O God of grace and glory, may your radiance
always bring brightness to our world ✠
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Over the past two months, we’ve been in the season after the Epiphany. Epiphany is the name we give to the Biblical story where the magi come and offer gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Christ-child. It’s a significant event because, in the glory of the star that guided the magi there and in their gifts, we see the glory of God in Jesus. It’s also a significant event because these magi are not Jewish – which is a signal that Jesus is not the only the King of the Jews as the charge against him on Good Friday will read, but he is also the Savior of the whole world. The theme for these Sundays after Epipany is about us getting glimpses of this glory of God that has been revealed for all to come and see.
At
St. Luke’s, we’ve also been focusing on Baptism over these past eight Sundays for
a few reasons. For one, Baptism is the groundwater out of which our faith
flows, so it’s always good to consider this Sacrament of grace. Baptism is also
related to these Epiphany themes because it is through Baptism that we are brought
into the glorious story of God’s salvation which began with Israel and extends
to the whole universe.
As
we conclude both these Sundays after the Epiphany and this sermon series on
Baptism, our focus this morning is on the transfiguring aspect of Baptism. Now,
what does Transfiguration even mean? It’s not a word that we use other than in reference
to this Biblical event. When a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, we call it a metamorphosis,
not a transfiguration, but it’s a similar idea. “Trans,” as in “transportation”
or “translation” means that something is being changed. And what is being
changed is the figure, the appearance – hence, Jesus is transfigured as the
appearance of his face changed and he was dazzlingly bright.
How
exactly Jesus’ face was changed, none of us can say for sure, but what we can
know is that for Peter, James, and John who were there to witness this
Transfiguration, it changed everything for them. They gave their livelihood and
their lives to spreading the Gospel. They caught a glimpse of the Resurrection
glory of Jesus and it forever changed them – giving them newfound courage, insight,
and purpose.
In
concert with the readings from Exodus and Second Corinthians, we see that this
event has been understood as the unveiling of God, where we are allowed to peer
into the deeper mysteries of God. One thing that we see is God’s mercy. Moses
had an encounter with God on the mountaintop and received the two tablets
containing the Ten Commandments. God was seen as the lawgiver, as one who put
demands on us and our behavior. But St. Paul interprets this differently,
writing “When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the
Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” As it turns
out, God is more interested in being merciful than exacting, more concerned with
us having abundant life than us following the rules. Yes, abundant life comes
through us living as God has instructed us, but we don’t want to confuse the
destination for the vehicle. Sure, flying on a plane might be fun, but the real
purpose is to get somewhere. That law is given not just to be kept, but so that
we can get to the life in Christ desired for us.
And
so more than caring about whether or not the rules are followed, God’s concern
is whether or not we are living in the freedom that Christ gives us – the
freedom which comes from being unshackled from Sin and Death so that we are
free to love God, our neighbors, and ourselves. God is not watching us to see whether
or not we are good enough, weighing out our good deeds against our bad,
deciding whether or not we deserve heaven or hell after death. That is such a
caricature of God and a misunderstanding of the Christian faith – but, sadly,
it is far too common. Instead, when we see beneath the veil, what we find is a
God of mercy.
This
is what we are Baptized into – the mercy and forgiveness of God. It’s not a
coincidence that the initiation ritual into the Body of Christ is a symbolic washing.
As a Sacrament, the water of Baptism is a sign of the reality that God has
already washed us clean in Jesus. This is why the color of Baptism is white. It’s
why we wear so much white in our vestments – it is a reminder that as we come
before the altar, we are made worthy not by our efforts, not by our accomplishments,
but by God’s mercy.
As
St. Paul puts it in Second Corinthians, this reality gives us such a hope that
we can act with great boldness. Knowing that we will not be judged by God harshly
for our mistakes, we can be bold in striving to follow Jesus. To be clear, the
world will judge us harshly for our mistakes, but God will not. Just imagine
what we could do as individuals and as the Body of Christ if we weren’t so
worried about our reputations or results.
Both
because of this pandemic which has disrupted everything and trends in our
society around religious affiliation, it is time for the Church to be bold.
There was a time when we could just “keep on keeping on” as a congregation and
have everything work out okay – but those days are behind us. If St. Luke’s, or
any congregation, is going to thrive and be relevant in our community in the years
to come, we will need to be bold: bold in our faith, bold in our imaginations,
bold in our courage to try new things and learn from our mistakes, bold in taking
the risk of love in all things. And the only reason why we can have such boldness
is that Baptism assures us that God is a God of mercy.
This
sort of boldness is not often received well by others. We heard in Exodus that
the people told Moses to “cover up” after his encounters with God in which his
face was radiant. The world will tell us to put a veil on our faith. It’s funny
that so many people think that the idea of “separation of Church and State” is
for the benefit of the Church. It’s not. The idea behind the separation of Church
and State is the sort of idea that couldn’t have been better crafted even by
Satan. The intention and the effect of such a doctrine are that faith becomes privatized,
apolitical, and impotent. In other words, faith becomes a matter of opinion
instead of the very drumbeat by which we live our lives.
Another
veil comes not from outside but within – when faith is compartmentalized; when
giving to the church, in both time and finances, is not disruptive to the rest
of our lives. Even that phrase “the rest of our lives” betrays how we veil the
faith and don’t allow its radiance to light up all parts of our lives. More
than a hobby or interest, something we do from time to time, faith is a lifestyle.
For me, an example is fitness and healthy living. For some, exercise is a hobby
– you go to the gym every once in a while or try to be physically active. For
others of us, it’s a lifestyle. Of course, there’s the disclaimer that lifestyle
can also be an unhealthy obsession, but that’s not what I have in mind. I structure
my days around being able to exercise for an hour and track the calories I eat.
This isn’t a hobby, it’s a way of living, a lifestyle that impacts my whole day.
The same is also true for praying Morning and Evening Prayer each day – it doesn’t
happen by accident, but is a priority that makes me think about the rest of my
day in relation to having those times for prayer. Yes, both fitness and prayer can
be empty ritualism, they can lead to legalistic living, they can be burdens to
stress about – but only if we focus on the thing itself instead of the purpose.
When
we put a veil over the faith, we are covering up the purpose of faith because
the practices aren’t as convenient as we might want them to be. If we want to
find peace and a sense of calm, we have to do things that will make us calm and
peaceful. If we value humility and forgiveness, we have to both remember that
we are forgiven and forgive others. As I said last Sunday, the early followers
of Jesus were not called Christians – that sounds like a status or a membership.
Instead, they were called “members of the Way” which makes it clear that faith
is a process, a journey, a movement that never ends. In order to make faith
easier though, we domesticate it and put a veil on it and say: faith is what I
do for an hour on Sunday morning if nothing more pressing is going on. An
unveiled faith is a way of being – the mercy of God will seep into our
relationships, the generosity of God will change our relationship to money and possessions,
the grace of God will change our identity, the peace of God will change our
worries, the compassion of God will change our priorities, the love of God will
transfigure the entirety of our lives.
Luke’s
recording of the Transfiguration also mentions that there was a cloud that overshadowed
the disciples. The cloud represents God’s presence. Yes, God is always with us
and around us, but sometimes that “thickness” of God’s presence is more
apparent, as it is in this all-enveloping cloud. Peter, James, and John were
overshadowed by this cloud, the same word for what happened to Mary back in
Luke chapter one when she was “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit as God
Incarnate was conceived in her.
It’s
an absolutely stunning statement that St. Paul makes: “All of us, with unveiled
faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” This is
what Baptism is about – this glory of God that we saw in Jesus is what we are
being transfigured into. Not only does Baptism turn us away from Sin and Death
and towards God’s mercy and grace, but it also pushes us out on the journey of
a lifetime in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is described as
wind – and we can think of Baptism as being given sails. Not only does the Spirit
point us in the right direction, it also takes us somewhere.
Elsewhere
in Scripture, we read that “our life is hidden in Christ.” It’s not that God’s identity
and purpose obliterate our own, rather our lives are kept safe in Christ. In
the same way that this cloud overshadowed the disciples, in the same way that
Mary’s life was overshadowed subsumed into God’s story, so too are we
overshadowed by God’s grace and glory. Again, for those of us who prefer to have
the spotlight on us and our accomplishments, we’ll try to put a veil over God
to make ourselves look like the star of the show. But as any celebrity will
tell you – the spotlight is overwhelming, as not only do people see the things
we like to gloat about, but they see the imperfections as well.
Through
Baptism, we embrace the fact that the veil belongs on us and not God. My
favorite work of art is the Isenheim Altarpiece, specifically, the
Crucifixion panel of it. Why I like it so much would take another sermon, but
one part of it is that St. John the Baptist is depicted there as pointing to
the crucified Jesus with the words “He must increase and I must decrease”
written above his head. That’s a description of a transfigured life – when we
live not for ourselves, but for God, when we find our glory not in our
successes but in what appeared as weakness on the Cross, when we recognize the way
of the Cross to be the way of life. This is the glory of God that we have been
seeing throughout these Sundays after the Epiphany and it is the glory that we
are brought into through Baptism, as our Collect today put it, that “beholding the
light of Christ, we are strengthened to
bear our cross and be transfigured into Christ’s likeness in glory.” Come and
see this light of Christ that changes everything.
