In the name of the God of all Creation.
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
Today is the Last Sunday of our Epiphany Season. We begin Lent this week with Ash
Wednesday. Among the definitions of the word “epiphany” are “disclosure,” “manifestation,”
“unveiling,” and “appearance.” The reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning is certainly an
epiphany … complete with a blinding light, a heavenly voice, and visions of Elijah and Moses.
This season of Epiphany began with the celebration of the Wise Men honoring the baby Jesus,
followed on the next Sunday with Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan. As Jesus came up
out of the water there was voice from heaven “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.” This morning we heard those words again, this time on a mountain and coming
out of a cloud in what is called the Transfiguration. Baptism at the beginning … Transfiguration
at the end. These are the bookends of the Church’s season of Epiphany.
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
Today is the Last Sunday of our Epiphany Season. We begin Lent this week with Ash
Wednesday. Among the definitions of the word “epiphany” are “disclosure,” “manifestation,”
“unveiling,” and “appearance.” The reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning is certainly an
epiphany … complete with a blinding light, a heavenly voice, and visions of Elijah and Moses.
This season of Epiphany began with the celebration of the Wise Men honoring the baby Jesus,
followed on the next Sunday with Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan. As Jesus came up
out of the water there was voice from heaven “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.” This morning we heard those words again, this time on a mountain and coming
out of a cloud in what is called the Transfiguration. Baptism at the beginning … Transfiguration
at the end. These are the bookends of the Church’s season of Epiphany.
Another definition of the word “epiphany” is: “a sudden realization … a sudden intuitive leap of
understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence.” It is one thing to listen
to these stories about Jesus that we have heard over these last eight weeks as a testament to
his divinity. It is another to ask how this “Epiphany” might be true and real in our own lives …
right now … today. What do we know of living a transformed life?
Peter and James and John went up the mountain and saw Jesus transfigured. They saw the
meaning of what it meant to be the Messiah. They saw robes dazzling white, beyond human
comprehension. And standing next to Jesus they saw Moses and Elijah. The prophet Elijah was
the archetype of what it meant to be a prophet and proclaim God’s justice to the world. And on
the other side of Jesus they saw the archetype of God’s law. The Kingdom of God would be a
world where God’s law would reign; where everyone would be in right relationship with God,
with each other, and with all of God’s creation. Moses was the ultimate lawgiver … Elijah the
prophet of justice. And Jesus, the Messiah, standing between Moses and Elijah, was the
fulfillment of both.
When Peter saw this he was dumbfounded. Of course the impetuous and impulsive Peter, who
was never at a loss for words, blurted out that they should make three tabernacles … three
booths … one for Jesus, one for Elijah, and one for Moses. Peter fell for the temptation to
concretize the experience. This mystical event obviously terrified Peter and James and John.
And concretizing such an experience is the same temptation that we, all too often, fall into. I
believe we would rather worship Jesus the Christ in beautiful buildings and with wonderful
liturgy … a way of literally and figuratively concretizing the experience of Jesus … rather than to
take seriously what Jesus took seriously … that is, to actively participating in God’s Kingdom …
to live a transformed life.
The Transfiguration of Jesus was certainly a mystical mountaintop experience. For Peter, James
and John it was both frightening and it filled them with incredible awe. But the experience
began to answer the question of what being the “Messiah” may have been for Jesus … the
fullness of the incarnation of God’s justice and rightness with God and God’s creation. And it
becomes for us a path to living in God’s Kingdom today … to live a transformed life. If this
means anything at all it means bringing God’s justice to the world we live in, and living in a right
relationship with God, with each other and all humanity, and with all of God’s creation.
However, a transformed life is not life as usual. Learning to see in new ways is one of the most
difficult tasks of the transformed life. Old habits of selective vision, old choices about what to
leave out and what to focus on tend to dominate us, even as we search for new ways of living a
transformed life … a life that is in closer communion with the life of God’s Spirit.
Transfiguration … that mysterious transformation of vision that is narrated in today’s
readings … is a radical, if brief, way of seeing.
Jesus on that mountaintop projected the image of what God’s anointed was … God incarnate in
this world in Word made flesh. The Messiah … which literally means “God’s anointed” … was
the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. And if what Peter, James and John saw with their
eyes was not enough they also heard with their ears:
While he [Peter] 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!"
Jesus was the Incarnation of God in this world. In his words, “I did not come to abolish the Law,
I came to fulfill it.” He came to proclaim the Kingdom of God: a world as it would be if God
reigned in every heart and soul, and in every community and nation. Two thousand years later
we stand as the Church in his name. If we are to be God incarnate in our own time … and live a
transformed life … then we too have to proclaim by word and example God’s justice … and we
have to proclaim by word and example what it means to be in right relationship with God, with
each other, and with God’s creation.
We are called to welcome the stranger, to include the marginalized, to feed the hungry, and to
empower the disenfranchised. We are called to go beyond mere words and into action … to
take seriously those things that Jesus took seriously. It may mean sacrificing our own security
for the sake of another but we do it in the faith that the one who lost his life for us also rose to
new life.
As we end this season of Epiphany, and move to the Church’s season of Lent in preparation for
the Resurrection at Easter, we are reminded of the echoes of baptism … the beginning of this
season. In our own baptisms we are invited into that transformed life in which we see the 3
world differently. Throughout this season we have heard Jesus proclaim what a Kingdom of
God might look like … that the poor are blessed, the hungry are fed, the grieving are consoled
and comforted. He told his listeners that they were the salt of the earth and the light of the
world. They were, indeed, a transformed people. Today, as we end this season, we are
reminded again in the Transfiguration that the transformed life is a life that we sometimes see
in a mystical way … and it can illumine even the ordinary.
“Epiphany” … “a sudden realization … a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially
through an ordinary but striking occurrence.”
Amen.
understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence.” It is one thing to listen
to these stories about Jesus that we have heard over these last eight weeks as a testament to
his divinity. It is another to ask how this “Epiphany” might be true and real in our own lives …
right now … today. What do we know of living a transformed life?
Peter and James and John went up the mountain and saw Jesus transfigured. They saw the
meaning of what it meant to be the Messiah. They saw robes dazzling white, beyond human
comprehension. And standing next to Jesus they saw Moses and Elijah. The prophet Elijah was
the archetype of what it meant to be a prophet and proclaim God’s justice to the world. And on
the other side of Jesus they saw the archetype of God’s law. The Kingdom of God would be a
world where God’s law would reign; where everyone would be in right relationship with God,
with each other, and with all of God’s creation. Moses was the ultimate lawgiver … Elijah the
prophet of justice. And Jesus, the Messiah, standing between Moses and Elijah, was the
fulfillment of both.
When Peter saw this he was dumbfounded. Of course the impetuous and impulsive Peter, who
was never at a loss for words, blurted out that they should make three tabernacles … three
booths … one for Jesus, one for Elijah, and one for Moses. Peter fell for the temptation to
concretize the experience. This mystical event obviously terrified Peter and James and John.
And concretizing such an experience is the same temptation that we, all too often, fall into. I
believe we would rather worship Jesus the Christ in beautiful buildings and with wonderful
liturgy … a way of literally and figuratively concretizing the experience of Jesus … rather than to
take seriously what Jesus took seriously … that is, to actively participating in God’s Kingdom …
to live a transformed life.
The Transfiguration of Jesus was certainly a mystical mountaintop experience. For Peter, James
and John it was both frightening and it filled them with incredible awe. But the experience
began to answer the question of what being the “Messiah” may have been for Jesus … the
fullness of the incarnation of God’s justice and rightness with God and God’s creation. And it
becomes for us a path to living in God’s Kingdom today … to live a transformed life. If this
means anything at all it means bringing God’s justice to the world we live in, and living in a right
relationship with God, with each other and all humanity, and with all of God’s creation.
However, a transformed life is not life as usual. Learning to see in new ways is one of the most
difficult tasks of the transformed life. Old habits of selective vision, old choices about what to
leave out and what to focus on tend to dominate us, even as we search for new ways of living a
transformed life … a life that is in closer communion with the life of God’s Spirit.
Transfiguration … that mysterious transformation of vision that is narrated in today’s
readings … is a radical, if brief, way of seeing.
Jesus on that mountaintop projected the image of what God’s anointed was … God incarnate in
this world in Word made flesh. The Messiah … which literally means “God’s anointed” … was
the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. And if what Peter, James and John saw with their
eyes was not enough they also heard with their ears:
While he [Peter] 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!"
Jesus was the Incarnation of God in this world. In his words, “I did not come to abolish the Law,
I came to fulfill it.” He came to proclaim the Kingdom of God: a world as it would be if God
reigned in every heart and soul, and in every community and nation. Two thousand years later
we stand as the Church in his name. If we are to be God incarnate in our own time … and live a
transformed life … then we too have to proclaim by word and example God’s justice … and we
have to proclaim by word and example what it means to be in right relationship with God, with
each other, and with God’s creation.
We are called to welcome the stranger, to include the marginalized, to feed the hungry, and to
empower the disenfranchised. We are called to go beyond mere words and into action … to
take seriously those things that Jesus took seriously. It may mean sacrificing our own security
for the sake of another but we do it in the faith that the one who lost his life for us also rose to
new life.
As we end this season of Epiphany, and move to the Church’s season of Lent in preparation for
the Resurrection at Easter, we are reminded of the echoes of baptism … the beginning of this
season. In our own baptisms we are invited into that transformed life in which we see the 3
world differently. Throughout this season we have heard Jesus proclaim what a Kingdom of
God might look like … that the poor are blessed, the hungry are fed, the grieving are consoled
and comforted. He told his listeners that they were the salt of the earth and the light of the
world. They were, indeed, a transformed people. Today, as we end this season, we are
reminded again in the Transfiguration that the transformed life is a life that we sometimes see
in a mystical way … and it can illumine even the ordinary.
“Epiphany” … “a sudden realization … a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially
through an ordinary but striking occurrence.”
Amen.
