Jesus Was a Gift
On this last Sunday after Epiphany, as we prepare ourselves for the season of Lent, it is a surprise to jump from the early days of Jesus’ ministry to this Transfiguration story, which is quite late in the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus goes up a mountain with three of the disciples, and while up there, Jesus is transformed in a way that shows his divinity. This same man who walked the dusty roads with Peter, James, and John is now in a sparkling white robe, his face aglow, and now has two of the ancient prophets, Moses and Elijah, flanking him.
I don’t know what the disciples expected when they started up that mountain, but I would bet that it wasn’t this. God’s divinity shows up in unexpected ways.
It can be as subtle as noticing a little snowdrop flowering in the remnants of the past two weeks’ snow and ice. It can be as obvious as a beautiful sunlit afternoon. It can be as mysterious as a message from someone you haven’t heard from in a while, but whose contact fills your heart with the realization that you needed this. It can be as moving as extraordinary music that takes your breath away.
In these days before we enter the contemplative and penitential season of Lent, when we examine our hearts and souls to learn how we might better be followers of Christ, it is useful to see the signs of the divinity of God, because the divinity of God is expressed to us in all ways and in all times as love.
And don’t we need that sense of being loved and being beloved these days?
We may wonder about how we fit into the strange world we inhabit these days, but knowing that we are loved, loved enough to see the signs of it, is both a comfort and an inspiration. If we are so loved, how can we love others? If God knows us so deeply that God is willing to show us a little bit of who we are by those messages of grace, that is fuel for our work of loving others.
On Valentine’s Day, we tend to give gifts to our beloveds. Perhaps breakfast in bed, perhaps a box of chocolates and a card, perhaps some other mark of our love and appreciation. One person I know built a beautiful greenhouse for his spouse, something he had promised her a decade earlier, but didn’t have the resources to do. Now that he did, he made her the greenhouse she had longed for, with decorative elements that showed that he knew what his wife would like.
You could even say that this man’s gift, as with those other gifts I mentioned, are an outward and visible sign of inward and deeply felt love. Just as we say that sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, we can say that open-hearted gifts are sacramental, too.
In a way, Jesus revealing his divinity to his disciples in such a dramatic fashion was a gift of love. He spoke in a manner that fascinated them and sometimes confused them, yet now they could actually see what he was suggesting: Jesus was a gift of God’s love for God’s people.
In this time of wondering what will happen next – and I am hoping that nothing that happens next is snow and ice – we can see the sacrament of God’s love, and in a thousand different ways. And with the strength imparted by that love, we can share that love with others and show them that we will be strong in that love together. The outward and visible sign of love that we show others, that sacramental love, offers those whom we meet the hope that is in us, and that can only be for our common good.
Be blessed and be a blessing,
Mary+
