Transfiguration Sunday

Last Sunday of Epiphany-A

March 6, 2011

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

Well, ready it or not here it comes!  Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Lent. It always seems to catch me by surprise.  So today I want to talk about leaving the mountaintop and walking into the desert. The story in this morning’s gospel has long been a favorite of mine. The visual imagery is wonderful and the story is wholly believable. I think we have all had these kinds of transformative experiences in our lives, and just like our bumbling friend Peter we want to capture those moments and make them last.  You probably know the old phrase when a joke or funny story fails short: “I guess you had to be there”. There are experiences that we cannot explain to someone who has not had at least a similar experience. It is interesting to me to think back over the last 20 or so years. When I was in high school I took a fair number of pictures with a camera my older brother gave me. I would send them off for developing through the PX and then wait anxiously for them to come back. It was like getting to relive the moment the first time I saw those pictures. Yet even though it was thrilling, it wasn’t exactly the same.  I don’t know why I thought instant pictures would make it better, but I got myself a Polaroid camera so I could see my photos instantly. They weren’t especially good quality and while I liked seeing them virtually instantly they still didn’t make me feel as though I were in the moment again.  When I went to Africa the first time, I had both a still and a video camera and took about 800 photos as well as several hours of great video. When I got home I watched the video instantly while I waited for my photos to be developed. Hearing the sounds of the African plain made it seem more like the real deal but it still wasn’t exactly the same. When my stills arrived in the mail I remember being somewhat disappointed. Several of them didn’t turn out as well as I had expected and they just didn’t seem to have the brilliant colors I remembered. What I have come to realize that it is impossible to re-create a transformative moment. The nature of the word itself….”trans” suggests change or moving through…..it can’t be isolated and captured. This is where Peter and company went wrong. They wanted to create a lasting picture memory of something that was by nature a momentary glance. It is human nature though, to try to grasp and hold onto these moments of inspiration, explanation or transformation. But it is like trying to hold water in your hand. Last week, Fr. John spoke in his sermon about how God provides for us and he mentioned the disciples leaving their homes and their families and following Jesus when they really did not know what that would mean to them.  A few weeks ago, I mentioned the very same idea in that the disciples chose to follow Jesus, leaving behind their old lives with their families and their jobs, and heading bravely into an unknown and uncertain future.  In each of these vignettes, the disciples are called from certainty to uncertainty, from the known to the unknown. This is what the transition between Epiphany and Lent is about. In Epiphany we are making our way to the top of the mountain where Jesus is revealed to us in glory, splendor and light. We then must make our way back down the mountain and begin our journey through the desert which is Lent.

I think most of us would like to stay on the mountaintop once we get there.  Just as the mountains themselves look very different, each of us has a different idea of what the mountain top experience is. For each of us though, the common link is the transformative nature of the moment.  The rest of the world ceases to exist for an instant and we are allowed this rare glimpse of something we can barely comprehend. Just when we think we can wrap our minds around it, it drifts away, just like the clouds on the mountain. And we are left standing there wondering what just happened.

It is very tempting to want to pitch a tent right there in hopes of recreating and recapturing the moment to enjoy over and over. But the thing is, that moment in time will never happen again. I can never happen again because time has moved on, we have moved on. The moment is passed.  This is the tough part about this gospel. There is a secret message here. It is not just about what happens on the mountain. It is about what is supposed to happen after that. It is about the change that occurs.

Throughout his ministry Jesus has been trying to tell people not to worry about the future, not to dwell in the past, but to live in the moment.  I believe that the message in this story is that we, like the disciples cannot stay on the mountaintop. We have to come down and we have to walk across the desert to get to where we need to be. To make it more relevant to today. I think an accurate understanding of this might be that we can’t sit here all day. This is our mountaintop in some ways. We are known and loved here. Our friends are here. We are happy and comfortable here. We have some control here.  What Jesus is telling us and what this story is illuminating for us is that we need to go out into the world with all of the uncertainty, fear, lack of control, and things we cannot yet even imagine. We need to go into the desert and at the right time, share what we have seen on the mountaintop.

One of the many things I like about the Episcopal Church is that we don’t spend much time talking about when we were saved, and when we accepted Jesus as our personal savior. I never thought of Jesus as my personal savior. I think of him as the savior of humanity.  I don’t think of myself as having been saved so much as invested. I don’t think of my faith in terms of what God can do for me. I think of it in terms of what Jesus calls me to do. I believe, that at least part of what we can take away from this story is a clear sense of call…from the mountaintop down into the desert and into the places where we may not be that comfortable. There is great uncertainty and great unknown in this wilderness. We worry if we are prepared and we worry if we will have the stamina to make it through. All this worrying makes it all the harder for us to fully commit to the journey. But when we get to the other side and we look back over the barren landscape and we remember how we faced our fear, how we embraced our weakness and made it a strength of character, how we kept looking ahead and dealing with things as they came along, we will see that no only was the journey worth every moment of the struggle, but we can actually see the moment of our own transfiguration into a more Christ like person. And when we see and recognize the moment when we were transfigured, then we realize that we are indeed light for the world and light for those who are entering the desert for the first or even the last time.       It’s hard to explain. I guess you have to be here.

Lectionary Readings: Sunday, March 06, 2011 - Year A Last Sunday after EpiphanyExodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2 or 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9