Matthew 17: 1-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid." And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

Sermon Text

Today is the beginning of our celebration of black history month at Hanover. It is also Transfiguration Sunday, when Christians meditate on scriptures that tell about Jesus climbing a high mountain with his three leading disciples, and their beholding him transfigured there, his face shining like the sun, his clothes glowing dazzling white. Let me weave these two topics together, black history and the disciples' experience of the transfigured Jesus, by speaking to you about Dreamtime.

I learned about Dreamtime last Fall, when Alice and I took our two-year-old granddaughter, Greta, to an exhibit of Aboriginal art at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Anthropology and Archeology. Our newspaper said that the exhibit would include many paintings of a mythical creature called the "rainbow serpent." Now there's something to capture a two-year-old's imagination, we thought, a rainbow serpent! Greta loves to color. And she's not afraid of snakes--yet. So, this would be perfect! We went. Not only Greta, but we too were delighted by the brilliant colors of the stippled paintings, done by people of ebony color whose culture on the continent of Australia dates back sixty five thousand years. The so-called Aborigines of Australia have the longest history of any people on the planet.

Many of the recent Aboriginal paintings that we viewed did, as advertised, include a rainbow serpent. It looked rather like a Coral Snake to me, but with many more colors. The captions to the paintings explained that the rainbow serpent was just one of the giant beings who emerged out of the bowels of the earth at the beginning of time, which the Aborigines call Dreamtime. The rainbow serpent and the other Dreamtime creatures roamed the earth and loved each other or fought with each other. And everywhere they went, they left their marks upon the earth: rivers and lakes, hills and valleys. Also, from these spirit creatures descended other living creatures who populate Australia now, like kangaroos and koala bears and wombats, and of course, human beings. In fact the Aborigines say that all life as modern Australians know it -- human, animal, bird and fish-- is part of one vast unchanging network of relationships which goes all the way back to the great spirit ancestors of their Dreamtime.

As I read the captions to the paintings and began to understand Dreamtime, I realized that it is much, much more than an ancient creation myth. Dreamtime is the basis for the spirituality of modern Aborigines. The artists who painted the pictures that tell the stories about Dreamtime are themselves participating in Dreamtime. Dreamtime didn't end at the dawn of their history. For them, Dreamtime continues, because the relationships between all living things that ensued from the spirit creatures, those relationships continue right up to today. And so do their dreams.

When you were very little, did you ever dream about terrifying creatures, like the giant green spider that crawled out from under my bed when I was about three, and wouldn't go away, not even when I opened my eyes? Did your parents rush to your side, like mine did, and assure you that everything was all right, because the spider or the bear or the shark, or whatever it was, was only a dream? In our culture, that's the way we dispose of scary dreams, isn't it. We explain them away. We say they aren't real. But it seems to me that some Aborigines do not cast their dreams aside that way, not even the scary ones. Apparently they believe that their dreams, instead of being unreal, are the very basis of all things that are real, for their dreams explain how all things came to be, and how they still hang together.

Well then, what does all this have to do with the transfiguration of Jesus? Our text this morning says that Jesus goes up on a high mountain with Peter and James and John. There his appearance is changed before their eyes. His face shines like the sun, and his clothing glows a dazzling white. Even more astonishing, Moses and Elijah stand before them, conversing with Jesus--Moses, the chief prophet of Israel, and Elijah, who according to Jewish scripture had ascended into heaven in a fiery chariot and was expected to return to earth when the Messiah came.

Peter gets flustered. He doesn't know what to make of this vision. Immediately he tries to decipher it by linking it to an already familiar experience, the Jewish feast of booths, when small huts are constructed to remind devout Jews of the makeshift shelters their ancestors built when they crossed the wilderness. "Should I make a shelter for you, Jesus, and for Elijah and Moses?" Peter suggests, almost pleading. He is obviously befuddled and disoriented by the waking vision he is having. Up there on the mountain, he has stepped unwittingly into Dreamtime, and it's spooking him. To anchor his mind, he hurries to stuff the experience into an old pigeonhole. He reaches for something familiar to steady himself: I know, let's make some booths!

Modern readers of the transfiguration story may get befuddled and uneasy, like Peter. Just as children's frightening dreams are quickly shooed away, modern readers may dismiss such paranormal experiences as unreal, or even silly, because they do not fit into the pigeonhole of things that can be scientifically understood. Lamentably, that's the only pigeon hole that makes sense to some modern people, the only one they will tolerate or pay heed to.

It need not be so for modern people. When I was teaching in Miami I met an Australian Aborigine Christian scholar. Her spirit is rooted in a black culture that goes back sixty five thousand years or more, and a Christian one not quite two thousand years old. She is a modern woman, sophisticated, urbane. I wish I had thought of this question to ask her when I met her: If she were here with us today I would ask that Aborigine Christian scholar what she makes of the vision that Peter and James and John had up there on the high mountain. I think she would say something like this:

"What happened up there was in Dreamtime. What happened up there is expressed in language of the same kind as tales of the rainbow serpent. It is language fitted for eternity. It is language to explain the origin of things, and how things hang together now, and will tomorrow. In the transfiguration story, when the voice of God says, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased," that's Dreamtime talk. Do not mistake my use of the term for a disparagement. By Dreamtime talk I mean not false talk. I mean not silly talk. I mean perhaps the truest talk there can be, because it expresses how we find a home in the universe, how we got here, and where we are going."

If you are seeking a spiritual home, and looking to Jesus to lead you there, do not be disappointed if you cannot fit everything said about him or by him into one of your familiar pigeon holes. There are different languages for expressing truth. One does well to train one's soul to listen in more than one.