A few weeks ago, I was attending a family wedding, and at the reception, one of the toasts was given in Spanish since the bride was born and raised in Spain. With four years of high school Spanish and a year from college, I rather enjoyed testing my ability to comprehend what was being said.
Writing and reading other languages has always been much easier for me than hearing and comprehending, primarily because I have never had an immersive language experience. But I love languages, and as much as I wanted to understand every word of the toast at that wedding, the reality was as I predicted. Listening to the Spanish words was like sifting for pebbles in the sand. Most of what I heard was sand, a cloud of words that rushed by too quickly for me to translate. And thrown in were little pebbles of light, words I could readily comprehend.
I found myself longing to sit with those moments where I understood a word, or if I was lucky, even a phrase. It felt good to receive occasional glimpses of clarity from the fog of another language. And in my pride, I patted myself on the back in those fleeting moments of comprehension.
Perhaps you, like me, have had dreams where you were speaking fluently in another language. These are wonderfully satisfying dreams, elusive proof that somewhere inside of us, we are capable of understanding another language. Uninhibited in the world of sleep, we comprehend clearly. In the muddle of a busy world with worries and cares, we can only glean pebbles of words.
If only translating were as simple as understanding individual words! Anyone who has studied another language knows that translation is an art. You can’t simply Google translate, literally transcribing word for word. Words have multiple meanings in some cases, and a literal translation will sound like nonsense in addition to being inelegant. Translation is not for those who like rigid clarity. It can’t be accomplished successfully without swimming in the linguistic sea of a culture different from one’s own.
I dare say that many people approach conversation with God with a literalism similar to novice translators. Listening to God’s voice feels like paddling our way through a cloud of confusion with a desperate desire to pick out one or two choice morsels of wisdom, hope, or clarity.
In Scripture, there are numerous stories where crystalline voices sound from heaven, obviously from God and unambiguously stating God’s purpose and will. These are the moments we want to enshrine in our memories and hearts. These clear glimpses of the divine are like those dreams in foreign languages that we want to hold onto forever. If only we could.
In the New Testament, we get just a few of these moments where the voice of God breaks distinctly into the earthly realm. At Jesus’s baptism, before his earthly ministry begins, the heavens part and God’s voice speaks directly to Jesus, designating him as his Beloved Son. And at Jesus’s transfiguration on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, God does it again. God speaks from heaven to earth with great lucidity, but this time to the disciples, and presumably to us as well. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!
Don’t you long to experience one of these moments? Don’t you yearn to hear God speaking directly to you, with such transparency? And are you somewhat mystified and frustrated by God’s clear command as Jesus was transfigured before his disciples on that mountain? This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!
The command is direct; how to observe it is less so. How, Lord, do we listen to Jesus? How, through the din of war, of voices raised in anger, with ears clogged by fear can we hear Jesus’s voice? How do we know which voice is his? What does his voice even sound like? And what does it mean when we hear no voices except the incessant roar of a noisy world around us?
We are usually looking for blatant signs, whether voices or visions. Few of us are afforded what is offered to Peter, James, and John. Few of us will ever see such a vision of glory in this life. And so, is it any surprise that, in spite of his sleepiness, Peter tries to memorialize the spectacular scene before him by building booths?
Peter opts for the easy route of Google translation. He has grasped one clear morsel from heaven—albeit in a vision—and he wants to etch it in stone. But he has missed the point, for no sooner has he attempted to freeze in amber this remarkable moment in time than he is confused by a cloud. Peter has been listening to speech in another language, but he has only pulled out a few words that make sense to him. And he has thereby missed the point.
It’s only when Peter and the other disciples are overshadowed by the consternation of the cloud that a coherent command can be gleaned from this experience. Only when human confidence and arrogance are humbled by ambiguity can God’s voice ring clear in our own ears. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!
Undoubtedly, like us in our daily lives, Peter and the other disciples were searching for answers to Jesus’s identity. And Peter himself had been so bold as to state that Jesus was the Messiah. But did he know what this really meant? Does anyone know what this really means? Do we know what this really means?
Peter represents those of us who want an uncomplicated Messiah who does not have to suffer. Peter represents those of us who want unequivocal answers to our theological queries without periods of dryness and confusion. Peter wants the ability to make sense of his faith by translating a stray word here or there from heaven, enshrining it in his memory, and calling it a day.
We who hear this story of the transfiguration have the benefit of knowing the whole story. We know that Peter missed something in his haste to memorialize the mountaintop experience, because he would soon deny Jesus. It would take him some time to learn Jesus’ language and to translate with some degree of fluency Jesus’s commands.
Which of us is not like Peter in some sense? We are instructed to follow God’s will and listen to Jesus, and our intentions are good. We want to do so. But so often it seems unclear how we are to know what God’s will is or what Jesus is saying to us. We cherry pick commands as we see fit and as they make us feel good, yet at the bottom of it all, we are missing the semantics of Jesus’s language. We have failed to immerse ourselves in it.
On the verge of Lent, we are perhaps looking for some clarity before we begin our long wilderness wanderings. Before we enter the cloud completely, can we have just a few simple and direct words?
As much as it is mystifying and mysterious, the story of the transfiguration provides us with some clues in our quest to heed God’s voice. St. Luke tells us that the setting of Jesus’s transfiguration is one of prayer. Jesus goes to the mountain to pray. It is while he is immersed in prayer, fluently communicating in the language of his heavenly Father, that this theophany happens. Might this have something to teach us?
Prayer frequently seems like uttering words into a cloud, and while we long for God to respond back to us with clarity, it is never so simple. On the mountain with his disciples, Jesus models something else for us. Jesus affirms the value of prayer as learning to speak God’s language. Discerning the results of prayer is rarely like translating random words from a cloud of confusion. It is more about conforming our lives to a different language, God’s language.
And when we immerse ourselves in that language, it may be that we can make more sense of the voices we hear, the nudges we feel, and the things we see. Unless we are steeped in the language of prayer, everything will seem like babel. But the language of prayer shapes our hearts and minds to listen and see in new and unexpected ways. When we become fluent in God’s language, we find ourselves able to heed our instincts and gut reactions more and more because we can trust they are really from God. We can trust that they are God’s words to us.
On the verge of this Lent, the noise is deafening. The cacophony of violence and the roar of evil is sickening. Voices cry in anguish and protest, and to begin to make sense of this cloud, we need the courage to enter it. God is inviting us to become fluent in his language, because God is not silent. God has never been silent. And God will never be.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 27, 2022