Transfiguration*

Last Epiphany – Revised Common Lectionary
(Homily shared at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Evansville,  Indiana...audio not from live delivery)

Exodus 34:29-35

Psalm 99

Luke 9:28-36

The only beets I had ever eaten

Until a couple of years ago

Were the ones my mother served

the pickled kind…that came from a jar

and since we weren’t farmers or big gardeners

I’d never seen a raw beet

In fact

I thought that beets were red because of the pickling juices

So when I wanted to make this new recipe

And I went to the grocery to buy my first bunch of beets

It was strange

You know…they’re so ugly and dirty…

Certainly nothing to look at  

But I had this new recipe…

And now I had my first bunch of beets

With my sharp paring knife in hand

I began to peel and slice

And…I was…totally surprised

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was dazzled

by the rich, and exploding redness

I remember calling the kids to the kitchen

“Right here…Right here is proof that God exists!”

to me…It was that dazzling

People can move me this way too

In the hospital

One of the things I have to watch for

Is becoming wooden…detached from myself and from my work

And while I KNOW that

No two patients are alike

No two calls to the emergency room are alike

I’m no always able to hold on to that

When I do catch myself being wooden

It’s usually because I have been…well…dazzled

By Another person’s faith

And I don’t mean some shallow Pollyanna faith

But a real ABIDING and STURDY and GROUNDING faith

In the midst of overwhelming difficulty or even trauma

I count both of these as glimpses…

A sort of preview of the Kingdom

They are "shots in the arm"

fuel  for my own transfiguration

With texts like our Gospel today…the Transfiguration

I find that I have two different impulses to fight

The 1^st is my:

hyper-critical 21^st century scientific-literalist side 
that wants to know…what…exactly…happened on that mountain
I want the facts

and the 2^nd is:

my cynical side that wants to dismiss it out right 
as too outrageous to have anything    
to say to me ...today

...and neither of these are very fruitful

In order to derail those impulses

I need to find a way to enter the story

So I can get a view from within the scene

But before that

I have to take in the setting…the context

It is Year C

We are in Luke

Luke is THE master storyteller

He writes later than Mark and Matthew

Toward the end of the 1^st Century

His purpose is to encourage the faith and hope

of the reading & hearing community

And that includes all of us

Luke emphasizes the role of prayer and the Holy Spirit

In a much much bigger way than the other Gospels

The 2^nd coming hasn’t materialized and

Emphasizing the Holy Spirit and Prayer

Makes perfect sense

Because it is clear now

that Christians are in this for the long haul

And the Holy Spirit and prayer

are answers to long-haul needs

We have been long-hauling ever since!

This story of the transfiguration

Is here to help us

For the long-haul!

When I’m looking for a way into a scene

I’m always glad to see Peter

Impulsive Peter

Peter…prone to putting his foot in his mouth

I can relate to him

So I’m going in as Peter

I don’t know how he does it

Praying ALL night

James and John and I

We couldn’t keep our eyes open

But thanks be to God

I was able to be just enough WITH IT

to catch Moses and Elijah…I mean Rock Stars!

The conversation was a bit odd

A little above my pay grade

But ROCKSTARS

WOW

And… shoot

What would you have done?

Two of the all time GREATS

Two of the figures that have taught me

almost everything I know about God

It sounds dumb now

But in the moment

I really thought it was a good idea

-Let’s nail this thing down

-Let’s build something

-Like a new chapel

-I’m good with a hammer!

-I could at least get an autograph

But before I could hatch a plan

There I was

engulfed in a cloud

And…well…biblically anyway

Clouds are fearsome omens

Clouds = Straight up terror

The surprising thing…

It wasn’t like that at all

There was this voice

This loving, gentle, guiding voice

-No commandments

-No new litany of laws

-No long ritual how-to’s

Just

LISTEN

LISTEN TO HIM

HE IS CHOSEN

HE

Not Moses

Not Elijah

Look around

They are gone

LISTEN

LISTEN TO HIM

Well he didn’t have to even say

Not to tell anyone what happened

I didn’t KNOW what happened

All I knew is that it was a dazzling glimpse of glory

A kind of shot in the arm

And that it was

NOT fearsome

…It was totally new in some way

That’s why it was so confusing                                                                                                                    

Now we have an advantage over Peter

We know the end of the story

We know about another mountain

Golgatha

and

loving surrender and forgiveness

from the cross

What Peter saw

Was a continuous line of GREATS!

Moses, Elijah and now Jesus

Let’s make three tents

But the text invites us into a contrast not a continuum

We know about Moses

He’s the law-giver

The Law that hoped to make a people from the outside-in

That’s how laws work

And Elijah

Well…The most famous story about Elijah

From 1 Kings

Is about the time he showed up the priests of Baal

at the Mt Carmel God competition

Both sides set up altars

And the one spontaneously consumed by fire

Well that would be a clear indication that the true God

Is on their side

Elijah even throws a bucket of water on his altar

That is how confident he was in Yahweh

And Yahweh came out on top…no surprise there

We stop right there

But Peter surely remembered

the climax of the story in the next line

Elijah commanded

“Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.”

Then they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the River,

And killed them there… (all 450 of them).

NO doubt Elijah THOUGHT that he was pleasing God

But the ancient texts of the Bible

Are what some scripture scholars call

Texts in Travail

They are texts about God…yes

But more importantly they are texts about us

About human beings slowly slowly working out

This mysterious relationship between God and God’s People…Us

I think that’s what Jesus

Was doing for Peter, and James and John

He was bringing their attention to their deep-seeded notions of God

So that those notions might be TRANSFIGURED

Because the God that Jesus has come to reveal

Doesn’t fit into that same box

The God who Jesus reveals

WILL go to the cross

WITH love and forgiveness

for those who brought him there

And that action puts and end to cycles of violence and revenge

At least those done

in the name of God…the God Jesus came to reveal

That doesn’t mean that we won’t keep trying to

Use God’s name to justify our violence

That is everywhere

…But we just can’t get away with it for very long!

Not if we are Christian

So here we are

A week before Lent

And the opening prayer this morning

Gives us some real guidance about the direction of this liturgy

The prayer asked

“that we may be strengthened to bear our cross,

so that we may be changed into his likeness”

strengthened and changed

And isn’t that what we all need?

Don’t we all need to check our notions of God?

Isn’t it ever so easy to slip God into a figure of our own making…

Probably one that justifies our own choices and actions…

Luke knew about this human tendency

And the church knows too

…we know

That’s why we have Lent

Because my guess is that

Idolatry creeps up on us all

Peter was given a dazzling shot in the arm…a preview if you will

Fuel for the intense journey toward Jerusalem

So like my beets

And the abiding faith I sometimes encounter in the hospital

this episode on the mountain

offered a shot in the arm to to Peter, James and John

As it does for us today

It jolts us a little

…toward a kind of realignment

A gentle push to our own ongoing transfiguration

Here we are

gathered

To LISTEN TO HIM

To strengthen and grow

Individually and as a community of faith

We are here…in a way...to be dazzled

Dazzled by…The one God of love revealed to us

In the life death and resurrection of Christ

Dazzled By…The one God who invites us

To welcome transfiguration

Into His image and likeness

Dazzled By…The one God who comes to us as bread

So that we can be nourished

together

as we change and grow.