It comes out of the blue--an astounding word of good news. It was unexpected and unsought, as most good news is, if we stop and think about it. It comes from a completely unanticipated source. Everything about it is a jolt--nothing follows any pattern or fits any sort of normal flow. It just appears.

This is how the edict of Cyrus had to have been received by the exiled Israelites. Fifty years have passed since Israel was wiped from the maps of the world by the Babylonian army. An entire generation has lived and died far removed from their homeland. Hope of any sort of return had faded like so many of the memories of Jerusalem, the city of Zion. Only a few have kept any hope of return alive. It was simply too farfetched an idea to hold onto. Israel was lost in a valley of despair. They were a people so marked by calamity that their failure was a hallmark among their Babylonian neighbors (“Sing us a song of Zion,” they asked, like children asking for fairy tales of magical kingdoms [Ps. 137]). The Jews could only remember bitterly a time that was, a time of their grandparents that they would never see again.

It has been a rough stretch for us within these walls. We have not lost our homes, but we have lost, quickly, people who were integral parts of our life together, people who formed us and shaped us, who stood firm within our gathering. They were our mentors and teachers simply in who they were, and now they are gone, died and arrived within the Communion of Saints. We feel hollowed out and still a-tremble from the events of their passing. We feel lost and out of kilter with the world around us that charges along its normal course of business and action, so different from our experience at the moment.

We need a word of hope, a cry of restoration and redemption, all the things proclaimed so strongly in the words of Cyrus, the King of Persia.

I wonder what Peter, James, and John were thinking about as they made their way up Mt. Tabor with Jesus. There is no way they could have had any inkling of what was about to happen up there on the mountain. I imagine they were still occupied with the last major conversation they had had--Jesus had asked them who people were taking him for; and Peter had responded with the great affirmation (You are the Christ!); but had immediately failed in his affirmation when Jesus outlined exactly what being the Christ meant (suffering and dying for the world). That had to be on their minds. Jesus’ tone had suddenly shifted. His words had become startling and stark in their terrifying implications. The disciples had to be wondering what was happening in their circle and what would become of their fellowship.

Then all at once, all was changed. In an instant, their entire world was transformed. It was a bolt from the blue, a shock, and an abrogation of reality--there was Jesus aglow with the power of God and with him stood Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets Israel had ever known. The earth was changed, transformed, the holiness of God shone through it. In that moment came hope and a surety of salvation--the complete revelation that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah who would be the Savior of all humanity. It blew them off their feet.

So, too, I imagine, were the exiled Jews blown off their foundation when another pagan Emperor suddenly reworked the world beneath their feet, but with astoundingly good news.

So, where is our moment of being blown away by the sudden infusion of God’s power in our midst?

John points the way for us--We will be like him, for we will see him as he is. As Jesus was transformed on the mountain, so, too, we will be. That is promise of God made in Jesus Christ--in faith, we belong to Christ, and in belonging to Christ, we share with him the infusion of God’s power to redeem us, to reclaim us, from the realm of death and destruction. We are freed. We are new creations.

God never stops working. That is the assurance made in both the edict of Cyrus and in the Transfiguration. God never ceases exercising his creative power, his ongoing work of making the world as God saw it in his will to create it in the first place. God never ceases from that work.

There are times and circumstances that seek to rob us of that knowledge, however. There are moments that stop us in our tracks, that suddenly bring us to a halt. We cannot go on--we are too overwhelmed to do so. But in that moment, God is there, working, creating, and fashioning us to be who we are to be.

We have gone through tremendous moments of loss--right now, but also before now. We all recall moments when we have lost friends, parents, children--people whose loss we feared we would never recover from--yet here we are, still gathered together, still abiding in the mercy of God, in the grace of God, and in God’s fellowship. God is here, God lives. In that presence comes transformation, a means by which we cease to be people defined by loss, but defined instead by life, the life of God that is the light of the world.

Yes, in one moment, the exiled Jews sat and wept by the rivers of Babylon while their conquerors called for songs of Zion, but in the next, they were marching home, toward Zion itself, to the city of God, once again charged with being God’s people. So, too, the disciples were one moment reeling from Jesus’ announcement of suffering and death, coupled with their own inability to deal with it, but in the next they see Jesus the Christ, the hope of Moses and Elijah, standing right there in front of them.

Today, this very day, God is before us. God is present in the love that binds us together, that has seen us through the past several days, and in our ability to come before God in this place, in this hour.

God is here, our transformation is at hand.