The Way Things Ought To Be
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THE WAY THINGS OUGHT TO BE
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
March 2, 2025
And while (Jesus) was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. (Luke 9:29)
Every so often, you or someone you know, might have an experience that leaves you strangely uneasy: an experience that challenges your assumptions about life and existence, that causes you to rethink your take on the way things really are. The late Madeleine L’Engle was a celebrated author of spiritual autobiography, and most especially children’s books, including A Wrinkle in Time. As a faithful Christian she was always alert for such moments when God broke into the mundane, when heaven and earth overlapped, when otherwise ordinary times became extraordinary.
In one of her meditations, entitled Setter and Swallow, L’Engle writes of a dog named Timothy. Timothy was a red Irish setter who came to L’Engle and her family as an adult, already 3 ½ years old. Sadly, Timothy had been abused for much of his life, and by the time the family took him in, he was a neurotic, fearful creature. He cowered in the presence of people, and crawled from place to place on his belly, hoping not to receive a beating. Slowly, Timothy learned to trust the love that his new household offered him in abundance. He stood up on four feet and walked about the house. He chose a favorite chair for himself. After a year he even began to wag his tail.
L’Engle describes how one summer, while living in rural Connecticut, they noticed that Timothy had developed a peculiar friendship with a swallow. She writes:
Timothy will rush out to the big meadow, his once timid tail waving ecstatically. He looks adoringly up at the sky, wagging, listening, and the swallow comes to him, flying very low, and then Tim will run along with the bird while it flies, back and forth, round and about, in great parabolas, all over the big meadow. Then the swallow will fly off and up, and Tim will stand looking upward, swishing his tail, and waiting for his friend to return. It has been a great joy to us to watch this amazing friendship. Day after day they play together, and the game never palls. … The two of them are lion and lamb together for me, a foretaste of Isaiah’s vision. When I watch them playing together in the green and blue, it is a moment of transfiguration.
In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke (9:28-43a), we hear of one such moment in the life of Jesus known as the Transfiguration. Luke writes how Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then they heard a voice from a cloud that enveloped them, identifying Jesus to be God’s chosen Son. “Listen to him,” said the voice. Are we to interpret the text literally? How did the disciples know who was appearing with Jesus? Did Moses and Elijah wear nametags? We don’t know. Matthew and Mark also record the same event, setting forth largely the same details, agreeing that it was a moment in history, not a dream. For Peter, James, and John, and then all of the earliest Christians, the Transfiguration took hold of their imaginations as a revelation of great spiritual significance. It would be an understatement to say that the experience left them strangely uneasy.
What did it mean? Quite frankly, it seems that the Transfiguration challenged their assumptions about Jesus. They saw Jesus for who he really was – and is. No longer could they regard him as merely a prophet or preacher. He was more than a teacher, a miracle worker, or a revolutionary. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. The great story that God had been telling the world for centuries through Israel was coming to a climax in Jesus. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!
The experience of the Transfiguration not only enlarged the disciple’s understanding of Jesus, it also challenged their assumptions of life and existence, and caused them to rethink their take on the way things really are. You see, over time, as they reflected on their experience of witnessing Jesus’ shining in heavenly light, enjoying perfect communion with God, they surmised that they had caught a fleeting glimpse of what human life was supposed to be like. Here in Jesus was human nature as it would have been were it not for the fall from grace. Here was humanity as God intended it: not expelled from the garden, not smeared with sin, not cut off from God, but restored to the place where lion and lamb play together. It was just a fleeting glimpse, but in that glimpse, they experienced the shock of recognition. They recognized who they were supposed to be. They remembered something they had never known. As such, the moment was a paradox.
How do you remember something you have never known? When I hear the story of the Transfiguration, and the disciples’ puzzling to make sense of it, I think of the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen called The Ugly Duckling. You and I who have heard the story many times know what the duckling does not know: that’s he’s not a duckling at all, but a swan. Nevertheless, because he is large and different from all the ducks, the ugly duckling is abused and finally driven from home. He spends a lonely winter on a frozen pond, but then a strange thing happens to the lost little bird. A flock of beautiful large birds appears out of the bushes. They are dazzling white with long wavy necks, and they soar higher and faster than anything the little duckling has ever seen. They are full-grown swans, and upon seeing them the ugly duckling becomes strangely uneasy. He swims round and round in a circle, and calls back to them in their own voice. The sight of the swans ignites something deep with the breast of the little bird. He remembers something he had not yet known. It was the shock of recognition that he was created to soar higher, and rise above the pecking throng of ducks that had held him down.
Likewise, the Transfiguration should make us strangely uneasy. For the disciples it was just a glimpse. The experience didn’t last for them. Neither do these moments last for us, leaving our deepest longing for communion with God ignited yet unfulfilled. Luke tells us how quickly the moment passed. The next day, when Jesus and the disciples had come down from the mountain, they were surrounded by a demanding crowd, including a man whose son was possessed by a demon. It was back to the valley: back to the world of sickness, suffering, and death. In her piece Setter and Swallow, Madeleine L’Engle writes of a quick descent back to the valley of the shadow of death. One day she and her family were entertaining guests who had brought their own little dog along with them. Timothy was out in the meadow at play with the swallow. When the other dog saw what was going on, he too wanted to join in the fun. He raced across the meadow, only to receive a menacing physical rebuff from Timothy. Perhaps Timothy didn’t want to share his private experience. Perhaps he was protecting the swallow from another dog. In any case, blood was drawn, even if it was just a scratch on the little dog. L’Engle writes, It was not a tragedy, but suddenly we were in a fallen world again. It was no longer lion and lamb in peace and amity. It was the world of battlefields and slums and insane asylums.
Such is the surly world in which we live: a land where the fierce devour the small. How do we rise above it? The first human to slip the surly bonds of earth and travel in space was the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. Upon returning from his historic flight in 1961 the Soviet propaganda machine reported that Gagarin had proclaimed he had seen no sign of God up there. The fact is, Gagarin was a faithful Christian and never said anything of the sort (imagine: the Kremlin told a lie). A Russian Orthodox priest rebuked the spurious claims of Red Square by saying that if you see no sign of God on earth, neither will you will see any sign of God in the heavens. His point was that God reveals himself not only on the mountaintops, not only in visions of dazzling light and heavenly glory, but also in the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life down here in the valley. Our calling is to be alert to the presence of God even here, in the world of battlefields, slums, hospitals, and prisons. If you don’t recognize God “down here,” it is unlikely you will recognize God “up there.”
It could be that you are not one given to mystical moments. The word of the Lord is rare for you. You have no frequent visions. Mountain-top transfigurations are experiences happen to other, presumably more spiritual people. Even still, you can take heart and be glad. Madeleine L’Engle and her family did not themselves participate in Timothy’s game with the swallow. They only watched it from afar. They enjoyed it indirectly. But the mere sight of it caused them to remember that God intends a much higher life for us, and perhaps for all creation. Nature red in tooth and claw is not the way God intended things to be. That life should devour other life in order to survive is not the way of the kingdom. Rather, God’s ultimate will is that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, that the setter and swallow shall play together, and that the earth shall be filled with the glory of God. What is more, in today’s reading from 2nd Corinthians 3:12-4:2), St. Paul suggests that we are being transformed into the image of Christ. So the Transfiguration is an encouragement for us to take heart, even if we’ve never had any experience remotely like it.
The Transfiguration can also encourage us to listen. If God speaks even here in the valley, then our calling is to listen. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him, said God’s voice in the cloud. But how? How do we listen for Jesus? Perhaps by paying attention to the very longing deep in your soul – the longing for transcendence and transfiguration. Listen to the strange uneasiness of your spirit. Why do we yearn for a quality and quantity of life that only dimly shines through mortal existence? Why are we drawn to YouTube videos of kittens snuggling up to fierce German Shepherds and receiving a welcome? C.S. Lewis writes that the longing itself suggests we’ve been made for a different way of being. Put another way, he said that we live in a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what ought to have been. Thus, the strange uneasiness we may feel when we glimpse people or creatures rising above the laws of the jungle is a holy thing. It is an echo of the memory of what ought to have been. It may be nothing short of God’s calling to us here in the valley of dry bones. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him! Listen to one deep calling to another in your own spirit (Psalm 42:9).
One of the greatest theologians of the early church next to St. Paul himself was Augustine of Hippo. In his majestic work, On the Trinity, Augustine set forth an interesting idea that he called Vestiges of the Trinity in the Created Order, or, “Vestigia Trinitatis.” He believed that while the fall from grace mangled the image of God in us and in all of creation, nevertheless traces of God’s nature, vestiges of the Trinity remain and occasionally shine forth. If indeed we are made in the image of God, then remnants of God’s perfect Being should still be discernable in human beings. That we love at all is a reflection, or a remnant of the fellowship that that the Father, Son, and Spirit eternally enjoy in heaven. That a setter and a swallow might play together is a vestige of the Trinity in the created order.
Personally, I like Augustine’s idea of Vestigia Trinitatis. It is a concept worth pondering as I listen for the voice of the Son of God. It shines a ray of light on the strange uneasiness of the soul that seems to be a universal experience of humankind. To say that the image of God has not been completely annihilated from our nature is to hold out respect for the dignity of every human being. It holds out hope that we might be changed into the likeness of Christ. St. John, reflecting on the great mystery of human nature and destiny, would write: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are … Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-2)
On the mountain top, the disciples saw Jesus just as he is, transfigured before them. They glimpsed what human nature was supposed to be, and by God’s grace might still become. And while (Jesus) was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.
Setter and Swallow is found in L’Engle’s book, The Irrational Season, 1977.
Thoughts by C.S. Lewis are found in Mere Christianity.