Metamorphoo in our Midst
Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 11:08AM 
By Brad Henderson
In telling the story of what has come to be known as the Transfiguration of Jesus, both Matthew and Mark use a Greek word of which Dr. Seuss would certainly be envious: metamorphoo. It’s mere appearance is enough to make one connect it more with the babbling of small children than the ponderings of scholars and theologians. This delightful word means exactly what it has been translated to mean: a change, a transformation, or in the more archaic language of our ancestors, a transfiguration. It is the word that at least two of the Gospel authors use to describe the change in Jesus on the mountain.
Wouldn’t you love to have been there, to have seen the cloud, to have heard the voice, to have participated in the metamorphoo? And wouldn’t this journey of faith be so much easier and so much more powerful if we could experience these great theophanies the way our forebears in the faith did? To stand toe to toe with God on the Mountain the way Moses did? Or have God call us from deep slumber like Samuel? Or be claimed as God’s Own like David? Well, of course it would. But I suppose my question is why we find it so very difficult to realize that we are already in the midst of God, and that like Peter, James, and John, we are witnesses to the metamorphoo, the transformation that comes at God’s hand?
When I pause and look at our daughters, I come to the breath- stopping realization that every day is an exercise in metamorphoo. Every moment of every day holds the potential of God, and often chooses to release it at the precise moment we have become bored and turned our attention elsewhere. I watch our youngest as she comes home with a skinned knee, for the first time in her life her eyes unblurred by tears, and I realize that she is being transformed from child to adolescent. And I watch our teens who now navigate the side streets and interstates alike, as though being behind the wheel of these ton- and-a-half weapons we call cars had been their calling since birth. I realize with some taste of bittersweetness that they, too, are being transformed from adolescents into young women. And I realize once again that metamorphoo has visited me, the same way it will when winter gives way to spring, and death gives way to life. This is a ride both exhilarating and frightening, and I love it and I fear it.
Is it the same as the “glory” of Jesus on the mountain? Well, don’t be too quick to dismiss it as much less. While we are waiting for the Cecil B. DeMille version of God, the real one slips past us in the seemingly mundane and ordinary. The key and the calling is to watch with eyes open to see, experience and be the change God would bring in us.
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