Once upon a time, when angels still walked the earth, there was a man who resisted God Almighty. But the Lord took mercy on him and sent to him the Angel of Truth, that he might be enlightened. The angel descended to earth and knocked at the window of the defiant man, craving entrance.

“Who are you, and what is it you wish?” demanded the man impatiently, opening the window slightly. The Angel of Truth told of his request, but the man slammed the window, and the angel stood outside, not knowing what to do. He waited a long time, walking up and down in front of the house, knocking again and again at the door, but nobody opened it. So he flew back to heaven and was very sad indeed, because his visit had been a failure.

Presently his sister, the Angel of Beauty, saw him and asked the reason for his distress. The Angel of Truth told of his grievance. “Take courage, brother,” she said. “What you could not achieve alone, we will accomplish together.” And so they both glided down to earth through the hanging garden of beautiful stars. When they came in sight of the man’s house, the Angel of Beauty turned to the Angel of Truth and said, “Wait awhile,” and she went to the window and knocked. But the man thought it was again someone come to disturb his peace, and he grumbled angrily.

Then the Angel of Beauty knocked again. This time she made the knocking sound like the sweet tones of a harp, and the window shone in many-colored radiance like the stained-glass windows of a cathedral. The man listened and looked up in astonishment from his work, and when he saw the Angel of Beauty standing before his window, the frown disappeared from his face, and his heart was warm and glad. He quickly opened the window, asking, “Who are you, my beautiful child?” “I am Beauty,” said the angel. “Oh, come in and be welcome,” said the man, opening the door wide.

“I should like to enter,” said Beauty reluctantly. “I think I should enjoy being with you. But – ”

“There is no but,” said the man. Whatever you wish shall have. Come in.”

“Very well,” said the Angel of Beauty, "but I have a brother outside. Do you see him? Have you room for both of us?”

“Room for a dozen children as charming as you,” the man answered gleefully.

So the Angel of Beauty flew to the Angel of Truth and said, “Come,” and so Truth and Beauty took possession of the heart of the defiant man. [Context (Jan. 2005,  Part A,  37.1.]

How are we to understand what happens on the Mount of Transfiguration in our gospel lesson today? In the first three gospel accounts, this event, this epiphany, this glimpse of truth about Jesus, is the turning point in his ministry. He’s been on an upswing, so to speak, to this mount, and now it will be all downhill until he mounts the cross. His popularity with the crowds has wound up right up to this moment, but after this things will begin to unravel. His closest friends need to see the light before things get darker. They must recognize him for who he is, not for what they want him to be.

And just so they see him—all lit up. His face shines like those old paintings with haloes round the heads of the saints to show their godlikeness. Moses appears there with Jesus, and Elijah, too. The two key figures in the history of Israel. Symbolizing the unity of the Law and the Prophets, these two undisputed men of God summarize the history and hopes of God’s people in the world. They don’t have the same shine about them, Moses and Elijah; they simply add weight to the truth that beauty already bears in the dazzling whiteness of the Lord Jesus. They confirm the unique divinity of this one who is called the Son of God.

And we wonder why this happened at all. Was it for Jesus’ sake or for the sake of the disciples? If it were for Jesus’ sake, we can imagine that at this moment in his life when his ministry was about to become all the more cruciform, God would want to assure him of who he truly is and what he must do. The same voice that spoke at his baptism commencing his ministry repeats itself now at the turning point of his ministry: This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. The first part of these words is from Psalm 2. These words were a crowd chant at the coronation ceremony of a new king. The people would declare that the new king bore a special relationship to God, and they would obey him. The second part comes from the Prophet Isaiah. It is part of the Suffering Servant passages that speak of the mission of Israel to the world as a messianic mission—to suffer and die for the sins of the world. Jesus is reminded at this important stage of his life who he is and what he must do.

The popular film trilogy The Matrix is filled with biblical imagery. The story line is somewhat complicated—at least for a middle-aged man, don’t you know?! But the abiding conflict that is being waged in the films is between a world on the one hand that is programmed and closed, a world ruled by fate that eliminates the frailties of human beings along with all emotion, chance and choice; and on the other hand an open world of human beings where love and passion defy fixed destiny.

The Christ figure, Neo, is also called The One. At one point in the second film, he enters a door that leads him from one world to the next. It is a door of pure light that takes him to one called The Source. The Source turns out to be the maker of the machine world that is trying to eliminate the “anomalies,” the remnant of resistant human beings whom Neo represents. Neo is given the choice between two doors. One will allow him to save Zion, the city of resistance, in which case he would have to lose the woman he loves, called Trinity. (I told you there’s a lot of theological language hard to follow.) If he chooses Trinity, the city of Zion is destroyed. His head tells him he must accept her death for the sake of the rest, but his heart will not allow the cold logic of evil to dictate his decision. He chooses love and the story continues. … (Movie #3).

Jesus learns in the midst of this bright shining moment, standing with his head in the clouds and God’s servants of old beside him, that love has logic of its own, and that only love will defeat the enemies of God. He is sustained to the cross by the power of this experience.

But while Western Christianity has long thought that the miracle of transfiguration was mainly to be focused on Jesus, Eastern Christians have attended to the experience of the disciples. They believe Jesus always bore a shining radiance as the Son of God, but that the miracle was in the seeing. The eyes of the disciples were opened to see what was always there. They had an epiphany. The veil between the visible and the invisible worlds became so thin in that moment that they could see what was always true. Beauty—in other words, led them to Truth, not the other way round.

We are reminded of John Keats’ wondrous poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn. It concludes with the urn addressing the viewer: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Beauty and Truth may be one, or they may be sibling angels in the service of God, but, like the story at the first, we are all more charmed into faith than reasoned into it. The heart draws us more than the head drives us to it.

Think of it: How many of you put your trust in Christ because someone answered all your questions? I know I have never talked anyone into becoming a Christian. The most I can do is to lower the bar of objections. But I was not converted that way. I was just like most children who grew  up in the church. We are drawn to faith by the smells and bells (you would understand that better if you grew up Catholic); by the stitching and color and symbols in the tapestry that you stare at when the preacher is boring; by the mystery of the waters of baptism; by the taste of wonder bread and wine at the Table; by the sound of voices singing and organ pipes piping and shafts of light that break in through the windows on Easter Sunday; by the gentle touch of a Sunday school teacher; and by a youth minister who was just the right blend of reverent and irreverent to reverend enough to make you want to be like him.

Jake Whitten is 6. He was with his parents as a little Mexican restaurant last week. He noticed the elements on the table and said to his father, “Dad, open your mouth.” Jon asked his son what he was doing, and the boy persisted. Next thing you know, Jake had spilled the salt shaker, wetted his finger and touched some salt to his father’s tongue, saying, “You are the salt of the earth.” Then he grabbed the candle on the table and gave it him and said, “You are the light of the world.”

That’s it, see. We come to faith in ways we cannot fully grasp, by a movement of the heart before the head. Now we want to get the mind into the act sooner rather than later, we want to leave our encounter with more than a powerful feeling of God upon us, we want to come away declaring that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and that we will listen to him. Faith is touchy-feely; and yet it is also bright and brainy. But beauty leads. It’s art before science. The heart first thirsts. The eyes must open to see. Which is what we mean when we say that seeing is believing. We don’t mean that you have to see something with your everyday eyes before you can believe; we mean that you have to SEE, really SEE. Do you see?

Some of us are so busy with important things in our lives that we believe we must do that we miss the wonder of life and the wondrous shining presence of Christ in the everydayness of life. This gift of seeing was not a one-time breakthrough intended only for Jesus’ closest three friends. It for any and every friend of God who is willing to attend to the heart and look upon Christ.

The minister and writer Robert Fulghum tells about a woman who was so stressed out that she went to see a psychiatrist. After listening for a long time, he wrote out a prescription and handed it to her. She expected some kind of mood-altering drug, but what she got were these words: “Spend one hour a week watching the sunrise while walking in a cemetery.” Not wanting to waste her money for the visit and desperate enough to try anything, she entered a cemetery one morning just before sunrise. She watched the sun come up. She listened to nature awake. She wanted to sing along with the birds. She came alive again with the world that morning because she attended to it. [Pulpit Resource (Jan.-Mar. 2005): 27.]

Jesus is still shining in the world. Remember the Christmas carol of just more than a month ago: “Joy to the world the Lord IS come, let heaven and nature sing.” Well they are singing if we will attend to them. But the thing to attend to is not just heaven and nature but that the Lord of whom they sing is come. We are to look upon the world to find those thin places that draw us as if by Beauty into Truth. We are to look for those glimpses of truth in the moments of each day that lead us deeper into the knowledge of the one who is the Beloved Son in whom God is well pleased. And when we look upon his shining face long enough, we may hear that voice from heaven and wonder if it isn’t speaking to us, too: “You are my beloved child; in you I am well pleased.”

Now do you see?