In experiences that are beyond us, God is always bigger, always stronger, always moving the world toward justice, healing, and peace.
In one of her more recent books, Atlas of the Heart, Brenée Brown sets out to map the language of human emotion – the language we use to describe what we experience.[1]Where she’s coming from is that she says that we have a broad and diverse range of emotional experience, but we don’t use the full range of words to describe it.[2] When asked how we feel, most everyone has sad, mad, happy down pat – but there’s so much more to our emotional experience – more variety, more nuance.
It’s important to see and to name the full range. Putting words to what we feel helps us make meaning of what we experience – so that we can live more deeply, more compassionately, more meaningfully. The more variety and nuance we have in our emotional vocabulary – the more we can say and begin to understand. Brown wants to give us tools for what she calls “emotional granularity” – getting specific and precise – about us.[3]
And so she has written what she calls an atlas – a map. Her team of research psychologists sought first to flesh out and articulate the broad spectrum of emotions – a full and robust vocabulary. And then, they set out to map out the terrain – grouping emotions that arise from similar types of experience – the places we go when we experience certain things. So, for example, when we are hurting, we don’t just have sadness – we can also name anguish, hopelessness, despair, grief – (maybe I should have picked a happier example). But each of those describes something just a little bit different.
One of her groupings is “Places We Go When Things Are Beyond Us” – when what is before us is so big, so vast that it is beyond our ability to comprehend.[4]
That’s what is happening in this morning’s Scripture.[5] Jesus takes these three disciples – Peter, James, and John – up out of their daily world into a mountaintop experience. And things happen. Jesus is transfigured – in the Greek it’s literally, he metamorphoses. He becomes radiant – a luminous, glowing white so bright that no one on earth could generate such a dazzling brightness. And then it happens: Moses appears. And Elijah appears. From centuries ago. And they talk with Jesus. And then it happens: there’s a cloud. And then it happens: there’s a voice from the cloud: “This is my Son. The Beloved. Listen to him.” And then suddenly – in this breathless gospel – it’s all over. No Moses. No Elijah. No cloud. No voice. No glow. Just Jesus himself alone with them. What has just happened is beyond them – beyond their ability to take it all in and comprehend.
So this is where I usually jump to talking about awe and wonder.[6] But I want to get granular, because that is not all there is to this experience – in this story or in our world. There is so much more complexity – to us – and to those experiences where what is before us is beyond us. The Scripture actually says that the three disciples were terrified, not awestruck. Let’s zoom out from the Scripture a bit. What is beyond us is not always a dazzling sunset or a comet in the night sky. Before we talk about awe, let’s talk, for a bit, about what it’s like when what is beyond our comprehension isn’t so shiny and bright.
And I go there, because in our day, in this moment, I’m hearing folks say – often – “It’s all too much. I turn on the news, and I can’t take it all in. It’s all too much. It’s just beyond me.” I hear you say that. And I feel that too. When I hear us say that, we are not talking about awe. Sometimes in those places where things are beyond us – what we experience isn’t Awe– but its sinister cousin, Horror.
We can just think of what has happened since October 7. On October 7, families on a kibbutz woke up to what they thought would be just another day – and what unfolded was a brutal slaughter of families in their homes and of young people at a concert – a planned, coordinated assault of terror, mayhem, and the murder of more than 1,200 people.
And then, ever since that moment, we have watched and witnessed the brutal slaughter of Gazans. As of February 5, more than 27,000 Gazans have been killed – the vast majority non-combatants (even the IDF acknowledges that) – more than 10,000 of them children.[7]More than a quarter of the Gazan population – more than half a million people are starving.[8]85% of the population has been displaced. More than 70,000 housing units have been destroyed; 300,000 damaged.[9]More than 30% of Gazan population have no home to return to.[10]
These are conservative numbers. I pulled those statistics from reports that were outdated almost as soon as they were compiled. The numbers increase by the day – as the attacks against Gazans continue unabated – and a cease-fire remains elusive. And this morning we read of Rafah.[11] More than a million people -- half of Gaza’s population – have been displaced south and are taking refuge in Rafah. And now we hear that Rafah is the next target, and they are told again to flee. But there is nowhere left to go.
Sometimes when we experience things that are beyond our comprehension – what we experience is horror. And I want to acknowledge that I’m talking about what we are experiencing here – a world away. I can’t imagine what it is like to be right there in the midst. We would need to use our trauma words, and I don’t know that even they would be enough.
Sometimes what is beyond our comprehension is man’s inhumanity to humankind. We should experience horror at that. That particular emotion registers and moves us to acknowledge that something is bad wrong. But we don’t have to stop and stay stuck there.
If we are going to stay granular and think expansively – other emotions can start to unfold from there. We can experience utter confusion – I just don’t get it. How did we get here? What can we do? We can start to experience overwhelm – that sense of emotional intensity to the point that it feels like we can’t function.[12]
And there are several paths that can appear before us.
It’s all too easy – given the enormity of things – to spiral down into despair – into dread– into fear. That’s one path. And that’s real.
Or, we could move into denial or avoidance – when things are beyond us – we could just start to shut down – and withdraw. Those are real things, too. That’s another path.
Or. When what is before us is beyond us – we have another choice. When what is before us is beyond us – we can look and strain to see even further. We can – even as all the other emotions are swirling around – we can look beyond what is beyond us.
That’s what Jesus is offering the disciples in this morning’s Scripture.
Remember, the world of the Gospel of Mark is full of its own violence and suffering. Most of Scripture tells of people waiting for the next empire to descend and conquer: “I lift mine eyes to the hills – where will my help come from?” In Peter and James and John’s world, it’s the Roman Empire – when Mark was written, either about to pull the Temple down, or having just done that – beating down on the people every day. The Gospel of Mark rushes head on into the midst of that world – breathlessly – and Jesus proclaims a new day – the reign of God – a power stronger than every power – nothing less than a reordering of power and the whole world.
And for a moment, in this morning’s scripture, Jesus takes the disciples up out of this world, all these things that are unfolding that they don’t quite understand, and Jesus shows them something beyond even that. In this breathless gospel, there on that mountain, there is a gasp.
Just before this morning’s Scripture, Peter has named that Jesus is the Christ – and Jesus says, “You are correct. And now I must suffer many things, and be killed and then rise again.” Jesus names the suffering of the world with the particularity of his own body and life, and then he takes Peter, James, and John up this mountain. There on that mountain, they see Moses, the one who brings the Law – God’s justice-ordering of the world. They see Elijah, one of the prophets who show up to announce what God is bringing to an end, and the new thing that God is about to do. There on that mountain – all around and in Jesus – there is the radiance of an experience of the divine, of the holy – God present visibly and vibrantly – palpably. There is a voice: “This – Jesus – this is my Son – Son of God – the Beloved.” And there is a command: Listen to him.
In the midst of a bewildering – sometimes horrifying world – we get a glimpse of something bigger – something bigger than the biggest bad things. This Scripture points us beyond what is beyond us – it points us toward God.
Now we’ve seen this before. We have the tools to look and see something more – to look even further than what is before us and beyond us. Remember the summer we spent with the Psalms. Remember those psalms of lament? Those psalms of lament give us permission to name the pain in the world – the pain in us – and to wail – even to ask, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” And then, standing in the truth of that – those psalms turn us toward.... the goodness of God... “I am sure of this: I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.”[13] Remember the angry psalms – that rail and rage against injustice and suffering – and then turn... to the goodness of God, to the power of God – “But you O God. Out of your goodness and your steadfast love – deliver me.”[14]
That is the cry and resolve we find across Scripture: In experiences that are beyond us, the anguish is real, and so too is this truth: God is always bigger, always stronger, always moving the world toward justice, healing, and peace. And this is where awe comes in – awe – “the feeling of being in the presence of [and part of] something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world,”[15] – even, we hope, beyond the worst bad thing that is beyond our understanding.
“That’s all well and good” – you might say – “but what can we do?” In the face of the depth of the suffering in the world – What can we do? That is a worthy question – and I hope we persist in asking it – even when the answers elude us, or feel so inadequate to the enormity of what is before us.
Look for a moment to what Peter, James, and John do in this scripture. I look to them because they are as bewildered as I would be – as bewildered as I often am. Notice first what they don’t do. They don’t shrink away from what is before them and beyond them. They are frightened, but they don’t run. They stay there right in the midst. They feel what they feel. They stand in the experience – and they are curious – they wonder – they engage. Peter does so out loud. They’re terrified, but at the same time he says, “Um, well, it’s good for us to be here.” And he talks about building tents – he starts groping for something to do. And I think that’s important. And lovely. They start to fumble and stumble toward God. It may not be the right answer – it’s not a complete answer – but Peter starts moving into and toward the experience. And then the glimpse is over. And Jesus takes them back down into the messy world. They move back into the midst of things.
There are so many things in this world that we will never understand. That is part of being human. But the reality of being human doesn’t end there. The reality of being human also includes compassion and courage and truth-telling and agency and perseverance and community. The gospel and this Scripture are telling us that the reality of being human in Jesus Christ is so much more than we have ever imagined. What is before us may be beyond our comprehension, but there is something beyond even that. God is always bigger, always stronger, always reordering and willing and moving the world toward justice, healing, and peace. What we can do – is claim that as our ultimate reality – and as our immediatereality – and in the midst of things – engage the world and move toward that.
© 2024 Scott Clark
[1] Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Ney York, NY: Random House, 2021).
[2] Id. p. xi.
[3] Id. p. xii.
[4] Id. pp.56-67.
[5] For general background on the Gospel of Mark and this scripture, see Shively T.J. Smith, Commentary in Connections, Year B, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), pp. 319-22; Gennifer Benjamin Brooks, Commentary in Connections, Year B, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), pp. 322-23; Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol.viii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 525-36; Herman Waetjen, A Reordering of Power (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1989).
[6] See, for example, last year’s Transfiguration sermon: https://www.togetherweserve.org/post/transforming-awe-matthew-17-1-9-transfiguration-sunday
[7] https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-02-05-2024-dd005061f9925525c56ea460ab5c9e77
[8] https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-12-21-2023-7d9718b32bf0d308c44c7c9e3c4e0deb
[9] See https://www.npr.org/2024/02/09/1229625376/domicide-israel-gaza-palestinians (UNOCHA statistics).
[10] Id.
[11] See https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-rafah-ground-offensive-looms-intl-hnk/index.html(as attacks on Rafah began, this was updated to reflect the time of posting this sermon).
[12] See Brown, p.6.
[13] Psalm 27.
[14] Psalm 109; see https://www.togetherweserve.org/post/and-what-about-those-angry-psalms-psalm-109-11th-sunday-after-pentecost
[15] See Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Change Your Life (New York, NY: Penguin Press 2023), p.7.