February 14: Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
Before he ever gets around to telling the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, Luke begins our gospel passage for today by asserting that this miraculous event took place after “Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God.” In other words, Luke describes the transfiguration as happening after Peter professes his belief, in an act of love and faith, that Jesus is in fact the Messiah.
This acknowledgment by Peter that Jesus was indeed the Christ took place after Peter had had many opportunities to witness Jesus teaching, preaching and healing. Being around Jesus for awhile and participating in his ministry allowed Peter to proclaim that Jesus was the one sent by God to save God’s people. Inspired by his love for Jesus, Peter is able to profess his faith in him.
As I pondered this passage from Luke, one of the things that caught my attention was Luke’s description of the cloud that the disciples entered into before they heard the voice of God. I got to thinking about the book The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous author in the 14th century, that describes the process of getting to know God. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing is careful to say that our journey toward God must be motivated by love and not the desire to understand. He says,
“Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love […] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God.” – The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous
We all have a need to understand what this journey called life is about and just who is this God who created us and calls us to follow Jesus. Sometimes in our attempts to follow God we become too attached to the religious practices of our faith, mistakenly believing that if we act a certain way, we will please God and therefore God will bless us. Or we might get caught up in the specific portrayal of God our denomination teaches us, instead of finding out who God is for ourselves by humbly approaching God in love and in prayer.
I believe that when this happens, God usually will find a way to unsettle us, shaking us out of our preconceived notions of exactly who God is. We cannot put God in a box, much as we’d like to, much as Peter wanted to when he wanted to build a dwelling for Jesus after he witnessed Jesus transformed. God is infinitely Mystery and beyond our human attempts to understand God.
In my own life, whenever my image of God gets too tidy and neat, something that usually happens when I am exerting too much control over my own destiny, God knocks my sense of certainty out from under me and surprises me in ways I could never predict. Whenever I experience God in ways other than what I expect, my sense of humility deepens and I realize I don’t have a clue who God really is. During these times, I laugh at God’s sense of humor, and my appreciation for God’s presence in my life deepens.
What is important for me is the knowledge that God is indeed active in my life, and so is my desire to grow closer to this God who loves me and all of us. As the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, “And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest.”
I think the author of The Cloud of Unknowing was saying that we should strive after intimacy with God, not knowledge, because God is Mystery and we can never truly understand God. The author contends that intimacy with God is attainable because it is based on our experience of God who is Pure Love and who seeks relationship with us.