What if the miraculous and awe-inspiring scene on the Mountain of Transfiguration was just a glimpse of how things really are? You remember the remarkable story: Jesus took three disciples, Peter, James, and John, up a high mountain where, Scripture says, Moses and Elijah met with Christ. Join Dr. Jay Dudley for a wonderfully insightful sermon where Rudyard Kipling's "Six Honest Serving Men" (What, Why, When, How, Where, Who) is employed to explore the incident on the Mount of Transfiguration.

The sonnet by Malcom Guite that Jay referenced is here:

For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

The quote by René Daumal that Jay shared is here:

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”

Note: The featured image for this podcast/sermon is a details from the painting titled "Transfiguration" by Lewis Bowman, a favorite of many of us at Epiclesis.