Lectionary Readings
In the name of the Holy Trinity ☩ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
There
are a lot of things that are headline news. Sure, I could use this sermon to
weigh in on the impeachment trial – not from a partisan perspective, of course –
but I could speak about the importance of truth-telling and accountability. And
it’s not just politics that grabs the headlines – there’s news about GameStop
and the stock market, news about the start of baseball Spring Training coming
up, news about celebrities getting into trouble, and news about how technology
continues to reshape our world. But just because these pieces of information
are put in capital letters across the top of a newspaper doesn’t make them
important. And this is a trap that we moderns easily fall into – we confuse the
loud for the important.
But
instead of focusing on what’s in the news, St. Mark gives us something more interesting,
more pertinent, more challenging to consider this morning: The Transfiguration
of Jesus Christ. Yes, if we take this narrative to be the most important piece
of news that we hear this week, not only will we better be able to interpret
all of that other so-called news, but we will be able to participate in this
glory of God.
Sometimes
we are so familiar with the story of Jesus that we forget just how incredible this
all is. In Mark’s description of the Transfiguration, he notes that St. Peter,
a man who has seen Jesus walk on water, exorcise demons, raise a dead girl, and
feed thousands of people with only five loaves and two fish, this very same
Peter, when he witnesses this event that we call the Transfiguration, is
terrified. When we all heard Deacon Bonnie read the passage from Mark, be
honest, how many of us gasped or screamed? It’s more likely at this point that
we took another sip of coffee. We share on social media or across the lawn about
the weather, or celebrity gossip, or the latest hot-button issue – but when’s
the last time we told anyone “Hey, did you hear about how the glory of God was
seen in Jesus as he appeared with Moses and Elijah?”
I
spent part of this past week having a conversation with St. Mark about this text.
I studied the words he wrote down, I consulted some commentaries to see what
others have said about his words, I prayed with an icon of Transfiguration and St.
Mark really wants us to know this truth about Jesus – that he’s God’s beloved Son
and we ought to listen to him. That’s what St. Mark asked me to share with you
all this morning, Jesus is the Son of God and that makes a claim on us.
And
this truth is what everything has been pointing towards and preparing for. But
it’s not a truth that we were going to figure out on our own. No, this is what this
season after the Epiphany is all about. We needed the magi to show us that
Jesus is not only the King of the Jews, but he’s also the King of the Universe.
We needed the story of Jesus’ Baptism to show us that Jesus has come as the
heavens were torn open to declare that Jesus is not just a prophet, not just a
teacher, not just a good example, but is the very Son of God. We needed stories
about Jesus calling his disciples, casting out demons, and healing the sick to
show us that, indeed, he has come to do as God promised to do back in Isaiah,
to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor, and the
day of vengeance of our God.” And this is what Mark gives us – a series of
epiphanies about Jesus so that we’ll know just who it is that we are
worshipping.
This
will become even more important in the days ahead. Today, on Quinquagesima, the
Sunday before entering Lent, the setting is on a mountaintop, generally assumed
to be Mount Tabor. On the other side of Lent, we’ll have another reading about
the glory of God being manifest on another mount: Golgotha. Instead of Peter
being there, it will be the faithful women; instead of being in glistening
white clothing, Jesus will be stripped naked; instead of a voice saying “This
is my Son,” there will be cries of “Crucify.” We would be tempted at that point
to think that we’ve misinterpreted these epiphanies along the way. Certainly,
Jesus can’t be the Messiah since he’s just been executed both as an enemy of the
state and as a blasphemer. And so we need this epiphany of the Transfiguration
all the more. We need to be told “listen to him.” And more than listening to
Jesus once, we need to keep listening. Because as Jesus tells his disciples who
were there that day, none of this will make sense until after the Resurrection,
so don’t try explaining this to anyone before then.
And
the Resurrection did happen. And so those disciples told others. There is a tradition
that St. Mark, who was not one of the twelve disciples, got his information
from none other than St. Peter. So Peter tells Mark, and Mark tells anyone who
will listen and writes it down. Through the ages, this good news has been
shared. And this week Mark told me about it again, so I’m here to tell you
about it. What you do with this really is between you and Holy Spirit. But this
is not only good news, it’s compelling news, its life-changing news, its
headline news if there ever has been any. And just what is this news?
Well,
for one, the Transfiguration reveals something to us about how God likes to
act. God, it seems, has a proclivity for doing things sequentially. God, as the
author of all that is, could have structured time differently. What those other
options look like, I’m not sure that our brains can fathom, but certainly,
things didn’t have to be this way. But God chooses to have things unfold. It
wasn’t six days of Creation, a day of rest, and then the Messiah shows up. No,
God lets decades, centuries, millennia, and eons pass by. There was Noah, and
then many generations later, Abraham, then King David, then Mary gives birth to
the Messiah, and here we are, some 2,000 years later.
And in this
passage of time, important and emblmatic figures come along, people like Moses
and Elijah who are pillars of the Jewish faith which Jesus embodies. Moses, the
great but flawed liberator of the people was a leader and law-giver and Elijah was
a prophet mighty in deed and action. These two are representative of the faith
of Israel and their appearing with Jesus on that mountaintop clearly demonstrates
that Jesus is the fulfillment, the perfection, the culmination, the embodiment of
the Law and the Prophets. In other words, he’s not only a part of the
tradition, he is the tradition.
Through our
Baptism into the Body of Christ, we, too, are a part of this tradition. It is
important to know who Jesus is because that tells us who we are. We stand in
this stream of witnesses to the glory of God. And given that we live on this
side of the Resurrection, we have been commissioned to tell people about this
tradition in which we live, move, and have our being, and to invite them into
this way of abundant life. On this Foundation Sunday, this is what we celebrate
about our Foundation. People who have come before us in the faith left behind a
monetary gift for us to use to further that very same faith that St. Mark tells
us about this morning.
Though the last
year has been a crazy one, it’s also been a transformative one for our Foundation.
Caroline Stephenson has taken over as the Administrative Assistant and brought
the Foundation up to date in terms of marketing and the grant application
process. Applicants are now able to complete their applications online and
Foundation trustees can easily review and score applications. Through the
leadership of our President, George Simons, we’re now engaging more with the organizations
we’ve made grants to. The Foundation is doing so much more than mailing checks,
we are building relationships, we are seeing how the tradition of which we are
part is manifest in other parts of our community and our world. St. Luke’s, both
the Parish and the Foundation, are growing in our call to become the beloved
community which stands in the tradition of the prophets, apostles, and all the
faithful who have followed Jesus. So that’s the first bit of news – that God acts
through tradition.
And the most
important news we have this morning is that the Transfiguration reveals to us
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about God. St. John
Chrysostom says that on that mountaintop we caught a glimpse into the
indwelling divinity of Jesus noting that at the Transfiguration Jesus did not
receive something he previously did not have, nor was he changed into the something
he was not already, rather it was given to us to see what he really is. And
when this epiphany was given, first to Peter, James, and John, and then to
Mark, and then to us, we are told “Listen to him.” Jesus is the whole truth
about God, which is why it’s so important to spend time with Jesus.
And when we listen
to Jesus, what sort of things will we hear? Well, we’ll hear the words of life.
Words like “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to the end that
all who believe in him may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son
to condemn the world but to save it.” We’ll hear things like “I am the bread of
life” and “I am the good shepherd.” From the Cross, we’ll come to understand
something about the truth of God when our Crucified Lord says “It is finished” and
“Father, forgive them.” Jesus will empower us when he says things like “Receive
the Holy Spirit” and “Go into all the world and make disciples.” Jesus will
teach us when he says “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” “Love the Lord
your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and you shall love
your neighbor as yourself,” and “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the
least of these, you did it unto me.” When we listen to Jesus he will tell us “Your
sins are forgiven” and that “The Kingdom of God is among you.” He will assure
with words like “This is my body, given for you,” “Remember, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the ages,” and “All shall be well and all manner
of things shall be well.”
Thanks be to God
that we have several ways to listen to Jesus and receive this good news today. We
have Scripture, we have the Eucharist, we have the poor, we have tradition, we have
the Holy Spirit. The only news you need to know today is this: Jesus is the
beloved Son of God, and so we ought to listen to him.
