forest hill 
March 2, 2025
Transfiguration Sunday
“Finding the Holy”
When I stand at the brink of Niagara Falls and watch water plunge over its rim into the abyss below, I am overcome with awe at my own insignificance beside such power. Here is beauty and raw strength that knows nothing of me, and yet moves me to tears.
Standing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains has done that to me too, marvelling up at crags that have been there for thousands of years, and will outlast me for thousands more. Gaping at the northern lights last Thanksgiving was another experience of wonder that put my life, with all its struggles and striving, into humbling perspective. In the face of that kind of immense and impersonal majesty, my oh-so-human goals are trivial.
Is the awe that rises within us during that kind of encounter with raw power also part of what happens when we find something “holy?”
Maybe even more inspiring for me than the impersonal power of the northern lights, is my conviction that the God who touches our lives and our traditions with holiness is NOT impersonal; beautiful beyond belief, but NOT uncaring; powerful beyond all my imagining, but NOT oblivious to all that we are and do. Is that possible? Is that real? Can we really be a part of that?
The God who touches our lives and our traditions reaches across the Great Divide to invite us to shape our beings by an encounter with that kind of holiness. How breathtaking that this Mysterious power cares so deeply, and knows us so intimately! None of us could deserve it; all of us are welcomed into it!
“Holiness” comes from the same English root as the word “whole” – experiencing the “holy” is an invitation to become more whole ourselves – and make our lives more what they were always intended to be. Religion is a journey towards “holiness;” a journey towards “wholeness.”
When Jesus was ready to leave Galilee and begin the journey that would lead him to Jerusalem and Palm Sunday and the Cross, he took his best friends with him on a field trip into holiness. They climbed a mountain together; no doubt exclaiming along the way about how different our human lives appear when you look down at our struggles from such a height. They prayed together on that mountain. They had some kind of experience of holiness that put everything they had been doing, and everything that Jesus had been teaching, into a new light. And they saw Jesus more clearly than ever before for who he was: the partner to Moses’ laws and Elijah’s calls for compassionate and fair living; the one who shows us the glory of God; the one through whom Divine power and beauty and wholeness is manifest. Words fail to describe their experience; even the biblical story can’t capture more than a glimpse of what changed their lives that day. In some ways it sounds more like cartoon than reality.
And, of course, Jesus’ friends stumbled to respond adequately. They were as human as I am! And as inadequate! They offered to build shrines to commemorate the moment – a response that is rightly rejected as silly and unwelcome. They were humbled by their own human imperfection, and struggled with why that Mystery would need them, or care about them. God doesn’t want shrines! God wants people inspired to go back down the mountain with healing in their hands and compassion in their hearts.
It’s not an accident that the first story that follows this encounter with holiness is an opportunity to bring healing to someone who had suffered long.
We sometimes describe our religious journey in small and restrictive ways. We argue about the words to use in our ceremonies, or the price to put on our bake sale items. We wrestle with things of no consequence, and forget that we are called into Mystery beyond anything our human brains could imagine. And yet, God still reaches out: with holiness, with possibility, with conviction, with truth, with light, with wonder, with wholeness. Our lives have meaning, beyond what we could imagine. Your life has meaning like that. You matter more than you know, and wholeness is within your grasp!
Look down from the mountain top to put our human striving into its true perspective; and then learn from what you see and bring healing to all who suffer.