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Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Transfiguration Sunday
August 6, 2006
Delivered by Dora J. Odarenko
Psalm 99
Exodus 34.29-35
2 Peter 1.13-21
Luke 9.28-36
Please pray with me:
O Lord Jesus Christ, glorified by the Father
Transfigured in holy light on Mt. Tabor
You have opened the gate of glory to the kingdom of God.
With Peter, James and John, we offer the adoration of our words and hearts. AMEN.
From today’s Epistle:
“You will do well to be attentive…as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” 2 Peter 1.19b
Several weeks ago I went back to Brewster, on the Cape, where I spent many summers as a child. In its Bay, that faces the mainland rather than the ocean, I learned to swim and sail. On its dunes, marshes, and woodlands, I was surrounded by landscapes so bountiful and compelling that the memory of them continues to sustain me. I particularly loved our marvelous explorations at low tide, a great sweep of sand, and sea grass, and tidal pools, where sheltered by the great arms of the Bay, we could walk out for more than a quarter of a mile, a space that for me, at five or six, seemed forever. This place was also where I learned many of my first verses from the Bible. Perhaps it was learning them in that setting that wedded God’s words and God’s works in my mind.
Coming up over the dunes and looking down at that beach once more—precisely at low tide, as it happened—was transforming for me, infinitely precious. I could call it sacred. In that glorious space and light, I was speechless, filled with happiness, aware of nothing but the shimmering present, a timeframe that embraced my childhood and somehow enfolded as well all my concerns about the uncertainties that lie ahead.
I wonder whether this experience can’t bring all of us a little closer to Jesus, Peter, James, and John on Mt Tabor. Here of course, it is Jesus and his companions, Moses and Elijah, who are dazzling. How did the disciples know who these two strangers were? They must have been struck by the identity of the two as men touched by God in an amazing way. Moses, who had spoken to God face to face, and Elijah, who had ascended into heaven in a whirlwind: these stories were so well known as to be cultural memories for faithful Jews. And from this deep past, Moses and Elijah had come to speak about the future of Jesus, one that the disciples were still struggling to accept for him and for themselves. This is powerful enough even before God the Father intensifies the moment. Little wonder that when Jesus and the three disciples later go down the mountain, it is in silence.
Even before the cloud overshadows them and they hear the voice—actually hear the voice of God—Peter realizes that this is a sacred moment and that they are on holy ground. As so often, Peter and his impetuous words can be seen as comic relief. His suggestion to create something permanent in this spot has been dismissed as foolish. In fact, in wishing to build three dwellings or tents or booths—chapels, really--Peter is expressing his conviction that they are standing on holy ground. So important is this revelation to him that he wants to mark it and preserve it, so that in the future he can say to others: “This is where we can remember that we were with Jesus and these are the events and the words that we must not forget.”
Don’t we build and preserve our chapels and our churches from the same impulse? Surely this drives our own stewardship here: St Peter’s is holy space. It is worth preserving. And its tower is part of the whole. Its bell must ring out again. And we are right to have these feelings and to work and sacrifice on their behalf. I would wager that one could come into St. Peter’s and even without seeing the altar and crosses and beautiful windows, could sense sacred space, that accumulation of sacraments and prayers and Christly moments.
And yet the Feast of the Transfiguration promises more. Peter did not get to build his booth on Mt. Tabor, but the epistle attributed to him that we read this morning insists upon the importance of his eyewitness to Christ’s majesty (vs. 16). It urges each of us to “be attentive” to the words “conveyed” to Jesus “by the Majestic Glory” (2 Peter 1.17), “to be attentive…as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises” (vs. 19) in each of our hearts.
This letter, which the early Church thought of as Peter’s last testament, might well have been written by one of Peter’s own followers to preserve apostolic teaching after the death of the apostles. And so Peter, and those who knew him, wanted to be sure that we did not lose our memories, the grounds of our Christian hope, the promise of transfiguration for each of us. It is because of this promise that we see the Christ in those we meet. If places can be holy for us, even more we can recognize the light of Christ. In one another. This morning.
Thus the Feast of the Transfiguration asks more--from Jesus and from us. The text demonstrates this. In the passage that follows immediately the one we heard this morning, we learn that on the very next day after Jesus and the disciples come down from their mountain experience, they are challenged loudly—even rudely—by the voice of another father and another kind of son: “A man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him” (Luke 9.38-9).
Here, in graphic detail, is the raw stuff of earthly heartbreak. The retreat is over, the vacation from our fallen world. All space and all opportunities are to be claimed as sacred. So Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit, heals the boy, and gives him back to his father. It is worth noting, however, that the transition from mountain peak to valley may not be easy even for Jesus. “You faithless and perverse generation,” he says, “how much longer must I…bear with you?” (vs. 41).
We too are called to move beyond our Sunday time of glory and revelation. In our observance of Rogation in May, we walked beyond the church grounds, through our town, gathering into our prayers the busyness of our traffic, the conspicuous consumption with which our shopping plazas tempt us.
Today, it is well to remember that this is not only the Feast of the Transfiguration. The other anniversary for this day is Hiroshima, that terrible act of destruction that seemed justified at the time and yet had consequences that could not have been imagined. In the words of a prayer preserved by the Anglican priest John Carden,
In this day also, O Lord Christ,
Were the gates of hell opened
In the skies of Hiroshima
And the unholy light of death unleashed.
There is much “unholy light of death” being unleashed today in the world, probably even as we worship this morning. Such news fills our media, and it seems likely to continue. I am not preaching a political sermon, nor am I taking sides here. But this Gospel passage, on this Sunday, urges me—as perhaps it may you—to see as false, even blasphemous, the brightness of any light other than Christ’s.
The vision of divinity on Mt Tabor, the light there, was so bright as to be almost overwhelming. The two icons that I have posted in the narthex show traditional representations of the effect on the disciples: They are thrown to the ground, perhaps in terror, momentarily overcome. But they are attentive--with every fiber of their being. Their robes are tinged with gold, for the light has reached them too.
The brightness of this light, the light of the Transfiguration, the light of our Christ, did not play them false, nor will it deceive us. Three of our gospels insist that the experience on Mt Tabor was part of Christ’s preparation for his own terrible experiences in Jerusalem, but these led to the “saving cross and life-giving resurrection” that transfigures us, Christ’s people, and the rest of Christ’s creation, “changing all from glory to glory” in ways that we cannot immediately comprehend.
If the Transfiguration has any of the meaning that the Gospels insist upon, it is that this world too will be transfigured since Christ came among us to be “a lamp shining in a dark place” so that the day may dawn and the morning star arise in our hearts. This may not come easily. It was not easy for our Christ. But it is the peace of Christ’s kingdom on earth that is the hope to which we are called, the Transfiguration that God’s grace offers. Acting as responsibly as we can as we move into and through whatever valleys call us, may we continue to be inflamed with the vision of God’s Chosen One and “refuse to be prostrated before the false brightness of any other light.” AMEN.
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