Transfiguration of the Lord

When I was a boy my father gave me a great little book to read: Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Some of you may have read it. Pirsig submitted the book to 121 publishers before it finally saw the light of day in 1974; it went on to sell over 5 million copies and is still in print. At one level it is a story about a road-trip. Father and son take a 17-day journey by motorbike from Minnesota to California. But really it is a book about philosophy; the travelogue is punctuated by reflections on such topics as epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science. The full title is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.

One of the passages I recall vividly tells the story of how to make crystals.

A supersaturated solution is one in which the saturation point, at which no material will dissolve, has been exceeded. This can occur because the saturation point becomes higher as the temperature of the solution is increased. When you dissolve the material at a higher temperature and then cool the solution, the material sometimes doesn’t crystallise out because the molecules don’t know how. They require something to get them started, a seed crystal, or a grain of dust or even a sudden scratch or tap on the surrounding glass.  

My late father, may he rest in peace, was a crystallographer.  After I had read his book, I remember him showing me how to enact this passage with two glasses, hot water, salt, and a piece of thread which was to act as our seed crystal. We mixed up the heated saturated solution, poured it into the two glasses, and put the thread into one. By morning the magic had happened: we had one glass full of salt crystals, and the other containing only the saturated saline solution.

It is a useful metaphor for life and faith: the seed crystal.

Today’s gospel reading tells the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. His disciples had been following him around for some time now, listening to his teaching, watching him heal people and work miracles. They were saturated if you like in Jesus’ words and actions, but most of them still didn’t quite get it. Who was this man: a prophet, a teacher, a rabbi, a magician, a healer, John the Baptist, Elijah? It was Simon Peter who threw in the seed crystal: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Six days later the Jesus-saline-solution crystallised in a very dramatic way. Jesus took Peter and two other disciples up a high mountain to pray: James and John. Suddenly the reality of Simon Peter’s words burst into their consciousness. Jesus is transfigured before their very eyes. His face shines like the sun. His clothes become dazzling white. The disciples experience a vision of the profound reality of Jesus: it is now so clear; he is the Son of the living God; he is the Messiah, the Christ.

Around the same time that my father gave me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, my mother gave me another little book that has been my companion for decades: The Practice of the Presence of God, by the 17th Century French monk Br Lawrence. In the life of faith, transfiguration experiences are not always, in fact not usually, dramatic mountain-top revelations, or visionary bolts from the blue. If we have an open heart, they are equally (or perhaps especially) to be found in the ordinariness of every day life. Actually Pirsig says much the same in his book. Life is ultimately rather like motorcycle maintenance, the day-to-day discipline of keeping an old motorbike running smoothly. Brother Lawrence writes of experiencing moments of profound peace and deep tranquillity in the midst of a busy monastic kitchen:

“The time of busyness,” he said, “does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”

We need both the saline solution and the seed crystal to attain the moments of sublime crystallisation; the life-changing transfigurations. It is good to saturate ourselves, wherever possible, in kindness, forgiveness, compassion, gratefulness, truthfulness, patience; we are then ready.

But the final moment of transfiguration or revelation or crystallisation is beyond our control. God sends the seed crystal our way. We are gifted with a moment of grace that brings everything into alignment; the trigger to growth. Seed crystals can be as simple as the listening ear of a friend on the phone, who brings us to tears in a moment of clarity and insight; or a passage in a book or moment in a film that just seems to transfigure everything, making everything fall into place. These are the “aha” moments of crystallisation.

St Augustine knew purportedly wrote: “Pray as though everything depends on God. Work as though everything depends on you.” There is no short-cut to creating a supersaturated saline solution; we have to do the hard work of living the good life. And only then, in a state of readiness, the divine seed crystal prayerfully drops into our lives and the world around us is transfigured for just a moment. These are the moments that change lives, the experiences that transform communities, the life-force that gives hope and healing to a broken world. Amen.