“In the midst of life, there is death.” This phrase takes on a reality when we are faced with the sudden death of someone who is in the full bloom of life, when someone who is alive and active one day, is dead and absent from us the next. This experience can happen to us personally or collectively.For many, a specific death on September 11 was like that. A wife kissed her husband goodbye in the morning, thinking of nothing but the ordinary, everyday thoughts we all have: I must remember to pick up the dry cleaning; or I need to make a dental appointment; or I wonder where I left my car keys—only to have her world changed forever.

And collectively, for all of us, September 11 changed the way we live. We felt vulnerable, insecure, lonely, lost.For Jesus’ disciples, His crucifixion must have felt much the same. The person who had seemed most alive to them, to whom they had looked for leadership, the one who was going to become king, the one they followed, for whom they had left their jobs, their families, was suddenly and inexplicably gone. On the day of the crucifixion, they must have felt, vulnerable and insecure, lonely and lost. But I’m getting ahead of the story. For Lent begins this Wednesday, the day we make the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes to mark our vulnerability and our dependence. During Lent we follow Jesus on His way to the cross. But today, the last Sunday before Lent begins, we find the disciples having a mountaintop experience.

Jesus took Peter and James and John up a high mountain just six days after the experience in Caeserea Philippi where Peter recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus had begun to prepare his followers for what was to come: “that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” What could this mean, they wondered? Words alone could not make them believe Jesus’ new definition of the Messiah; and the Way of the Cross would prove to be a harrowing, frightful journey which well could rob them of their nerve.

So why did Jesus invite Peter and James and John to climb the mountain with him? What did he want them to see? Some scholars believe that nothing happened on that mountain, except that the three disciples finally saw Jesus for what he was—a glory that of necessity had to remain hidden, because human eyes could not bear to have it revealed.  We read that the disciples witnessed Jesus’ glory, so that “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” As if the transfiguring light were not enough, two figures also appeared with Jesus: Moses and Elijah—the law and the prophet. We read of Moses’ mountaintop experience in our Old Testament lesson today. Elijah, too, had a mountaintop experience: he found God on Mount Horeb—not in the wind and not in the earthquake, but in the still small voice. And Moses and Elijah both had dramatic deaths. Deuteronomy tells of the lonely death of Moses on Mount Nebo. And Elijah, as the book of Second Kings reveals, left his beloved disciple Elisha and ascended to heaven in a chariot with horses of fire. The two figures who appeared with Jesus in the transfiguration had also seemed too great to die.It is easy to see how appropriate this vision of Elijah and Moses was. This tie with Jesus to the great leaders of their faith caused Peter to offer to build shelters for the three. But this was not to be, for a voice from the cloud spoke to them assuring them that Jesus was the Son of God and that they should listen to Him. And Jesus tells them not to be afraid. I believe that Jesus was very deliberate in taking these disciples with them to the mountain top. I believe that the Transfiguration empowered the disciples. It gave them hope to survive the assault of the Cross and to live by faith into the radiant light of the Resurrection, for the disciples certainly experienced death in the midst of life.

Have you ever had a transfiguring experience? That is, have you ever had a time in your life when you truly felt your faith in a way that was powerfully transforming? Maybe it was when you held your child in your arms for the very first time; maybe it was the magnificence of a sunset that overwhelmed you; maybe it was when you first realized that the person you loved, loved you back; maybe it was when you heard a great piece of music or viewed a magnificent painting; or maybe it happened in church during the Eucharist or while in prayer. Whatever it was, it was an unexpected moment, when you perceived the Presence of Christ, a brief glimpse of eternity, a moment when the barrier between Now and Then was broken. In such moments we see clearly who Christ is and what God’s presence means for our lives.

Someone recently told me of an experience that occurred while she was driving through Oklahoma, on a very flat part of the terrain. She had just driven through a violent storm, when suddenly a rainbow appeared, arching itself directly in front of her, across the road. And as she drew closer, a second rainbow appeared above it—a double rainbow with colors distinct and clear, giving her a transfiguring moment. I remember the day our son got married; as our son and his bride exchanged their vows, I felt the holiness of the day and the sunshine of their love so powerfully that I experienced a transfiguring moment. And I can recall the same emotions when I remember that moment. Whenever and wherever you have been when you have sensed that kind of transfiguration, you haven’t forgotten the experience. And revisiting that moment—looking back on it in our mind’s eye—we can use the occurrence to both sustain ourselves and to transfigure others. We can use the light that we have seen to comfort and to transform.

Let us examine our own experiences for moments of transfiguration, when our knowledge of something, our attitude to something or somebody, our relationship to our faith, was transfigured in a moment of unexpected insight. Let us search for these experiences. Then we, in our own faltering way, can accept our Lord’s invitation to climb the mountain, and return, never to be quite the same again, and to take others with us. We can, like the disciples, endure that which we don’t understand, that which brings death into the midst of life, because we have been assured of God’s immense, overwhelming love for each of us; we have experienced it. We have not only been faithful but we have experienced our faith in a real and powerful way. God wants to transform and transfigure us; let us find those moments and than allow His light shine through us, in our own lives and in the lives of others.