Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

The Reverend Melanie Dickson Lemburg
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany—Year C
February 14, 2010

Today is the Last Sunday in our season after Epiphany, a season of light in which we celebrate the revelation of God’s glory to all people. And so today, we stand in the dazzling light of Jesus, transfigured on the mountain, even as we join him in setting our faces toward Jerusalem, setting our faces toward the cross as we prepare to journey into the shadow-land of the season of Lent.
Transfiguration. What exactly is it? What does it mean for us as a church and as individual followers of Jesus Christ? People have written so much about transfiguration that it’s hard to know where to even begin. The Christian theologian Frederick Buechner writes about Christ’s transfiguration and how it relates to us saying, “It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they’d tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they’d seen as hungry, tired, footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it they were almost blinded. Even with us something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing”[1]
“The holiness of the man shining through his humanness…”
Another writer writes of Transfiguration as “living by vision: standing foursquare in the midst of a broken, tortured, oppressed, starving, dehumanizing reality, yet seeing the invisible, calling to it to come, behaving as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it that have come already, within and among us…”[2]
Transfiguration is showing up when we don’t feel like it, staying awake when our eyes and our hearts are so weary and heavy, but still being there to bear witness to God’s glory when it does appear. Transfiguration is standing with one foot in the shadow and one foot in the light; it is understanding that when the cloud comes and overshadows us that we are not alone and it will not keep us in darkness forever. It encompasses a willingness to dwell within the love of God for a few moments so that we are strengthened and emboldened to carry out what God asks us to do, to be willing to set our faces toward the cross and looking into the face of all the worst of humanity and see it transformed by the power of God’s love into new life that overcomes even the shadow of death. Transfiguration involves a willingness to give ourselves over to where God is calling us to grow and to deepen in our faith in God, in what may seem to be the impossible but in what we will eventually find to be new life, new hope, and a deep source of joy.
So what are the results when people are confronted with Transfiguration?
For those of us who pray the words of our collect today, it is the reminder that if we look upon the shining face of our Lord, then we will be changed into his likeness…from glory to glory. From glory to glory….listen to what that says both about what we already are and what we hope to become.
For Paul it is to remember that: “And 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; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit…”
For Peter and John and James it is to taste the glory and the terror, the confusion and the silence.
For the man and his son in Luke (and for the writer of Luke): the immediate results of the Transfiguration or the revelation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ is healing of the child possessed of the unclean spirit. Jesus restores the outcast to his father and to his community. (which then becomes part of the call of the church in Acts). The glory of God comes down from the mountain and shines the light on the darkness of human suffering and displacement and heals and restores.
For those of us who will begin our Lenten pilgrimage this week with Ash Wednesday, it is the reminder that there is glory even in the dust of our human existence.
In each of these places, we are reminded that the glory of God shines most brightly into the places of darkness, places most wounded by sin, by sickness, by misunderstanding, and confusion.
In his transfiguration, our Lord looks into the face of his own suffering; he looks into the face of his own death and still his face is shining with light and, even more importantly, with hope. That is transfiguration. To stand with one foot in shadow and one foot in light and to let our faces and our hearts shine with pure, unbridled hope….hope that one day, the glory of God will shine fully upon us all, and the darkness will be transformed from glory to glory.

[1] Frederick Buechner, Transfiguration. From Imaging the Word. Volume I. Kenneth Lawrence, ed. United Church Press: Cleveland, 1994, p 141.
[2] Walter Wink, Interpretation. From Imaging the Word. Volume I. Kenneth Lawrence, ed. United Church Press: Cleveland, 1994, p 142.