of particles, and instead would be like ripples in a pond.

When scientists ran the experiment looking for light as a wave, that’s exactly what they got. Light behaved like a wave.[3]

Wait a second. It can’t be both, can it?! Light changes from a particle to a wave depending on what the observer is looking for. This is a confounding paradox. I like what Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman stated, “The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feelings of what reality ought to be.”[4]

As you know, I love to brood. I’m a navel gazer. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that I’m made that way. It takes a lot for me to look up, and get out of my own head. I love putting people and things in categories. It’s safer that way. I hate snakes and are labeled under fear. Cantaloupe is one of the few foods labeled gross for me. I have tested these labels, and they have held true for decades. Sometimes things are labeled for a reason. Our species wouldn’t have survived this long without labels to help us survive. That red berry and that thing that slithers on the ground don’t react well with humans. Danger. Stay away.

Yet sometimes we get our categories wrong. Or we meet people who are in multiple boxes.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. Specifically my grandpa. I was told that my grandma was very fragile. She had rheumatoid arthritis that twisted her hands in ways that were painful to look at and more painful to have. I thought I should keep my distance. Being the only grandson at the time, a rambunctious boy would easily injure her. Grandpa, therefore, must be the tougher one who could handle me.

No one taught me these labels directly. I just picked them up. Someone once stated, “Most values are caught, not taught.” This is something I caught from life. Then I found out that my grandpa was having an affair. My grandma left my grandpa. It was a stressful time as my grandpa raged. We moved my grandma to a women’s shelter. She was there for a few months until my grandpa calmed down. My grandma then moved to an apartment complex not too far from my high school. I was able to stop by and spend a lot of time with grandma after school.

I really treasure those afternoons in her wood-paneled apartment. We’d watch Rosie O’Donnell’s show. I would run out and get her favorites, Wendy’s Chili and Diet Rite. One day, I showed my grandma a poem or story I had written for English class that the teacher had shared with the whole class. I wasn’t the best student, but I could write. I was happy to share this rare occurrence of scholarship with my grandma.

Then she brought out her notebook. It was full of poems. Original poems of heartbreak. Of a marriage she fought to stay in for 40 years. She worked at it. She opened up about the true nature of her relationship to grandpa that day. How she knew she needed to be divorced and how she never wanted to be. A strange mix of love and hate, promise and disappointment.

It was a mountain-top experience for me. This woman whom I had labeled fragile had an inner core of steel. A strength I had not fathomed. She was transfigured. My categories fell away.

I learned that day that true strength lies in vulnerability. There is power in confession. Art is an amazing way to get at the paradox of our existence.

My grandma suffered so much abuse. Not because she was weak, but because he was. Maybe the war messed him up. Maybe he was always paranoid, it just went undiagnosed. I can only ponder as they are both gone now.

We are layered and complex people. Sometimes, rarely; we see each other for who we actually are. Sometimes we reach a mountain-top experiences and people shine. I saw it with my children a few Sundays past as they sang for our special music. These souls that Kate and I brought into the world are their own little worlds. We can see echoes of ourselves in their lives, but they are wholly themselves and beyond us. They are mysteries we get to discover… and get frustrated with and wonder why can’t they pick up their socks or turn the lights off…. But greater mysteries to be entered into.

Because that’s what good mysteries do. They draw us in. And things aren’t mysterious because we don’t know the answer… it’s just that there are multiple answers! Light is both particle and wave. WHAT?! How?! God is both three-and-one. That makes no sense! Life is seemingly chaos and shouldn’t exist, and it is also completely ordered and does exist. The fact that our math works in the first place is a miracle we need to spend more time with. If everything was completely chaotic, math wouldn’t work. But it does, and we just put another rover on Mars!

We cannot stay on that mountaintop though. Peter wanted to. In his terror, he wants to stay there. But he has to go down the mountain and into the valley. Mountaintops are cool and all, but it’s hard to live there. Life is in the valley.

Mountaintops are clean. Not much lives up there. Maybe that’s why it’s often a thin spot. People make journeys up there to get away from the day-to-day chaos. I remember once when I was studying abroad. I just couldn’t make sense of where things were in this little Austrian town we were visiting. We took a hike up a mountain and from that view, yeah… I could make sense of the town from the view from above. But then I had to go back down and live in the confusing streets again.

Life is a lot like that. Yet there are times when God breaks in. Surprises us. Upends our thinking. Shows us the bigger story. This is the perichorietic nature of reality. That’s a fancy theological term that’s used for the Trinity. It’s a Greek word meant to convey the idea of “two sides of the same coin.” Peri- means “around,” chorea references a “dance.” We are dancing around one another in relationship. We are on the dance floor of life, moving in a dynamic way.

It points to the truth that life is for the living. I often put things in boxes in my mind. But living things don’t go in boxes. Dead things do. Living things move. They are dynamic. We are in relationship with others, dancing our way through life. It’s an amazing thing to discover that your grandma is human. She has her own dance, some of which involves being your grandma. She moved her own way through life. She was luminous and vibrant and lives on within me. I am still connected to her. Reminded of her. Sometimes I wish I could call or send a card but then catch myself and think, “She already knows.”

That’s the Transfiguration. Clear as mud? Good. If it were neat and clean, it wouldn’t be living.

We follow a Living God. Still active in our lives and in our world. Our relationship with God should be at times comforting. At times terrifying. Clear and confusing. Close and distant. Just like our other relationships in our lives. Sometimes something will cause the veil to drop, and we have moments of transcendence. I often get these through Van Gogh paintings, soaring guitar solos, searing poetry, and great stories that transport me. Afternoon hikes with friends or sitting around a firepit.

Anywhere really. Maybe you have, too. I wonder where you’ve had that feeling of everything dropping away, and you discovered a transformed view.

The first Sunday in Lent taught us that we are, in the words of Dr King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” This week teaches us that this network isn’t a static and dead thing. It’s a dynamic and living paradox where things can be multiple things at once depending on how you view it.

This is good news. It might cause us to reframe our view. What we think we categorized as “this bad thing that happened to me” can be reframed, revisited and we discover a transformed view: “this event taught me this.” Because of this thing that happened, I now have more compassion. These folks are on my radar.

Once one of you told me a story of how someone was making fun of folks with disabilities. And you were able to offer a counter viewpoint of your relationship with those with disabilities. To be a voice of inclusion. To remind that someone of love already within their life that their prejudice was overlooking. You said to me, “They really didn’t hate. They were just being lazy.” What a compassionate way to hold that person.

I’m often like that. I’m often lazy in my thinking. I have enough going on. Why challenge my well-reasoned prejudices? Because we’ll miss the transcendent moments. Why were only Peter, James, and John up there with Jesus? The others might have had other things to do. They thought that Jesus would hold another prayer retreat. Something else came up for them. Only three were able to make it, and look what happened.

I’m one of six people who got to be Betty Hite Benish’s grandchildren. What a gift! There are only three people on the planet who got to have her as a mom. If you happen to visit Dennison you might come across a Rosie the Riveter mural dedicated to my grandma’s memory. It’s not the flexing Rosie. This is Rosie taking a break, eating a sandwich. Rosie is strong. Putting in the hard work. As hard as the iron girder she sits upon. She’s also enjoying her life. My grandma got to spend the last years of her life free. Each year she healed a little more and was in a positive mental space. Some might have called her an abused woman. Or a fragile person due to her hands. But she was much more than that. She was an experience. A gift from God. A mystery that I’m still experiencing and in relationship with.

Because that’s the thing about mysteries. We keep asking “What does this mean?” and we keep finding more and more things. We can’t capture it. It has lots of meaning, and some of those things seem to be downright contradictory to other answers. Life is a paradox. Like light being particle and wave. My grandma being weak and strong; abused and victorious. Life is a paradox.

And that’s what makes it interesting.

My grandma spent a few weeks in a women’s shelter. We need those in each and every community. It’s important work. Work that my family benefited from. She was more than that label. We all are. For my response, I’m donating to the Medina Women’s Shelter and invite you to do the same to a cause you care about. I also understand that we’re Congregationalists and you are free to do whatever you want.

That’s what makes it interesting! Thanks be to God. Amen.

Works Cited

^[1][1] https://biblehub.com/greek/1630.htm

^[2][2] https://youtu.be/pCWvRI8G5s4

^[3][3] This was discovered by Thomas Young in 1801 in the famous “double-slit experiment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

^[4][4] For more on particle/wave duality and the Professor Feynman quote, click here: https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-wave-particle-duality-7414