Year A, Last Epiphany Good Morning!! Wow—I wish you all could have been with us yesterday at the Cathedral. It was truly a mountaintop experience and a major milestone for me! And with today’s readings about the Transfiguration, I might have been just a little bit transfigured myself! I’m sure all of you have experienced significant events in your life, milestones as it were. All of our lives are contain things like that: major moves, weddings, the births of our children. When these things are in our future, much of our energy and thoughts and activities are oriented towards the event, with planning and arranging and all those details as the event may require. Think about a bride and her family getting ready for a wedding, and how much thought and energy and work is focused towards that day, making sure every detail is perfect. Or if you have made a major move, or career change, how for weeks and months much of your activity and energy is directed towards that goal. For me, this journey began about 5 years ago, when re-evaluating what God wanted me to do with the second half of my life. I’d made a lot of mistakes in the first half, and wanted God to be in charge of my future. The company I was working for was expected to close their doors, my marriage was rocky, and I needed God’s guidance to make my life right. As I was contemplating life, I realized that whatever God had for me next, I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree and enrolled in an 18-month degree completion program—a wonderful thing! I continued to think about the future, and what came to resonate most in my heart was to pursue ordained ministry. So while I was working, taking college classes I began the discernment process in my church, with my priests whole-hearted support. I became an aspirant, and received my bachelor’s degree in 2004. I became a postulant and started seminary in January 2005. The hard work continued and there were many drudgery filled days, but I worked towards this goal always. There were lots of ups and downs personally and in our marriage, but the goal was always in view. Last March I became a candidate for ordination, and continued working until finally I was accepted for ordination to the deaconate---a marvelous and wonderful thing, but still just another milestone in the journey. Ahead are graduation from seminary, and, God-willing, ordination to the priesthood. And while this is my goal, it is not the end. When I achieve it, I will not think that I have arrived, because my goal is to serve Jesus Christ and to glorify him, and it will take the rest of my life. When any of us are confronted with the reality of Jesus Christ, our lives are transformed. When we begin to comprehend that Jesus is the Son of God, we cannot help but be changed ourselves. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus took Peter and James and John up on the mountain with him, and this took place six days after Peter acknowledged Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. He said it, but probably did not comprehend much of what he was saying. And so Jesus took him along with two other leaders to the mountain, where they would have a visual experience of Jesus in his divinity. They will witness his glory revealed. When they are all on the mountaintop, Jesus is “transfigured.” In the Greek this is a passive verb indicating that it is not something that he does, but it is done to him—by God the father. This is a physical transformation revealing his glory and divinity and for the disciples, a profound revelation of Jesus’ identity and mission. What Jesus truly was inside himself was made visible and apparent to others. In this glorious spectacle, he is joined by Moses and Elijah—representing the Law and the Prophets. Moses is the one God used to give the law, and Elijah represents both the prophets and the forerunner of the Messiah. Jesus is the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets and “their appearance on the mountain with Jesus indicates the greatness of Jesus, who transcends them both as the One who will be declared the Son of God.” 1 Peter is once again leader and spokesman as he tries to comprehend what is going on, and suggests that they should build monuments to memorialize what they are seeing. He still doesn’t get it, does he? The remarkable scene continues with the appearance of a bright cloud, suggesting the way God appeared in the Old Testament to Moses on Sinai as we heard in our Old Testament lesson. Later the cloud of God’s glory filled the tabernacle, and the cloud of his presence led the Israelites. The cloud of glory filled the temple and this same cloud also represents the coming of the messiah. The voice of God is heard, echoing his words at Jesus’ baptism. Did you get that? The Voice of God is heard!! He says “this is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Jesus is the embodied son of God—God in flesh—and so the disciples must listen. At the sound of thie voice of God the Father, the disciples “fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.” I would think so!! They were confronted with God himself, and would never be the same. Jesus then tenderly touches them and tells them not to be afraid, and the spectacular vision was over. They saw no one but Jesus, and he was now their focus over and above Moses and Elijah. The three disciples had an amazing experience, but it still would take time for them to comprehend the reality and the implications of their experience. Even so, this made a significant impression on them. Peter speaks of this many years later in his second letter:
In a similar way, when the Apostle Paul was confronted with the reality of Jesus, knocked off his horse and blinded, his entire life was transformed, transfigured, re-oriented. Nothing in his life mattered any more except Christ, and Christ was his mission and his goal. “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Like Peter and James and John, like the Apostle Paul, when we begin to comprehend that Jesus is the Son of God, God in flesh who is himself filled with the glory of God—and glory equals presence—our worldview is reoriented. Jesus who ate and drank and slept and walked with the disciples, this rabbi---was always God in his innermost being, and we cannot remain the same. Truth and reality shift. Jesus is not just the only way to the Father, as vitally important as that is for life eternal, but he is the sole truth that brings all reality into focus, and he is the sole access in this world to the kind of life that allows us to live thee way God intends us to live. If Jesus truly is the Son of God, which the events of the transfiguration declare him to be, then it demands that we view everything through his ordering of this world. 2 So what does this look like? In Christian circles several years ago, the question was “What would Jesus do.” And this led to an advertising campaign asking “What would Jesus drive.” In this ad, The Evangelical Environmental Network made the following claims: Of all the choices we make as consumers, the cars we drive have the single biggest impact on all of God’s creation. Care pollution causes illness and death, and most afflicts the elderly, poor, sick and young. It also contributes to global warming, putting millions at risk from drought, flood, hunger and homelessness. . . . Transportation is now a moral choice and an issue for Christian reflection. It’s about more than engineering—it’s about ethics. About obedience. About loving our neighbor. So what would Jesus drive? 3 We may or may not agree with this proposition, but it does put things into perspective. It does put Jesus at the center of our thinking and outlook. We should consider Jesus in all of our actions, thoughts, and choices. Consider again the kinds of things I spoke of in the beginning, the weddings, moves, babies, major life events. In the same way that our thoughts and actions are sometimes focused on and oriented towards big events in our lives, Jesus himself should be our mission and our goal, and our lives and our worldview should be transformed by the reality that Jesus is the Son of God. Listen to him! 1 Wilkins, Michael J. The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004. p. 591. |