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At the Transfiguration: A “No!” and a “Yes!” (The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/15/2026)

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Readings

In today’s Gospel we encounter a “no” and a “yes.”

The “no” is to Peter’s apparently quite reasonable proposal: “if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Jesus’ glory revealed, Jesus with Moses and Elijah, the “dream team” of Jewish piety: who could ask for more? Why not stay here…permanently? Down below so many needs…and the Pharisees…and the Roman occupation. Here, peace and glory.

Why the divine “no”? What’s at stake here? Perhaps the issue is the temptation to reduce discipleship or faith to the search for religious experiences. It doesn’t get more sublime or spectacular than what Peter, James, and John were witnessing.

But no. “This is my Son…listen to him!” And listening to and following Jesus means descending from the mountain, not hanging on to even the best of spiritual experiences, because Jesus is already down below; ahead of us.

Having said that, among us Episcopalians the more common temptation is to write off these moments on the mountain. Jesus knew that Peter, James, and John needed to be there. Jesus knows that perhaps most of us need some moments on the mountain.

But perhaps the “no” is about something else, the temptation to idolize a particular moment in the church’s history or in a parish’s history. “If only we were back in the 1st Century!” “If only it could be like it was under Father X.” And the text encourages us not to get stuck: we may even get the three dwellings built, but by then Jesus will be a considerable way down the mountain.

The glory of God on the mountain and the descent. That’s one of the rhythms of life, a rhythm this text encourages us to appreciate and fall in with. The “no” may help us appreciate that.

The “yes.” To focus the “yes” we need to wonder about what happened on the mountain. Why Moses and Elijah? That was important information for the disciples, for as good Jews they knew who Moses and Elijah were, but were still trying to figure out who Jesus was. Moses: giver of the Law; Elijah: representative of the entire prophetic tradition; Jesus? How does Jesus fit with Moses and Elijah? The Voice: “Listen to Jesus!” That is, when push comes to shove, let Jesus show us what Moses and Elijah; the institutions of law and prophecy, are about.

Now, once we recognize that the text is also about how Jesus relates to institutions, Jesus’ primacy over institutions, the text can really open up. That issue is our issue. How does Jesus relate to our institutions? The human being, Aristotle observed, is a political animal: we’re born into them, live, move, and have our being in them. Nations, the economy, custom: in their own way they’re as real as anything. Many cultures treat them as gods. Our culture says it doesn’t, but I wonder. We say, “The economy’s healthy.” “The economy’s sick.” More ominously: “The economy demands sacrifices.” TV and the internet give us instant access to competing priesthoods of the economy, a.k.a., the economists, with their competing prescriptions for what will make the economy happy.

As gentiles, our issue isn’t how Jesus relates to Moses and Elijah. Heirs of the Graeco-Roman world, it usually is how Jesus relates to Venus, goddess of love; Mars, god of war; Pluto, god of wealth, Athena, goddess of wisdom, etc.

So…picture Jesus together with whichever of these gods or goddesses are relevant to you. They’re talking. Imagine what they might be saying. Now comes the cloud and the Voice from the cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

All of these authorities, institutions, etc. depend on and will be transformed by Jesus. This is one of the points of the Transfiguration, with Moses and Elijah as representative authorities. It is Paul’s point as he speaks of Jesus: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers [here we might say “systems, institutions, customs”]– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17)

It doesn’t matter much which gods seem to be most important to us. Without Jesus they’d blink out of existence; in the end they’ll be visibly in submission to Jesus. In the light of this future, a future prefigured in the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah as stand-ins for the many possible authorities, our challenge is our ongoing relationship with them today.

This is some of the hardest work we do as Christians. When we get it right, it’s wonderful (the abolition of slavery in the British Empire comes to mind, the non-violent end to apartheid in South Africa). When we don’t… Today we’re badly divided on any number of issues. What today’s Gospel tells us is that Jesus needs to be in our conversations about these issues from the start. Jesus—not my picture of Jesus. That’s an important distinction. If my engagement with these issues isn’t pushing me to encounter Jesus afresh through Word and Sacrament and through my sisters and brothers, then there’s a problem.

Friends, the issues the Transfiguration raises for us are not the sort that lend themselves to individual resolution. They, like so many challenges in the Christian life, demand a corporate response. They demand that we get better at listening to each other, talking with each other. I’m probably not better at hearing Jesus than I am at hearing the brother or sister with whom I disagree.

Deep breath. The Transfiguration: also an invitation to us to use our imaginations. Pluto, Venus, Mars, etc: what are the gods that claim turf in our lives? What will their visible submission to Jesus look like? How do we live that future now?

The Damascus Road was the easy part

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A Sermon on the 6th Sunday of Easter (5/5/AD2013)

Acts 16:6-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:9-12, 21-22:5; John 14:23-29

We don’t often think of it in these terms, but the Book of Revelation may be the most important book in the Bible for understanding Christian worship. It offers a set of images to describe this world’s future: a future better than we deserve, a future we certainly can’t achieve. It is a future so glorious that it’s only right that we start celebrating, giving thanks for that future now. And so one of the most frequently used words for our worship is eucharist, a transliteration of the Greek word for celebration. Further, the same book describes the worship revealed to the seer: angels and archangels and all the company of heaven singing out “Worthy is the Lamb…” So in our Eucharistic prayers when we say “with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven” we’re acknowledging that our worship is joining with something bigger.

That future is a given. “After this I looked, —writes John—and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Rev 7:9-10 NRSV) In the midst of a world bleeding from more divisions than most of us can keep track of, it sounds wonderful. And we have the privilege of witnessing to this future now in our actions.

Wonderful. Piece of cake. Or—in light of the first reading—maybe not. Because if we pull out a map to make sense of those first verses it’s clear that Paul’s trying to go anywhere except Macedonia. And why would that be?

Well, although the Jews had been oppressed by many nations (Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, etc.), it was only the Macedonians, Alexander the Great and the leaders who followed him, that had seriously tried to abolish Jewish faith and practice. Less than two hundred years earlier Antiochus Epiphanes, paragon of enlightenment, had offered countless Jews a simple choice: eat pork or be tortured to death. (Read about it in the books of Maccabees!) Which nation had shown itself to be the deadliest enemy of the Jews? Macedonia. And Paul was supposed to go there?

“Those who love me—Jesus had said—will keep my word.” Paul, loving Jesus in the only way that mattered—kept his word. It took the Holy Spirit vetoing his travel plans twice and a vision in the night, but Paul kept Jesus’ word, went to Macedonia.

That was good news for Macedonia: for Lydia and her household, for others whose story we’ll hear next week. It was good news for our ancestors, for Macedonia represented the beginning of Paul’s mission to Europe, to our people. It would be nice if Acts had reported that Paul was eager to evangelize our people. Kicking and screaming would be closer to the truth—but we’ll take it.

And it turned out to be good news for Paul as well. Years later he writes a letter that readers refer to as the joyous letter. There’s so much joy in the letter, joy over what’s happening in that city, the joy that the Christians there give Paul, the ways they nurture his spirit. And that’s the letter to the Philippians.

We come together each week to celebrate the future that God is preparing for this planet. People “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” will participate. Some days we find it easy to witness to that future; other days—like Paul—we find it not so easy. Some days we deal with folk we hope are part of that future; other days… “Those who love me—Jesus had said—will keep my word.” May God grant us grace to continue loving Jesus, to continue witnessing to his vision of our planet’s future each of our days.