St. John’s Episcopal Church
207 Albany Avenue, Kingston, NY 12401

Sermons

  • Witnessing Transfiguration – The Rev. Michelle Meech

    February 19, 2023

    The Transfiguration is not the average Gospel story – as if any Gospel story is average. First, it’s a story we tell twice a year – each year at the end of the Season After the Epiphany, and once again on the Feast of the Transfiguration which is celebrated on August 6. Second, it’s one of the stories that appears, in some form, in all 4 of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke… often called the synoptic Gospels because the 3 of them have the same general outline or synopsis… all three of these have the same basic story.

    Several days after completing his teaching… 6 or 8… Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a high mountain apart from the others. Suddenly Jesus was transfigured before them – his face and his clothing all became like the sun, dazzling brightness, intensely glistening. Then Moses and Elijah both appeared beside Jesus and were talking to him.

    Luke goes off track just a bit and claims that Peter, James, and John fell asleep while Jesus was praying and this happened to him so they didn’t watch it happen but rather awoke to witness this scene.

    Then Peter… it’s always Peter… said to Jesus: It’s good that we are here with you because we can make 3 booths – one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. And as Peter said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them and a voice said: This is my beloved son – listen to him.

    Then, Jesus tells them to tell no one of this until “the Son of man” is raised from the dead. Luke departs again here, omitting Jesus’ instruction. But they kept silence anyway, Luke tells us.

    This is the story.

    Many scholars note that this story is designed to further elucidate that Jesus is indeed the fulfillment of the law and the prophets in this specific way. Moses brought the law down from Mt. Horeb (also known as Sinai) and Elijah was the prophet of the prophets who journeyed to Mt. Horeb after being told by an angel to do so. Both Moses and Elijah were, at the time these Gospels were written, and still are today very important figures in Judaism. Having both of these pillars of the Jewish faith join Jesus there on the mountain, with some other Jewish tropes thrown in like the reference to building booths, this is all a way for these Gospel writers to claim Jesus’ place, not as a prophet of God, but as the messiah. The one who fulfills what the prophets have been talking about and preparing people for.

    If you recall, last week I spoke about the context of Matthew’s Gospel.

    The larger context of the Roman Empire… the entity whose well paid, well fed military kept the empire growing. These soldiers who had occupied Judea, all the lands around Jerusalem, since the year 63 BCE. And the Jewish rebellions that ensued to try to gain their home land back, which led to the execution of Jesus and, eventually, to the siege of Jerusalem ending with the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 AD prompting the great Jewish diaspora as people fled for their lives.

    Judaism shifted from a temple-based religion to rabbinic Judaism. Synagogues cropped up as practicing Jews continued to worship the one God throughout the Roman Empire, a dangerous thing in a society that practiced the worship of many gods.

    Those who followed Jesus were a part of this diaspora. Now we know Paul had been evangelizing throughout the Mediterranean, but Matthew’s community were Jews who were part of a movement within Judaism, those who believed the messiah had come. They were in Syria, just north of Judea and were forbidden by the local rabbis from worshipping with the Jews there. Matthew wrote his Gospel to help form the imaginations of those in his community. To help them understand who they were, who Jesus was, and who God was calling them to become. Mark had the same task in Alexandria, modern day Egypt. And Luke did as well in Corinth, modern day Greece.

    All of these writers needed to help the members of their community understand the important place Jesus held as the one who taught with authority, who healed and performed miracles, who was announced by John the Baptist and recognized as the anointed one, the Christ, who practiced love as a liberative force in a world dominated by power-over others because he knew this liberation of all people to be the true desire of God. The one true God, that is, the God of Life.

    The Transfiguration is, in one way, a story about the authority of Jesus as the glory of God shone through him. It is clear that Matthew is doing that here. As does Mark and Luke. And we know why they offer this story – to teach the people of their communities that Jesus’ authority is like that of Moses and Elijah.

    But the story of the Transfiguration is much more, frankly. This isn’t just what we might crudely think of as good promotional material for Jesus.

    Let’s talk about the nature of Transfiguration itself. And let’s talk about the nature of Jesus and why he came to teach us.

    We often talk about transformation in Christianity – how God’s Holy Spirit works in us and through us, transforming us into what God is calling us to become. We consider prayer to be a transformative experience, God’s Holy Spirit transforming us as we pray. The season of Lent, which we begin this week with Ash Wednesday, is considered to be a season of transformation that ends with the story of the death and resurrection of Christ whereupon we given new life in Christ. The sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist are transformational in that we formalize the grace God has gifted us.

    Transformation is, of course, not always spiritual. It’s also physical and emotional and mental. As we practice something, we change over time, transforming into something or someone new. Transformation may happen suddenly too in a moment when we are suddenly changed forever.

    Transfiguration is something different than this. Transfiguration is an unbidden radiance that shines through the stuff of life, the organic material of this very real, very tangible existence. As if a particular aspect of glory that has always been waiting to be known glistens and shimmers into view, whatever that view might be.

    And being truly known, we are flooded by love incarnate every cell at once relaxed and open while beaming forth the exquisite joy of God’s Light. Divinity present where it has always been waiting to be witnessed.

    There is something relational about transfiguration, you see. Have we ever wondered why Jesus took Peter and James and John with him? What did they offer to the experience except that they bore witness? Jesus wasn’t looking down at his own robes thinking, “wow, look at me glow!” It was Peter and James and John that were able to witness God’s glory in Jesus.

    Poet Jan Richardson writes about the Transfiguration in her poem, When Glory:

    That when glory comes,
    we will open our eyes
    to see it.

    That when glory shows up,
    we will let ourselves
    be overcome
    not by fear
    but by the love
    it bears.

    That when glory shines,
    we will bring it
    back with us
    all the way,
    all the way,
    all the way down.

    I think we sometimes mistake the Transfiguration as something that gives Jesus some kind of authority over and above the others. Certainly, at least, in the mind of some people, authority over and above Moses and Elijah. But that kind of interpretation is, I think, missing the point of Jesus’ entire ministry and missing the point of Christ itself.

    Jesus was born of Mary – a woman whose song The Magnificat reminds us that God’s work with her is to overturn the powers that be. Jesus was baptized by John, at Jesus’ insistence, with all the others in the Jordon. Jesus blessed and healed those on the margins. Jesus taught us that we are all the light of the world, that we are all the salt of the earth. And Jesus said that all the law and all the prophets come down to two things: Love God. And love your neighbor as yourself.

    The Season After the Epiphany is all about God’s light, who comes to us in the form of the most vulnerable – love incarnate being born in the filth of a manger. We see this light then when it’s precious and new. We may even warm up to it and smile with some tilt of our head.

    But coming to know this light, really know this light in all its fullness… that’s something else. We must then take time learning about this light, coming to know this light, finding this light inside of ourselves so that we develop our own capacity to see it in its everydayness, not just at Christmas.

    That when glory comes,
    we will open our eyes
    to see it.

    That when glory shows up,
    we will let ourselves
    be overcome
    not by fear
    but by the love
    it bears.

    That when glory shines,
    we will bring it
    back with us
    all the way,
    all the way,
    all the way down.

     

    The Transfiguration is about us. You might say that it’s in the eye of the beholder. It’s about Peter and James and John who witness this mountain top event and who bring it back down the mountain with them. It’s about us because, when take the time to know, really know another person, when we stop wondering what we can get from this person or this situation, when we stop worrying about ourselves and what another person might think of us… When God’s silence rings through our ears, evaporating all thought and fear… and can see God’s glory shining through this person or this aspect of God’s holy and righteous creation… right in front of us…

    That is transfiguration.

    This is, after all, what Jesus came to teach us. That all are holy. All are blessed. All are beloved.

    Even us.