Transfiguration: The perspective from a Bolivian mountaintop

This is the text of the sermon I preached at Trinity United Church on Sunday about Transfiguration: an alteration, and things are never the same again.

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they say no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

What really happened that day on the mountaintop?

Was it a physical event so real that anyone who had been there would have seen it and been awed by it? Or was it more like a “vision,” like the Matthew version of this story suggests? Were Peter, James and John alone with this vision of a dazzling Jesus, so that others on the mountaintop have seen Jesus as just a man, praying?

I don’t know, so if you’re looking to me for a definitive answer, I’ll have to disappoint you. I’ll leave that for you to ponder at your own comfort level.

But something happened.

Maybe it was a little of both. And I know that there are people here today who can relate to what Peter, James and John experienced. Local author, Robert Sibley, calls it “glimpses of the underglimmer,” and Marcus Borg, among others, calls it a “thin place.” I know because I’ve talked to many of you who have experienced ordinary moments that have a shimmering overlayer of extraordinary. Through the soaring notes of an operatic aria, a still moment beside an ancient tree in the woods, a deep look into the eyes of a deer, or even a wild dance to Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” have led some of us to experience ordinary moments that have a crackling overlayer of extraordinary.

When we experience these moments, our rational brains struggle with it. We have to acknowledge the ordinary physical aspects of it. “It’s just a deer,” we say. Or, “It’s only music.” We know it’s ordinary, but we also know—we just know—there’s something more.

When we’re comfortable with it, when we can acknowledge the ordinary and surrender to the extraordinary, we enjoy the full balance of both.

Before I left for Bolivia, Ellie pulled me aside and said, “I’ve had to change my travel plans. Would you be able to preach about your experiences with Habitat?”

“Sure,” I said. “Give me the scripture for the day, and I’ll see how it fits.”

Ellie gave me the lectionary materials about Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountaintop, and I didn’t think it exceptional. Later that day I finally had the time to begin to research the community in Bolivia where I would be working. The first Google image that appeared when I typed in “Cochabamba, Bolivia” was of Jesus on a mountain. And not just any mountain: La montaña San Pedro, or Saint Peter’s mountain.

That was the first epiphany moment. A chill run up my spine and the hair on my arms stand up.

It had a “meant-to-be-edness about it.

As you can imagine, the word “transfiguration” ran as a daily undercurrent as I worked in Cochabamba. But I was having trouble putting together the ever-present giant Jesus there with the idea of Transfiguration. Something altered so that nothing is the same again. What did it all mean? For Peter? For me? For you? What was I supposed to come back and tell you? Was I supposed to say anything at all? After all, Jesus told his friends: “Tell no one.” Tell no one? What was I supposed to do about that when I was scheduled to come and preach here?

And, you know, the glowing presence of Jesus on the mountaintop is almost inescapable in Cochabamba. He is called El Cristo de la Concordia, or Christ of the Concord. Jesus helping people to work together in harmony. The statue stands to the east of the city, so you can actually determine if you’re going the right direction according to Jesus. If he’s on your right, you know you’re going north. You can’t see Jesus all the time, but you catch glimpses of him between buildings as you move along the streets. On our bus ride to our building site, we would call out, “I see Jesus!” Standing on street corners in conversation, you would suddenly notice Jesus over the shoulders of your friends. An avid athlete in our group often went running in the mornings, and she returned to breakfast one day saying, “Today I ran all the way to Jesus.”

Here in Canada, if someone says, “Jesus is always with us,” they mean it metaphorically. In Cochabamba, it’s true.

n fact, I didn’t keep a statistical count, but it’s possible that I might have heard the word “Jesus” more in 2 weeks in Cochabamba than I have for the past decade here at Trinity. Jesus was everywhere there, but (and here’s something for you to ponder) where is Jesus in this room? Do you see him? Where is Jesus in this building?

We are a church that focuses on “life as lived like Jesus” rather than Jesus the icon.

Our church is consistently among the top three givers per capita to Mission and Service in the Ottawa Presbytery. We are known as a justice church. We are known as a mystical church. We strive for the charitable, justice-seeking, mystical life of Jesus.

But we don’t seem to need physical reminders of him to do that.

I was familiar with the Transfiguration story before my trip to Bolivia–I had taught it in Sunday School–and I had always thought of it as a “Jesus” experience. Something happened to Jesus on the mountain that day.

But when I immersed myself in what is a third-person telling of events, and as I stood on a mountaintop at the feet of the world’s largest representation of Jesus glowing, dazzling white in the South American sun, I realized that, for my purposes, the story is really about a witnessed experience. I started to think of the Transfiguration as more than something that happened to Jesus, but as something that happened in the presence of Jesus.

Because, while I’d like to report that when I stood at the feet of the awesome representation of Jesus, the skies parted, a voice spoke to me and I crossed the threshold into another dimension. Wouldn’t that have been convenient? But that didn’t happen. Jesus was just there.

Nothing was happening to Jesus, but something certainly was happening in the presence of Jesus.

The ten members of our Habitat for Humanity team straggled into Cochabamba from our homes across Canada. We arrived jet-lagged and fighting the thin air at altitude. Only 3 of us had ever done anything like this before, so we drove to our first day on the work site nervously.

The only people in Cochabamba more apprehensive than we, were the Bolivian masons awaiting us on the site. While Habitat has architects and masons that they work with regularly, in this case, the masons were acquaintances of the homeowner and had never worked with a Habitat team before.

It’s safe to say that when Bolivian masons seek labourers for their job sites, they don’t seek women. If only I could accurately portray to you the expression on the faces of our Bolivian mason co-workers when they saw a team comprised of 8 Canadian women and 2 men walk onto their build site.

We could pick up the vibe that said, “How on earth are we going to work with these people?” from 50 paces.

The barriers seemed insurmountable. Cultural differences. Language differences. Gender issues.

Daniel, the Habitat for Humanity volunteer coordinator for Bolivia, stepped in to translate, relay orders and smooth things over. Within half an hour, we were mixing mortar, cutting rebar, shovelling dirt and moving rocks. The ten of us did in one day what would have taken the Bolivian workers without us, well, ten times longer.

For our part, we felt fantastic. We all had the same reason for being there, and it drove us to work joyfully. We laughed and chatted. We savoured the reward of physical labour. We worked side by side with the family who would be living in the house, and we created their home with the same loving care they did.

At the end of the first day, Felix, the main mason on the site, our maestro, saw how much we had accomplished–far more than he had expected–and he felt our infectious joy. He quietly told Daniel that he would miss us when we left.

Each hour, each day, we became more and more comfortable with each other.

By Wednesday, Felix started to arrive on the work site each morning smiling and calling out, “¡Buenos días, mis maestros!” By Thursday, the masons were doing yoga with us in the park on our lunch break. By Saturday, Felix’s admiration for our teamwork and his appreciation for our contribution had grown to such an extent that he invited us to be a part of a centuries-old Quechua tradition with his family. In six days, we had gone from “How on earth will I work with these people?” to being included, embraced, and blessed.

Miraculous.

The following Wednesday, when we completed our stay, an emotional Felix cried and gave each of us a bracing hug. The members of the family who would be living in the home cried and told us that we would be honourary members of their family forever. We all cried. Such a powerful bond in such a short time. Miraculous.

I don’t know if outsiders walking past the build site would have been able to see the glow as we cried and hugged each other—perhaps we just looked ordinary—but we glowed, alright, in a crackling extraordinary moment.

Nothing had happened to Jesus, the Christ of the Concord, solemnly watching over all of us as we worked together in harmony, but something had happened in the presence of Jesus.

But, let’s get real for a moment.

ll those centuries ago on an unknown mountaintop as Jesus stood infused in dazzling light, below him in the communities of his time, most people went about their business, oblivious. The people in those communities would have faced some of the same societal challenges that Bolivia does today. The disease in Jesus’ time was leprosy. In Bolivia I heard about HIV/AIDS. Poverty is rampant now, as it was then. Echoes of the patriarchal society of Jesus’ time can be see today in Bolivia.

So the transformational experience of a few on a mountaintop does not translate to the masses. For most people in Jesus’ time it was “same old, same old.” For most people around us in Cochabamba, it is “same old, same old.”

So, how do we balance the ordinary with the extraordinary?

How do I come away from a week in Bolivia where I witnessed the miracle of the melding of two cultures without feeling discouraged about all the work that still needs to be done?

This question, I think, lies at the root of Jesus’ instruction to his disciples not to tell anyone. This was after his third year of ministry. He had already been reported to heal the sick, walk on water and feed the masses. Perhaps he was getting a little publicity shy. Perhaps his advice was the ancient version of today’s, “Let’s not Tweet about this one, shall we?”

Because not everyone buys into epiphanies.

With each new extraordinary account of Jesus, suspicions about him grew in some quarters. Some people thought he was gifted. Others thought he was crazy. Would Jesus want everyone to know that he was talking to dead people?

Or maybe Jesus knew that the timing and the audience had to be just right. Anyone who has experienced these “thin place” moments knows that they aren’t stories to tell to just anyone at anytime. First, words can’t adequately describe them. No matter how eloquent we are, when we try to grasp the quality of the experience through words, it sounds lame. And, if we decide to share our experiences with cynical friends, they think we’re a little crazy.

We can assume that Peter, James and John eventually did tell the story, because we can read about it in three different accounts in the New Testament. But we’re still not really clear on what the special quality of that moment was, because words fail. And chances are good that plenty of people thought Peter, James and John were a little crazy.

But still they shared.

All these years later you and I can try to find a way to balance the ordinary with the glimpses of the underglimmer in order to find hope.

True, there are still many people in Bolivia without adequate housing. But one family has a home that they lovingly built with us.

True, masons in Bolivia still won’t look to women to populate their labour force. But the masons we worked with will work with other Habitat teams, and when they do, the bridges between culture and gender will be just a little shorter.

True, the unsteady relationship between Spanish influence, indigenous culture and North American presence in Bolivia will continue. But in 2012 a small group of people opened a small door to greater understanding.

When we’re comfortable with it, when we acknowledge the ordinary, and we surrender to the glimpses of the miraculous, we can welcome the full balance of both.  In our own small way we can make one small difference in one small corner of the world, and then transfiguration continues.

An alteration, and things are never the same again.

Getting off the hamster wheel

From The Background Story: We Write the Stories You Will Never Tell Vol. 2 Ch. 2 P. 16.

We were going too fast but not getting anywhere.
We moved only when we stopped.

———

If you really want to get somewhere, and I mean somewhere, not across town to your dentist appointment or to the grocery store before closing, maybe you need to stop.

Valentine’s Day: What’s love got to do with it?

“Is your husband romantic?” one female member of my Habitat team asked.

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “He gives me flowers for no reason, and when our family is together for dinner, we eat with music and candlelight every night.”

Silence.

More silence.

Surprised by the reaction, I looked at the faces of the women across from me. I saw disbelief, and envy.

“Every night?” another woman finally asked. (It’s true. Except for Stanley Cup finals, Grey Cup, Superbowl and occasional nacho feasts in front of a Sens game.)

This conversation took place over dinner during my recent Habitat for Humanity build in Bolivia—a land of Latin American passionate love, of serenades and amorous wooing—the romantic ideal. The problem is, that romantic notion of love sometimes comes with a dark side: sexual exploitation and a sense of proprietary ownership.

Nothing romantic about that.

We think we want the idealized romantic kind of love that people try to cram all into one day on Valentine’s Day,  but the kind of romance we really want doesn’t fall all on one day in a chocolate box. It brushes up against us in moments of quiet surprise. It startles us into spontaneous laughter and abandon. It embraces us in a tight, supportive hug when we sob from life scraped raw. It doesn’t lead to expectations, disappointments or loneliness.

When I thought about it, I regretted the reflex to say that my husband was romantic because of flowers, music and candles. I appreciate those things. I really do. (My husband loves to create occasions for celebration. “Let’s have champagne. It’s Tuesday!”) But I only appreciate those things because they are part of a healthy balance. The real romance in my life comes when my soul glows in response to action selflessly taken.

Like when my husband:

• Spent evenings carrying our baby daughter in a Snugglie so I could attend night classes at university.
• Took the snake out of the cottage bathroom at 3:00 a.m. without any remarks about my snake phobia.
• Bought sanitary napkins when I was too sick to get to the store.
• Squeezed the hand of a dying friend and told him that he would do his best to look out for the family.
• Taught Little League players proper batting stance.
• Broke the news to his mother that she couldn’t live in her own home anymore and then held her when she collapsed and sobbed.
• Earned a Master degree in his fifties while working full-time, looking after his mother, coaching baseball, coaching hockey, etc., etc.
• Lead me into adventures by saying “Let’s take this road and see where it goes” when we travelled through Europe.
• Perched on kindergarten chairs during parent-teacher interviews.
• Changed diapers. (That one’s important.)
• Bragged about me to friends and coworkers.
• Made me laugh when I was feeling down.
• Took on all the family responsibilities so I could go to Bolivia for two and a half weeks.

Nothing contrived or confined. Effortless romance.

Whether it’s telling the same story over and over (and over) again to keep family history alive, or doing the middle-of-the-night run to the emergency room with a feverish child, my husband’s real romance arises out of his respect for me and his support for my work. It doesn’t come from the idealized romantic love of Valentine’s Day, but from courageously doing the hard stuff that just needs to be done, and from allowing me to be the person I am.

Give, and it will be given to you

As our Habitat for Humanity team worked together over the past two weeks, we had plenty of time to chat. We talked about our homes, our families and our hobbies. But there was one thing we never had to discuss: our reason for being half way around the world helping someone we had never met build a house. All of us knew that we were here for the same reason.

Compassion.

Compassion is one of my favourite words. I’m a signatory on The Charter for Compassion. And well-known theologian, Marcus Borg, believes that the word “love” in the Bible would better be translated as “compassion.” (Can you imagine how many marriages would improve if people promised to have compassion for their spouses instead of to love them?)

With all the people on our team working from this foundation of compassion, a miracle occurred. A vacant lot became the garden for growth of cultural understandings, gender appreciation, and, of course, a new home. When we held our good-bye celebration at the build site, tears flowed freely. We shared long, warm hugs with people from a different culture and with a different language we had met a mere 10 days earlier. The small building lot glowed with joy and heartfelt respect.  

I will return to Canada on a high created by the joy of helping a terrific family. I will never forget a Quechua mason brought to tears during his farewell speech. I will never forget the family standing on the sidewalk waving at our bus as we drove away.

We gave a little money. We gave a little time. And we got  back so much more than we gave.

“Inspirated” by 3 rituals

English was not the first language of our tour guide. He said, “The people of Cochabamba really wanted to finish the Jesus statue. They were inspirated.” 

I loved his new take on the word inspired.

He used the word when telling the story of El Cristo de la Concordia, the biggest representation of Jesus in the world. Cochabamba planned the statue as a tribute to the Pope during his visit in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the builders could not complete the statue on time, so when the Pope arrived he saw a Jesus only up to the chest. But the people of Cochabamba made a pledge to complete the work, and everyone pulled together to finish the task. Hence the name El Cristo de la Concordia—Jesus of the Concord. Jesus brought people together to work in harmony.

Jesus is a powerful presence in Cochabamba.

He appears in and around buildings as you drive on city streets. You catch glimpses of him in the background when you least expect it. In Cochabamba you can’t help but have the feeling that Jesus has your back. And on a Sunday morning, people from Cochabamba travel to San Pedro mountain to spend time with Jesus, some climbing 1250 steps to do so.

The people on our Habitat for Humanity team have many different opinions about Jesus. Some have deep faith and took some time alone for personal reflection with him at the top of San Pedro mountain. Others are Christian but in a remote kind of way. Others were just standing beside a big statue. But no matter how each one felt personally about the Sunday morning experience, all felt honoured and blessed to be part of it. We were inspirated.

But there is another powerful presence in Cochabamba.

As often as you catch glimpses of Jesus in this city, you will see people in traditional Quechua or Aymara dress. Thousands of years of indigenous culture thrive in this very Roman Catholic city. The Christian tradition imported by the Spaniards intertwines with the native traditions grown out of the Bolivian soil. in this picture, a Quechua woman boards the cable car to see Jesus:

Felix, the mason on our work site, is Quechua.

After we had worked together on the Habitat house for a week, Felix became so comfortable with us that he invited us to be part of a Quechua tradition. The Quechua let their daughters’ hair grow uncut until it is time for a hair-cutting ceremony. At that time, all the hair is cut off as a way to bring blessings and stronger, more beautiful hair to the child.

It was time for the hair-cutting ceremony of Felix’s four-year-old daughter. All of the girls’ hair must be cut—but not by the parents. For her, each member of our team took a turn snipping off a piece of her hair. None of us had ever taken part in such a ceremony before, but when we looked at the beaming faces of Felix and his wife, we felt honoured and blessed to be included in such a meaningful event in their lives. We were inspirated.

And we brought with us our Canadian presence to Cochabamba. 

Our team thought that it would be meaningful to place a Lucky Loonie in the house as a symbol of good luck for the family. We asked them if they would be comfortable with that, and they agreed. “Por suerte,” they said. For luck.

In the soil at the threshold of their home, we placed a Lucky Loonie that will be sealed in cement to stay with them forever. The family had never heard of our Canadian Lucky Loonie tradition, but they felt honoured and blessed to be included in our ritual. They were inspirated.

Over one weekend, our team took part in three rituals.

Each one had different history and culture behind it, but each one fed a common human need for ritual. 

We were inspirated together.

Overcoming cultural differences

You would not have wasted your money if you had paid admission to see the looks on the faces of the Bolivian construction workers when our Canadian Habitat for Humanity team of 8 women and 2 men arrived at the building site on our first day.

Apprehension. Hesitation. Discomfort. A little fear, maybe.

But staff and volunteers from Hábitat para la Humanidad Bolivia were there to translate, smooth things over and assign tasks. Within half an hour, we were mixing mortar, moving rocks and shovelling dirt. By the end of the day,  hesitation was gone and Felix, our maestro (the head mason) told us he would cry when we left.

Now, four days later, Felix walks into the site in the morning with a big smile and a cheery, “¡Buenos días, mis maestros!” We laugh together. We even do yoga in the park together. Many cultural differences still exist, but we found our common humanity.

When people from two different cultures come together they instinctively seek the common ground.

This week we went to visit two homes affiliated with Niños con Valor (Valuable Children), an organization that provides loving homes for abandoned children in Cochabamba. Most of the people on our Habitat team speak little or no Spanish (mine is very rusty), and none of the children speak English, but with gestures and guessing games we communicated.

I noticed a list of all the children’s birthdays on the wall, so I walked over to have a look. A little girl stood beside me and pointed to her birthday on the schedule. It was the same day as mine. ”¡Este es mi cumpleaños tambien!” I said. Her eyes lit up and we looked into each other’s eyes with joy over our common connection. She gave me a big hug. Another woman on our team sat and spoke with a girl over dinner. Their connection? They had the same first name.

I noticed as we talked and played with the children that our conversations led us to seek the common ground. Did we like the same sports? Play the same musical instruments? Like the same kind of books? We already knew that there are many differences. We wanted to find out in what ways we are the same.

We can expect apprehension, hesitation, discomfort and a little fear, maybe, when confronted with cultural differences.

But it’s good to know that when we find our common ground we can move on from there, and it sure doesn’t take long.