LAST EPIPHANY

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: LAST EPIPHANY
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: February 10,2002

TEXT: Matthew 17:1-9 – The Transfiguration of Jesus & The Divine Approval
“And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. . . . . . . . . While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’”

ISSUE: The Transfiguration of Jesus is a momentous Epiphany of Jesus. Matthew’s account calls for his disciples and all who experience this event to ‘listen to him.’ In the context of Holy Baptism in the Parish, this mysterious event demands that we hold Christ before us at all times as Son of God, and Beloved. It calls us to him as our living Lord to accompany us along our way, and to share in his grace. In this spiritual event we raise our children, and give our selves as an example to the world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This Sunday marks the Last Sunday of the Epiphany Season. The Gospel reading tells of a mysterious and remarkable manifestation, or “epiphany” experience of Jesus, referred to as The Transfiguration. The story reveals the divine approval of Jesus by the Father, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am will pleased; listen to him! This verse is an echo and refrain of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at his Baptism. This transfiguration announcement comes of Jesus as the Son of God, with whom God is pleased comes in the middle of the Gospel account. It is a moment of transition, between Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing, and now his readiness to approach Jerusalem where he will ultimately be crucified.
One of the things that Matthew’s gospel account does repeatedly is to associate Jesus with the great leaders of the Hebrew Scriptures. Both Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah the great prophet had had significant mountain top experiences. The reading from Exodus 24:12-18, tells of Moses the great Law Giver of Israel ascending Mount Sinai. The mountain was covered with the glory of God for six days. Now six days is not an unimportant number. Six days is reminiscent of the Creation Story, which took six days. Thus, there is the suggestion that God is renewing creation and giving the Ten Commandments to Moses as a new beginning and covenant with his people. While Moses is there the glory of God is revealed in the light of a brilliant devouring fire. Moses himself was said to return to his people with the commandments and with a radiant face.
Matthew tells that after six days, Jesus ascends another mountain, taking some of his disciples, Peter, James and John, just as Moses had taken his assistant Joshua. The six days passing hints again at a new momentous mystical concept of something new and profound about to happen. While they are on the mountaintop, Jesus is transfigured, that is, he becomes dazzling and brilliantly white and overshadowed in the mysterious cloud, as Moses had been. Peter, James, and John stand there in utter awe of what is happening. They see Jesus in mystical splendor. He stands honorably with Moses and Elijah; he stands with the most important and the most honorable. Then comes the voice of God: This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well please; listen to him!”
What we have in this mysterious mystical scene is a vision given to the disciples. Peter doesn’t know quite what to do with it. He wants to memorialize the moment, capture it, keep it forever by building a tent, or tabernacle. But, mystical visions and experiences cannot be captured and held. It is a wonderful, profound, but fleeting moment in which the disciples see and realize, and come to internalize the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And when they have finished the marvelous experience, Jesus comes and ‘touches’ them. Through Jesus Christ, his divinity and his humanity, God is reaching out to his disciples and to us touching their humanness and ours, and assures, ‘Don’t be afraid; just keep following even to the cross.” The ministry of sacrifice, compassion, forgiveness and servant-hood begins.
This passage of Jesus’ Transfiguration has at various times been a difficult passage of scripture for me to talk about. It is more than likely a difficult passage fro many of you to appreciate. It is difficult because it is a mystical experience, and Jesus says to his disciples tell no one about the “vision,” until after the Son of man has been raised from the dead. Matthew tells us this is a vision, mystical, as all the dazzling glory and clouds imply. American culture is not comfortable with visions and mystical experiences, also known as alternative forms of consciousness. Most other cultures are far more comfortable with such incidents. We’re more scientific and matter of fact, and skeptical of what is hard to explain, and what is mysterious. People who have visionary experiences, unique dreams in our culture are seen as suspect and peculiar. Our need for proof and explanation is certainly to our advantage. We are not easily duped. However, to completely remove our selves from the mysterious and the visionary and the meaning in some of these experiences may not be to our best advantage either. God and God’s love is awesome; God’s unearned love, we call grace is precious. It is not something of this world that we readily appreciate. Maybe at times we just need to be in touch and allowing the mystery of God to touch us in a new and wonderful way.
I recall as a youngster sitting in a pew, barely able to se over the top of it. There in the front of the church were two candelabras of seven candles on each side of the altar. A gold (brass, really, but I thought it was gold) cross was in the center. Across the altar were the words, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” And above the altar was a stained glass window, which I’d not seen anywhere else, depicting Jesus embracing children and holding one on his lap. The clergy and the choir were all dressed in strange vestments. The music was accompanied by a pipe organ. This place was so very different to a child. It revealed and mysteriously spoke of something wholly other from the world. Yet it was in the world. To a child’s innocence it was so mysterious, visionary. It was as if I were hear what Isaiah had heard in his vision at a time when he enters the Temple of God. (Isaiah 6:1f) – “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on his throne, high and exalted, and his robe filled the whole Temple. Around he flaming creatures were standing, each of which had six wings. Each creature covered its face with two wings, and its body with two, and used the other two for flying. They were calling out to each other: ‘Holy, holy, holy! His glory fills the world.’” Isaiah has a unique vision of the presence of God who wants justice, love, and hope for his people, and wanted Isaiah to be his prophet. There are experiences in our lives, if we permit them, to bring the presence of God to us. Are they emotional experiences? Probably, but to be emotional is to be human too.
Some people will claim that a great painting, or a violin concerto “speaks to them.” It gives them goose bumps. Something they can’t explain but reveals a perfection, a wholly otherness that comes through the artist. Art, music, speak beyond words; religious experiences can speak to us too, saying things sometimes that words themselves don’t quite accomplish, and give us a sense of greater wonder, hope, and glory in our world. Jesus on the mountaintop bathes his disciples in enlightenment. It reveals the honorableness of Jesus in the sight of God. It reveals that the human Jesus and his ministry is of God, is from God. Stand in his light and be dazzled by his love and glory.
We can’t always have dazzling experiences. There are the hard facts of life that confront us. For Jesus and his disciples it would be the crucifixion. But they carry on having had the experience to charge them and to give them the hope to face the future. We are now coming up on Lent. What does God expect of us: Do justice, love compassion, and walk humbly with your God. Yes, and be prayerful, know scripture, look and make opportunities to be in union, in the presence of God through meditation, through worship. The world is a tough place. People kill people. People terrorize one another. People rob and cheat and cheat and cheat one another, ie. ENRON employees and Irish Allied Banks can tell us all about that. These are some of the hard harsh realities. We desperately need the visions, the religious experiences, the mystical experiences of God every bit as much as we need and know the harsh facts of life.
May God help us to be bedazzled, and mysteriously aware of his presence and potential for new hope and new creation. May God increase in us a spiritual dimension that breaks through the barriers of a mere materialistic factual understanding of the world, and self-satisfaction, and total unsatisfactory self-reliance. May we see in the humanness of Christ Jesus in his transfiguration on the mountain us the face of God which reveals love and servant-hood, and sacrifice of a Lord who enables us to face the harsh hardness of the world with the conviction of hope. May we be always listening to him, and listening for him.
Today we are also baptizing Morgan Ann. To her parents and to her Godparents may I ask and encourage you to enable this child to grow up in the love of the Lord. You want for her all that she needs, I’m sure. You want her to be educated; to have some semblance of a secure and happy life. But give her a balanced life. Be sure she gets the Christian religious life that she may be well aware that Jesus is Lord. That Jesus Christ is her hope and her strength in life. Let her know and learn his ways and his teachings. Help her through a prayer life, a moral life, and sacramental life to feel and experience the very presence of God through her relationship with Jesus Christ. Let her be exposed to opportunities to know the mysterious and wonder of God’s creation and his longing to have her as his own. May she, with Christ, be his Beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Teach her to “Listen to him; to listen for him.”