Ikea & the Transfiguration

A post very similar to what I preached @LCMontheHILL on Luke 9.

I feel a real connection with Peter. Now, I haven’t followed Jesus to the top of a mountain or seen his face transfigured. I haven’t seen Jesus checking in with Moses and Elijah. I haven’t heard the booming voice of God speaking directly to me from a cloud. But...I have been to Ikea. 

Peter, James and John follow Jesus up to the top of the mountain. As he’s praying, the face of the man whom they had dropped their nets to follow around the Galilean countryside was transfigured. Jesus’ face, something incredibly familiar, became something incredibly new and different. The familiar became strange. In the face of an itinerant preacher they saw the face of God. 

A trip to Ikea is not that different. The multi-story blue and yellow behemoth looms above the interstate like a summit. My search for cheap and stylish furniture fix is a journey through a prayer-like labyrinth where transfiguration awaits around each turn. Inside the maze, all the ‘stuff’ of my everyday life is seen in a completely new and exciting way. I’ve got a couch at home, but at Ikea it becomes a dagstorp. Tea kettles become ödmjuk’s and comforters become smörboll's. It’s my regular life, except more functional, stylish, and gleaming. It’s all the pieces of my life transfigured. 

A trip to Ikea evokes in many a desire to never leave. A man in New Jersey decided to live inside of an Ikea for a week. In Sweden they actually sell Ikea houses. You could buy one for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah!

Certainly, Peter’s experience was slightly more intense than my average trip to Ikea. That intensity begs a question, What do we do with experiences that so transcend the realities of our daily lives? What is our reaction supposed to be to an experience so far removed from the places where we live? Gathered with students around a piece of bread and cup of wine, in a coffee grove in Guatemala, and sharing a student's hopes and fears over a cup of coffee I find myself joining in Peter’s chorus, “It is good for us to be here. Let’s build a house. We can’t lose this.”

The trouble is that, so far removed, it's difficult to imagine how the light of these holy experiences might bathe and shape the rest of our lives. We want all of our lives to be lived in that light these sacred experiences, but we can’t see how to get from here to there. 

It’s as if these moments of transfiguration are a stylish Scandinavian wardrobe, a pax uggdal, if you will. They come with a million different parts, directions in a language with an abundance of umlauts, and a solitary allen wrench. With those tools how do we get from here to there? I think there’s an air of frustration with Peter’s suggestion that we just move into the store and not have to worry about putting it all together. 

This story is not ultimately about unfamiliar vocabulary or Scandinavian furniture. It’s not a story about how we get from here to there. Rather this story is a story about how Jesus gets from here to there. 

I’m tempted to focus on Peter and the disciples’ time in the light, yearning for access to that experience. But on the whole of this text there is a definite movement from light to dark. In the light Peter asks Jesus if they can stay. But Jesus doesn’t respond. Instead a fog moves in and the God who dwells in the darkness of a cloud speaks, “This is my chosen, listen to him.”

They descend the mountain and the first thing Jesus does, coming from the light, from the very presence of God, is to go directly into the depths of the darkness. A child is in the midst of seizure, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. A parent stands by with no recourse, no way to help their child. The situation could not be further removed from the life and light on top of the mountain. And yet, this is what Jesus does. He goes directly from the light into the dark and in the dark he makes the light shine. He heals the boy and continues on his way. 

Mountain top experiences, spirit-filled moments of great clarity, are blessed and holy experiences that give shape and vision to our lives. But the good news is that Jesus then, now and always is bringing the light into our darkness wherever we might wander. That’s good news in the midst of lives that sometimes make as much sense as a set of Ikea instructions. 

It turns out that it’s not our job to get us from here to there. It’s our job to follow Jesus, to follow Jesus into the dark hoping,trusting that the light of Christ will find us along our paths, even if all we have to guide us is an allen wrench and a prayer. Amen.