Last Sunday after the Epiphany--Year A

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany—Year A
March 6, 2011

Today is the last Sunday after the Epiphany—a season of light in which we celebrate the manifestation of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. In our readings today we get a few more glimpses of the glory of God in Moses’ encounter with God on Sinai and in Jesus’ transfiguration as witnessed by his three disciples.

In our reading today from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has already set his face toward Jerusalem when he takes his three closest disciples up the mountain with him where they witness his transfiguration. I wonder what those three disciples expected when they made that journey up the mountain with Jesus? Surely they didn’t expect to witness, first hand, the glory of God? Do any of us ever really expect to encounter the glory of God?

I think that we can relate to both the disciples and to Moses who witnessed God’s glory in slightly different ways. God calls Moses to come up the mountain to meet God and to wait indefinitely, not knowing when God will reveal God’s glory to Moses. And we get that, don’t we? We try to follow God’s call, but so much of our life is bound up in the waiting, and sometimes it is in how we wait that we live into God’s call in our lives.

And then sometimes the weight of God’s glory can steal upon a person, amidst both the holy and the mundane events of life. I have encountered the weight of God’s glory in the most mundane events—putting my children to bed, in a conversation or a meal; and I have encountered God’s glory in the holy moments—when you have shared details of your life stories with me, when I look into your shining faces as you kneel before God’s table. Sometimes God’s glory steals upon me when I witness people being able to set aside their own egos and agendas and to work together for the greater good.

Jesus’s three disciples were surprised by God’s glory in their trip up the mountain, and when God speaks to them, they are pressed to the ground under the weight of God’s glory and under the thrall of their own fear. They are raised up out of their fear by the glory of God as they encounter it anew in the touch of their friend and teacher and in his assurance to them: Do not be afraid. Then he leads them down the mountain and tells them to not speak of his glory until after many things have come to pass. And so they go about their lives.
One of the temptations that we face in this life, that we may encounter in the wilderness of this coming Lent, is the temptation to seek after our own glory, or in the absence of the evident presence of God’s glory, to try to manufacture some in our lives. We are like the children of Israel who see the initial signs of God’s glory up on Mt Sinai, but after Moses is away from them for 40 days and 40 nights, they begin to crave more evidence of glory, and so they attempt to manufacture their own, crafting the golden calf out of their gold.
So what is the good news in this? What are we to do when faced with the weight of God’s glory or when faced with the apparent lack of it?

Henri Nouwen wrote about how he struggled with the temptation of replacing God’s glory with his own, and he wrote about how he would pray and wrestle with the question of “how to live for the glory of God and not for your own glory.” Finally, he received some wise counsel from the abbot at the monastery where he was staying. Nouwen writes, “Well the first thing is to realize that you are the glory of God. In Genesis you can read: ‘Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being’ (Gen 2:7). We live because we share God’s breath, God’s glory. The question is not so much, ‘How to live for the glory of God’ but ‘How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?’ With a smile [the abbot] said, ‘Take this as your koan: ‘I am the glory of God.’ Make that thought the center of your meditation so that it slowly becomes not a thought but a living reality. You are the place where God chose to dwell…and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to …create the space where [God’s] glory can manifest itself. …Ask yourself ‘Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?”
“You are the glory of God.” The glory of God is revealed this day, not just in our worship, but in each of you, in each of your lives. And the gift of its surprise this day, if we can hold fast to its truth, will carry us through the wilderness of Lent, through the times in our lives when we are called to wait, to carry out the ordinary rhythms of life. It will carry us through the times of inconsolable sorrow, of boredom, of weariness.

How might each of our lives be transfigured if we can hold fast to the truth of this day—that each of us is a part of God’s glory and that it is never far away from us. It is always there, waiting to surprise us?
“You are the glory of God.” What a powerful statement! One that may make us wish to fall to the floor under the weight of its burden and our own fears. What must be expected of us if we are truly the glory of God? What must we do to live into that?

We make manifest the glory of God when we actively follow the way of Jesus in our lives: when we comfort the poor, pity the afflicted, when we offer hope and healing to those who have little, when we deliberately treat others with kindness and mercy. We live into the glory of God that is within us when we forgive others, when we choose life over death, blessings over curses. We become the glory of God when we live for others and not for ourselves alone; when we consider the impact that the way we live our lives and spend our money has on other people in our own society and around the world. We live into the glory of God when we hold fast to the hope of the resurrection, even in the darkest moments of our lives. We make space for the glory of God in our lives when we love God and when we love others.

Let us pray. O God, who before the passion of your only¬begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.