PAST SERMONS
Sermon of February 22, 2009 by The Rev. Rosalee Glass
St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church
Camden, Maine
February 22, 2009
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Mark 9:2-9, II Corinthians 4: 3-6
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Sermon by Rosalee T. Glass
Today is the last Sunday of the Epiphany season, the season of light and revelation, the season of new life and joyous works. It is a time when the lectionary Gospel readings reveal Jesus’ divine nature. Today’s Gospel story of the Transfiguration is the culminating revelation of the season of Epiphany.
A revelation seemed to be what Jesus’ disciples needed because of what happened in the events that led up to today’s Gospel story. They must have been reeling with confusion. From the first moment that Jesus called them, they had felt the irresistibility of being with him. They had seen the power and compassion of his teachings and his miraculous healings. They had seen his growing celebrity among the people. They must have felt proud and energized to be part of the “Jesus team.” In fact, six days before our story today, Peter had declared without hesitation that he believed Jesus was God’s Messiah.
But then what a shock they had received! Right after Peter had identified Jesus as God’s Messiah, Jesus broke the news to them that he would be rejected by the establishment, that he would suffer, that he would die; and that then somehow, they didn’t understand how, he would rise again. Not only that, but Jesus implied that if they followed him it meant the same fate for them. What was he talking about? What could he mean? This was not what they had expected. God’s Messiah was supposed to come with strength and power to sweep away evil and save Israel.
In truth, their ideas of the Messiah may have been understandably fuzzy. The Holy Scriptures and the apocalyptic literature of the time seemed to give a mixed picture of what kind of Messiah to expect. Some predicted that God’s Messiah would be a strong theocratic monarch like King David. Others depicted him as more like one of the great prophets of Israel’s history, those servants of God who spoke God’s words, but who claimed no secular power or authority.
So the disciples were hearing many different voices, even within the orthodox Jewish establishment. They were also hearing Jesus interpret Jewish customs and law in new ways. And now they had just heard that Jesus would be shamed and killed. Hearing that, even those closest and first-called among his disciples, Peter, James, and John, must have been in a quandary about who he really was and why they should be following him.
What happens when new facts and experiences don’t match what we had always assumed to be true? Such moments can be unsettling. We struggle to reconcile our past beliefs and assumptions with some new reality. At times this reconciliation takes place only when, by God’s grace, our hearts and minds are enlightened with a revelation that allows us to see things in a new light.
The disciples very much needed the enlightenment that would bring them to a new level of discipleship. Jesus knew their minds were troubled. Jesus always knew what people were thinking and feeling. And so, he led the three disciples up the mountain. There suddenly Jesus appeared different to them, dressed in white, radiant with supernatural light. And they saw him conferring with Moses and Elijah, in Scripture two of the most important of God’s prophets.
Peter was flabbergasted, flustered, and afraid. So he jumped to conclusions when he saw the prophets and blurted out an impulsive response to their presence. He offered to build them booths, grabbing at the assumption that what he was seeing must have to do with the Jewish festival of Sukkoth, also called the festival of tabernacles or booths. Sukkoth is a joyous Jewish custom in which one builds and lives in Sukkahs, which are temporary booths, for seven days. It is a festival celebrated in remembrance of when the Israelites lived in temporary shelters while on their pilgrimage with God through the wilderness. A later addition to this Sukkoth tradition was the receiving each day in the Sukkah as symbolic guests one of Israel’s seven greatest leaders, like Moses and Abraham, who had themselves been in exile and homeless wanderers in the wilderness.
We often make fun of Peter’s indiscretions, but the associations he was making here made some sense. This dream-like Transfiguration experience would have brought to any Jew’s mind important aspects of Israel’s salvation history and the experience the people had had with God in the wilderness.
In our Transfiguration story, what an important moment it would have been for Peter, James, and John! Here were Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets and in a wilderness setting like the ones in which God had spoken to them before. And these ancient leaders were drawn together with Jesus, their new Rabbi, and were talking with him. The ancient accepted traditions and the new messages of Jesus were being brought together.
Then suddenly they heard the voice of God reveal the identity that God had given Jesus at his Baptism in the Jordan River, “My Son, the Beloved.” And what they heard after that they would never forget. They heard God say, “Listen to him.”
No longer would they have to struggle, tossed between the truth that Jesus was teaching and their past assumptions based on their Jewish tradition. All of their experience of what was holy, both old and new, was represented and valid on the mountaintop of the Transfiguration. But now the way forward into the future was revealed in utter simplicity: they were to listen to the word of Jesus. The divine command for them to attend to what Jesus said made things clearer. Maybe they wouldn’t always understand everything, but from now on whatever he said would be accepted in the new light of what they had experienced on the mountaintop.
The story of the Transfiguration and the story of Jesus’ Baptism both have the words from God himself revealing Jesus’ divine identity, “my Son, the Beloved”. The two stories that use those same words are bookends of the season of Epiphany. But there is more in this Transfiguration story that has to do with our own lives. What it tells us is that God will provide revelations and new insights when we need them. Peter, James, and John didn’t ask to be given that life-changing experience. They were troubled and Jesus knew it. They never could have imagined ahead of time what would happen to them at the Transfiguration.
When we find ourselves struggling with doubts and conflicts, God knows it. But we cannot know beforehand what new insight or assurance God will provide that will take us to a new level of understanding. We may walk to a mountaintop seeking an epiphany, a revelation; but that may not be the way we will receive new truth for our lives. It could come in unimaginable ways and maybe through a person, even someone we may not know. Our revelations may come in dreams. That was true for Jacob’s son, Joseph, whose dreams saved nations. Many of us are aware that we’ve had dreams which have left us changed in the morning from who we were the night before.
As Jesus knew the disciples intimately and tenderly in Transfiguration, God knows us intimately and tenderly. Not only does God know when we need to see things in a new light, but he knows what kind of revelation we each need and when we each need it. In the Gospel of Mark, God’s voice directed the same basic message differently at Jesus’ Baptism at the Jordan and at the Transfiguration, because the recipients were different and each needed a message meant uniquely for them. The message at the Jordan was to Jesus, and said “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus was about to begin his ministry and badly needed the love and confirmation of who he was. At the Transfiguration, the disciples, who had just received some shocking news from their teacher about unbelievable things that would happen, needed authoritative confirmation of Jesus’ identity and direction about what they could believe as true. So to the disciples the divine voice said not “You”, but “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”
We, like the disciples, will be transported from old into new, from darkness into light, whenever we are ready. In the meantime and always, the message to the disciples will be our mainstay and salvation: “listen to him.” And now, using the words of our Epiphany Eucharistic preface and our reading today from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, I join with all of you in thankfulness for the new light of this Epiphany season, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. AMEN.