Transfiguration: The Ultimate Epiphany, by The Rev. Dr. Donald L Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A -- Last Sunday After The Epiphany
February 26, 2017
Exodus 245:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17: 1-9
Transfiguration: The Ultimate Epiphany
God our light, make us attentive to your Word as to a lamp shining in a dark place, that seeing your truth we may live faithful lives until that great day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. AMEN.
Today is the last Sunday in the season after the Epiphany. During these past weeks we have studied and preached about the numerous and varied ways that Jesus was gradually revealed to the Jews and to the Gentiles alike as the Messiah who had been promised throughout the Hebrew scriptures. And as we will through most of this year, we have been viewing the Christian take on this through the eyes of Matthew, a faithful Jew writing to a Jewish audience aiming to make connections between the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus of Nazareth. His description of the Transfiguration continues this theme.
The transfiguration story itself ties together the whole of the Hebrew Bible with Jesus, who will become the Living Word. On the mountaintop, Jesus is not alone: He appears with Moses himself – symbolizing The Law – and Elijah – symbolizing the prophets. There it is: The ultimate Epiphany. It doesn’t get any better than this, right? Jesus is there, side by side with Moses and Elijah, standing there in all his glory as the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, the One that Jewish history had been pointing to.
The three disciples don’t know quite what to do. Peter, in his inimitable style, suggests building three dwellings as if he wants to preserve this image, like a photographer who’s got the perfect shot and preserve it forever. But God has other ideas. While Peter is still speaking, the voice of God cuts him off from a bright cloud with the words, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased; listen to Him!” And with that, the disciples fall to the ground overcome with fear. And then there is Jesus, standing there by himself, touching them gently and telling them, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
This turns out to be a transformative moment in Peter’s faith journey, something he will look back on among all of his incredible moments with Jesus that, eventually, helps pull the Jesus story all together for him. Remember how this story begins – “Six days later…” Later than what. Well, if you go back to the previous chapter, it is six days AFTER Jesus has had another remarkable interchange with Jesus. After hearing about all the speculation about who Jesus was, Jesus has asked his disciples, “But who do YOU say that I am?” And Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” A seeming moment of brilliance, but short-lived. You know what happens next. Jesus begins to tell them, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story – that he is going to have to “go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Peter may have gotten the glory part, but he didn’t get the suffering part. He argues with Jesus that this can’t be, and Jesus reacts with his strongest recorded rebuke of anyone: “Get behind me Satan.” For sure, this exchange, along with all of Peter’s lapses throughout the events leading up to and culminating in Jesus death and resurrection, indicate that even to the end of Jesus’ life, Peter still didn’t get it.
But over the years, the experience of the Transfiguration took it’s place at the center of Peter’s belief. Now it is almost certain that the 2nd letter of Peter as presently contained in our Bible was not written by Peter itself, but it is written by a follower of his and echoing his beliefs and teachings. So we should pay special attention to the closing words of this morning’s passage: We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. The Transfiguration allowed Peter to see Jesus in a new way, a way he only understood much later.
But here’s a question for us today: How important is it to us that this
event described by Matthew actually happened as he tells the story? What if Jesus actually didn’t change at all? What if Moses and Elijah were not physically present with Jesus on the mountaintop? What if they only thought they heard the voice of God? What if, in that miraculous moment, whatever happened, Peter, James and John were just finally able to see Jesus as he actually was, what had always been there, but their eyes were opened and they just saw him in a new way? What if the change wasn’t in Jesus, but it was in them?
You know, we Christians think of Transfiguration as a religious term because this story appears in every one of the Synoptic Gospels. But the more general definition of “transfiguration” is “A striking alteration in appearance, character or circumstances,” “a change in form or appearance” or “an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.” Have you ever had the
experience of transfiguration in your life?
I know I have, some minor, some of more significance. My mother will tell you that she sent me to college in Washington, D.C. as a Republican and a Roman Catholic and I came back as a Democrat and an Episcopalian. I like to think that every day I experience something or someone who opens my eyes or my mind or my heart to experience life in new ways.
One experience that will always remain with me is one when I was 22 years old. It was the summer of 1973, and I was about to go to law school and I needed a summer job. Being blessed with friends with connections, I landed an unlikely job in the Connecticut Department of Corrections as a correctional officer at the old Seyms Street Jail in North Hartford. Yes, for 5 months your pastor was a guard in a jail. One night I had recreation duty outside, and a dispute arose between a group of inmates over the ownership of a store card. The last guy holding the card was named Charlie – I do remember his last name – and as was my duty, I asked to see the card to see whose name was on it in order to resolve the dispute. Charlie wouldn’t’ give it up, a couple of other guys said Charlie had taken the card, and so I and another officer had the duty to “write him up” for failing to comply with an order and, as it turned out, stealing the other guy’s card.
What I didn’t know was that Charlie was considered one of the meanest, orneriest, violent guys in the jail, and he didn’t go down easy. I remember it took six guys to get him down to what was known as “deadlock” which was kind of like a purgatory holding cell where you stayed until things cooled down. As I was about to go off shift at midnight, an inner voice – perhaps God’s? – was telling me to go down and reach out to Charlie. And I did. I went down and told him I was sure he was – I’ll change the language a bit – angry with me for the way things went down, that I was going to go home and pray over how things might have gone differently and I hoped he might do the same. He cursed me and with that I left for two days.
When I returned, Charlie was back in the regular population and at supper that night. He came up to me and told me he appreciated the fact that I had come down to see him that night and invited me up to his cell because he wanted to show me something. Now, I have to tell you it occurred to me that what he might want to show me was the knife he had fashioned out of a spoon in the mess hall and he wanted to run it through my gut. But being the naïve fool that I was, I discounted that possibility and agreed to visit him in his cell.
And then I had a transformative experience, because the walls of Charlie’s cell were papered with beautiful, meticulous, inspired artwork that he himself had created. I shared my admiration of it, particularly since stick figures are a challenge for me. We became friends and developed a new respect for each other. Was there a change in Charlie? Maybe. But the bigger change was in me, as for me Charlie was transformed from a caricature -- the meanest guy in the jail – to a multi-dimensional human being, a child of God for whom Jesus lived and died just like me, a child who if born into different circumstances I might never have met, a child with an inborn goodness and talent that life’s circumstances could bruise but not destroy. That experience has forever changed the way I look at other people.
My seminary colleague and friend, The Rev. Maryetta Anschutz, writes that “The Transfiguration offers the disciples the paradox that while there is nothing they can do to save themselves from suffering, there is also no way they can shield themselves from the light of God that sheds hope in their darkest moments. The mountain was the way for God to prepare a human band of companions for the sacred journey, to offer something to hold onto when they descend into the crushing reality of the world below.”
Perhaps the significance of the biblical transfiguration is not that Jesus changed, but how the experience changed the disciples and opened their eyes to more fully know their friend, the God/Man Jesus. The writer of 2 Peter, recalling Peter’s own experience, wants his readers to remember who they are, and who they are called to be. Maybe that is why he talks about the story of Christ’s identity in the Transfiguration and not in the Resurrection. It is a story about who he has become, how he is blessed, and what he is called to do, in spite of the challenges that lie ahead.
And now, as we approach the season of Lent, we, like the three disciples, must descend from the mountaintop of epiphanies to face the crude reality that lies ahead for Jesus, and for ourselves. Are we prepared to be changed by the Transfiguration? Are we anxious about what that might mean? We shouldn’t be, because that is precisely the moment when Jesus comes to gently touch us and summon us with the words, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” AMEN.