Last Sunday after Epiphany; Sermon, March 3, 2019
This sermon was preached by the Rev. Sandy Horton-Smith, Deacon at St. Paul’s on the last Sunday before she began her first diaconal sabbatical.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
601 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS
Last Sunday after Epiphany Readings
Main Focus Text: Luke 9.28-43a
The Feast of the Transfiguration is August 6th, but those who made the decisions about the Revised Common Lectionary chose to have this gospel reading on the Last Sunday of Epiphany, the final Sunday before Lent. We have a reading about the Transfiguration every year on this Sunday - this year from Luke, last year from Mark, and next year from Matthew. So why is this story significant at this time of year?
The Transfiguration is so familiar to us. At least, I thought it was familiar to most Christians. I asked my office-mates at work what they thought the Transfiguration was about and found out that neither one of them knew what I was talking about. They had to look up the passage in Luke to know what it was. But the more I thought about this story of Jesus going up on the mountain and being transformed before his disciples, the stranger it seemed. It seems so out of place compared with the rest of the gospel story of Jesus’ life, his teachings and the miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and dining with sinners. Jesus didn’t show off his divinity with flashy displays even though Jesus and his disciples lived surrounded by a society with Roman and Greek gods. Those gods would transform themselves into animals or disguise themselves in order to interact with people and mess with their lives. But Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips or fly through the air. So why did he go up on the mountain to pray and then start glowing?
And why were Moses and Elijah there? And how in the world did Peter, John, and James recognize them? I mean they didn’t have photos of these people, so how did they know who they were? If you look at some paintings done of this scene, the artist gives them props to indicate who they are – the stone tablets with the 10 commandments for Moses, of course, and a scroll for Elijah which relates to a bible story about him. Those props help us to identify them in the paintings, but I wonder if Moses was really hauling those tablets around on the mountain-top.
The obvious answer is that it shows the divinity of Jesus as he is glorified on the mountain. This is part of that mystery of the incarnation that took centuries to be worked out and led to cries of heresy and persecution of those who came up on the wrong side of the argument. It involves fun words like homoosia and homoiousia and the great puzzle of one person with 2 natures. But what can you take away from that today into your week that has any real connection? So I dug deeper into the passage and didn’t find much help there either.
The story of the Transfiguration is loaded with elements that point to other parts of scripture, one little bit after another. Moses and Elijah are often taken to represent the Law and the Prophets, giving their seal of approval to Jesus and his place in God’s plan. As the disciple Phillip said to Nathaniel, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.” Moses and Elijah also both witnessed the glory of God on a mountain-top in stories from the Old Testament. Our first lesson was about Moses coming down from the mountain after such an encounter with his face glowing from that experience. Elijah went to the mountain to meet God and experienced the power of a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire, but met God in a sheer silence and a quiet voice. These two again experience the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus.
The presence of Peter, John, and James in this story reminds me that they are the 3 disciples who were also went with Jesus when he went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray prior to his arrest and crucifixion. They were sleepy on that night, too, and Jesus chastised them when they couldn’t stay awake just one hour. And poor Peter! He once again doesn’t quite get it. Just before this in Luke, he declares that Jesus is the Messiah, but when he sees this undeniable evidence of the divinity of Jesus, he gets so excited that he says to Jesus, “This is soooo amazing! Let’s just stay here on the mountain and we’ll put up a tent for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah. And it’ll be great!” Jesus had just told him that the Son of Man would have to face great suffering and persecution and be killed. The point is not to hang around on the top of a mountain.
Finally, Jesus’ face being transformed sounds to me like the way he was changed after the resurrection so that the disciples didn’t recognize him. Mary Magdalene thought he was a gardener until Jesus said her name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus walked with Jesus and talked with him about him but didn’t recognize him until he blessed and broke the bread. So in Jesus’ transfiguration there are echos sounding of his death and resurrection.
And all of that is very interesting and would make a good exegetical paper for a class on Christology, but what does it mean for us today? Well, I think the answer comes, not from Luke, but in 2nd Corinthians, our epistle reading today.
“All of us... seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” Just as Jesus was transformed in his appearance, we are transformed by seeing his glory. Step by step, moment by moment, encounter by encounter, we are meant to be changed by having Jesus in our lives. How we encounter Jesus and how we are transformed will differ, but all of us should be made different by our experiences.
Encounters with Jesus can come in many different forms. You may meet Jesus in visiting the elderly during a pastoral care visit. You may see him while watching a child first learn about the wonders that are chocolate chip cookies. Or you may hear Jesus in the words of our presiding bishop about how the most important thing in all of God’s good creation is love. Mother Teresa said “I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.” You will encounter Jesus many times today, but will you be transformed?
Transformation can also take on many different forms. Your time with Jesus may lead you to spending your time with those who need you most – those who are sick, poor, tired, or lonely. You may feel called to witness to another person about the effect on your life you have felt from being a part of this congregation. And sometimes that transformation involves a cathedral full of people, 14 bishops, vows and prayers and a change of wardrobe including a funny hat. As Cathleen Chittenden Bascom was transformed into our bishop yesterday at Grace Cathedral.
In just a few days, Lent begins. It’s a time to slow down, reflect, pray, and spend some time with Jesus. It’s up to you whether you will be transformed by it. You can breeze through the next 6-1/2 weeks coming to Easter just as you are now. Or you can open your heart, recognize the presence of Jesus in your life, and be transformed by the encounter.
I’ll be going on a 2 month sabbatical starting on Thursday. I’ll be going on a retreat in Tennessee about spiritual discernment to start. Then I’ll explore other churches in Manhattan to see what ministries lay people are involved in and how they are encouraged to become involved. My plan is to come back and present an adult formation course on discernment and explore forming a lay discernment committee to help all of you explore your questions about how you are feeling called to serve. I ask you to pray for me during this time so that I might have some encounters with Jesus and be transformed. And I will pray for all of you for the same.
Unveil your faces, see the glory of the Lord, and be transformed.
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