Thirty years ago or more, author Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek became a best-seller because her language was so lyrical and her eye was so sharp.  It was a simple book, and therefore profound.  It is merely and magically a record of her observations made on daily walks near her home – often along little Tinker Creek.  The whole point of her walks, and of life, she says, is to open one’s eyes to the wonder of our world:  “...beauty and grace,” she says, “are performed whether or not we will or sense them.  The least we can do is try to be there.”  (Bantam edition, page 8.)  Later she continues:  “We don’t know what’s going on here [in our world].  ... We don’t know.  Our life is a faint tracing of the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the surface of a leaf.  We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here.”  (page 9)  A few pages later, she whimsically describes her art:  “Like the bear who went over the mountain I went out to see what I could see.”  (page 12)

Over the past few weeks of Epiphany, our journey of faith has also been an invitation to each of us to awaken the wild bear in our own hearts, if that is what it takes, and to “see what we can see.”  Maybe that’s the essence of the season of Epiphany and a core challenge of the Christian life:  seeing all that there is to see; seeing both literally, with our eyes, and spiritually, with our hearts and our souls.  Just a few weeks ago, in a lesson from the beginning of the gospel of John, Jesus gives a cryptic answer to a disciple’s inquiry about him.  “Come and see,” Jesus responds. 

Indeed, seeing is the point of each of the gospels.  It’s as if they invite us into the world of faith in Christ with the same invitation:  “Come and see.”  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all want us to see Jesus as they have seen him, in the joy of his resurrection.  They want us to see, because, they almost whisper in our ears:  seeing is believing.  Faith is may be more than mere awareness, but it always begins with taking notice.  No one truly speaks the oldest of Christian creeds, “Jesus is Lord,” without first noticing, “There is something about this person.  Jesus is different somehow.”

Or course, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – along with Paul before them and all the rest of us since them – suffer the inevitable challenge of language.  With what words can one describe the holy, which is, by definition, beyond words? How does one understand God, who is beyond all comprehension?  How do we tell of our encounter with the holy?  Finally, like Annie Dillard along Tinker Creek, all we can do is tell the story as best we can.

And that brings us back to the lesson for today, the story of Jesus’ transfiguration.  It’s a very compact story:  Jesus, like Moses in the Old Testament, goes up a mountain, and he takes a few disciples with him, but just a few:  Peter, James, and John.  And on the mountain they experience God’s presence.  There is a bright light, evoking both the dawning of creation and the dawning of the first Easter day – the day that changed all their lives and the day that made the telling of this story imperative.  There is a heavenly voice, recalling the God’s blessing at Jesus baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.”  With this bit of instruction addressed to the disciples, I suppose, and therefore to us:  “Listen to him.”  The in the face of this holy presence, the disciples do the human thing:  they fall to the ground “overcome by fear.”  Jesus has to coax them, as it were, back to life, using the words God often speaks to any so stunned by a holy encounter:  “Get up, and do not be afraid.”  But telling the story, I’m aware of how mere words can’t fully convey such a moment.

And yet words are all that Matthew has, of course, to tell the story of Jesus.  It’s a story beyond words, of course, but we are bound to use words to tell of the mystery.  The only hope is that something of the holy will shine through.

That’s the only hope the church has ever had:  to tell the story, and thereby to invite one another to become pilgrims back into the world of mystery.  The words invite us to open our eyes, first of all, to see the wonder of life and the wonderful life we’re invited to share with the very God of creation itself, author of all this wonder.  Just so, the first lesson reminds the church, and us, “You will do well to be attentive to this [gospel] as to a lamp shining in a dark place....” (2 Peter 2:19)

The words of the gospel invite us to open our lives, too, and therefore our hearts, to accept our place within the mystery.  We take our place in the world as a people who continue to tell the story.  We are not pilgrims only, but pilgrims with a story to tell, with words to share, if we can be attentive enough on the journey of faith to take a few notes.

When we stand in a few moments to speak the words of the Nicene Creed, don’t be put off by the words.  Rather hear them for what they are, the story of a journey of faith with Christ, a story in which the fourth-century church is trying to put into its very best words its devotion to a living presence in their midst.  God was in their midst, and they struggled to find their best words for the story.  In effect, this creed is built of words they found inadequate to record the experience.

A more modern, and more accessible story of faith I recall from one of my favorite Christian journalists, Frederick Buechner.  He tells the story somewhere of being touched by a holy moment at his village church, the place where he knows and is known.  He came to the altar for the sacrament, he said, and his priest in this little Episcopal church did what he always did, he offered him the wafer with the same simple words he always used, but he said his name:  “Freddy, the body of Christ, given for you.”  In that moment, through the power of those simple words, he heard anew, that God’s love was for him. Yes, for all, of course.  But for him.  For Freddy.  Not for the noted author, the gifted wordsmith, but here, the human being, blessed by the one simple word, his name.  “Freddy.”  Only his friends used that name.  Now he understood that God knew his name, too.  “Freddy.  Christ.  For you.”  Baptism.  Blessing.  Resurrection.  Life.  All are there.  Freddy saw.  (I don’t remember just where I read this story; probably in one of Buechner’s several memoirs.)

Such seeing is believing.  See?  

Amen.