How close is God?
How far is God from us? And how near? The question is one I think all people contemplate, though they often may not realize it. How close is God?
The question, I believe, is one that we carry in a unique way as people living on the doorstep of the Tetons. Six to nine million years ago, the earth’s surface spread and stretched, creating stress along the fault line that runs south to north from town. The east side of the fault line fell away to create the valley we call Jackson’s hole; the west side was thrust up to create the youngest portion of the Rocky Mountains: the Teton range. Because of their relatively young age, there is an intensity and drama to the profile of these peaks, and a Sublimity that awes and overwhelms. It is the intensity of their beauty that draws so many to the Tetons: an intensity and beauty one might call God. As the Wyoming Eucharistic Prayer puts it, “We, like Jesus, are called to these high places ...” and I believe that within or underneath that call is a desire to be in contact with something larger.
The Gospel reading appointed for the last Sunday in Epiphany is the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes three students up onto a mountainside to pray, and he is transformed before them — his face and garments radiate a light (the word Luke chooses is one for lightning). Peter, who often speaks for the rest of us, impassioned and impetuous, is overcome, and suggests they build tents: to mark the place as sacred, and perhaps also serve as structures they can dwell in. But Jesus directs them back down to the valley, where he is immediately met by a crowd and thrust into the work of healing.
Jesus knows that they cannot stay on the mountainside forever.
So it is with us. We often feel called to connect with God on the mountainside, but our work is always in the valley. Peter, James and John do not need to build tents for God to dwell in — because they are the tents. We all are tents for God to dwell in, and our work is to make ready in our hearts a home for God: to carry God, bring God, be God to all of those in need of comfort, beauty, consolation, love.
We are told that these disciples saw Jesus’ transfiguration because “they were fully awake.” And part of the work of the faith is cultivating this wakefulness: becoming awake to all the ways that God is always moving in the world around us. Rowan Williams once described prayer as birdwatching: “You sit very still because something is liable to burst into view, and sometimes of course it means a long day sitting in the rain with nothing very much happening.” Whether rain is falling or the sun is shining, we watch. We stay awake. And we open our hearts, our lives — like doors of tents — to the beauty of God’s love at work in the world around us, and then work to bring that love forth radiantly in all we do and are.
Love, Travis
