As we read this passage, we might expect a little girl named Alice to take our hand to walk with us through the Transfiguration. We don’t see a dormouse. No one invites us to a tea party. Nevertheless, we seem to have fallen down a rabbit hole. Everything points to a kind of Wonderland, where things don’t happen the way we expect them to happen. 

            After Jesus and three of his disciples climb a high mountain, we receive our first clue. Jesus’ clothes turn “dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” 

            We watch a scene unfold on earth, but Jesus doesn’t dress for this earth. No matter how much a launderer soaked and pounded the wool Jesus wore, he would not be able bring out that level of brightness. Jesus’ clothes tell us that all this takes place in a wonderland, on earth, but different from earth. Those dazzling clothes point us beyond earth. On this occasion, Jesus did not dress for this earth. 

Much that does not make sense

            If the Transfiguration doesn’t make much sense to us, does life on this earth make sense to us either? We can see some predictability, but there’s much that we would call “senseless.” Does war make sense to us? Do shooting sprees make sense to us? Does the Holocaust make sense to us? Does slavery make sense to us? Does random vandalism make sense to us? Does social-media

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