To Be Awakened

“. . . it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.” – Romans 13:11

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

The chapters that precede and follow the Transfiguration suggest a more or less ceaseless flow of mundane ministry and prayer. Jesus cares for people in miraculous ways and has important conversations with his disciples. He prays. He sleeps. He eats. He feeds people. He does these things without any fanfare or interest in spectacle, even though crowds insist on gathering wherever he goes.

After an apparent eight day lull in activity, Jesus takes St. Peter, St. John, and St. James “up on the mountain to pray.” This was most likely a regular, mundane occurrence, too; something Jesus would have done patiently, faithfully, and without need for attention. It’s likely he was intentional about who he invited onto the mountain that day, but we might safely suppose it wasn’t uncommon for him to invite small groups of friends and disciples to join him in these times of prayer.

But on that day, something happened that took the disciples off guard. Jesus was transfigured. St. Luke tells us, “As He prayed, the appearance of his face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

St. Peter, St. John, and St. James were there. They witnessed this – this moment of Jesus being revealed in the glory of his divinity, talking to the prophets and being blessed by God. How did they meet this moment? 

It seems they were sleepy. As St. Luke tells it, “Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.” They appear to be totally dumbfounded until St. Peter blathers out a somewhat stupid response about building three tabernacles to commemorate the occasion. St. Luke tells us St. Peter said these things “not knowing what he said.”

Gethsemane is another significant moment in which the disciples are, due to their sleepiness, caught unaware by the reality of Jesus’s personhood and how he chooses to exist in the world. And Gethsemane is another moment in which their sleepiness stands in stark contrast to Jesus’s vigilant, simple, wakeful prayer, with which he meets even his arrest and impending death. (St. Peter’s response in that situation is similarly stupid, if somewhat endearing, when to “defend” Jesus he famously cuts off the ear of one of the guards.)

In the case of the Transfiguration on the Mount, St. Peter’s attempt to talk his way into the right response is silenced when the group is “overshadowed” by a cloud, out of which a voice speaks, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” And when the cloud departs, only Jesus – the normal-looking, familiar, flesh and blood Jesus they knew – was left behind.

When they came down from the mountain, they told no one what they saw, and the continuous churn of ministry life again met them: “. . . on the next day, when they had come down from the mountain . . . a great multitude met them . . .” 

There are many important things about this story. But I don’t want us to miss the fact that the disciples are drowsy when the Transfiguration occurs. They’re so tired that they are rendered insensible to the happenings around them. They are “heavy with sleep.” It takes a moment for the blinding glory of the Transfiguration to wake them up, and even then they can barely rise to the wakefulness the occasion requires.

Drowsiness is an apt metaphor for what it’s like to seek Christ in this world. We might think of ourselves as a people constantly trying to rouse ourselves from a deep sleepiness. We struggle to maintain our habits of prayer; we engage in ministry, daily life, and the occasional charitable act; we try to get to know ourselves; we try to love other people; we try to pray. And all along, on a very deep level, what we’re trying to do is simply live in a wakeful relationship with Christ. We are trying to attend to who he is with vigilant faithfulness, and let him change us. One might say the Christian life is a call to just keep waking up whenever our souls feel sleepy. This is a difficult vocation that takes a lifetime. 

There are moments of transfiguration in each of our lives, blessed moments when we’re granted glimpses of the glory of Christ’s personhood and his love for us. But for most of our lives, there’s the mundane churn of life and ministry. Half the battle we are fighting as we fight to honor Christ is simply a battle to stay awake, to keep praying, to keep our senses alert in all this mundanity. It is no mistake that the Father’s command to St. Peter, St. James, and St. John on the mount is an appeal to their senses – he commands them to “Hear Him!” 

Stay awake! Keep your ears open! Hear Him! This is our call, too. And the best way to hear Jesus is to pray.

We are called, throughout our lives, to follow Christ’s example of prayer. To, like Jesus does at the Transfiguration and Gethsemane, pray regularly, faithfully, ceaselessly both in the mundane moments and in the crises of our lives. It is through our faithful, daily habits of prayer that we practice openness to the spirit of Christ’s wakefulness.

In this continual flow of daily life, of our constant battle with our human drowsiness, the Transfiguration account begins to read like a sort of promise. It’s like Jesus is putting his hand on our shoulders and saying, “Look! Listen! Don’t forget who I am! I know you are tired now, and you can’t see much. Keep praying. Keep listening. Hear me. There is more of me to know, and one day all will be revealed.