Exodus 34:29-35
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

The readings assigned for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany always include an account of Jesus’ Transfiguration. The story is very familiar: Jesus, taking some of his most trusted disciples, goes up the mountain to pray, and while he prays, he undergoes a miraculous transformation: his face changes and his clothes become dazzlingly white. It is reminiscent of what happened to Moses, in the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, when he talked with God; and it leads us to reflect that close association with God changes people. Of course, in the story of the Transfiguration, it isn’t just Jesus’ appearance that is affected. In addition, Moses and Elijah — two of the powerful spiritual forbears of the Hebrew people — appear in glory, and talk with Jesus about “his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” This gives us another hint that part of the message of the Transfiguration event was to Jesus: an opportunity for God to affirm the path Jesus had chosen, to validate his determination to go to Jerusalem, even though he and his disciples must have known how dangerous such a course would be. Peter, perhaps predictably, seems to have missed the point entirely; and when he starts talking about building shelters — physical spaces to commemorate the event, instead of simply accepting the message and moving on — the voice speaks out of the cloud to set him (and us) straight, once and for all. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

In many ways, we are like Peter: we want to control our experiences of God; we, like Peter, would rather commemorate an event than assimilate a message or a calling and move forward with it. We want our faith to be safe: a comfort, not a challenge. We want God to be available to us like an ace in the hole, or perhaps, an over-protective elder brother, who will take on the people and things that threaten us. We want God to be king and judge (of other people, of course), the power that holds the world in balance and makes everything safe for us. “The Lord is king!” our Psalm asserts, this morning. “Let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.” And while there is ample imagery to support this kind of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels tell a very different story; the Gospels show us, in Jesus the Christ, a very different aspect of God.

When Jesus and the disciples go to Jerusalem, the mission isn’t to conquer the city; it’s not to become the king enthroned over Israel, or to vanquish the Roman conquerors. Instead, Jesus teaches and heals, embracing the marginalized and the outcast, and challenging the powerful. And when the powerful strike back — as the powerful, throughout history, have been wont to do — Jesus, in response, demonstrates such a profound vulnerability that it transformed our very understanding of the Divine.

It may be significant to note that, in Luke’s Gospel, the story of the Transfiguration — which emphasizes God’s glory and majesty, and echoes the kind of theology apparent in this morning’s Psalm — is followed immediately by the story of a healing. The next day, when they had come down from the mountain, they are met by a great crowd, which contains a man whose son needs healing. The man calls out to Jesus, explaining the situation, and the fact that the disciples have been unable to affect a cure for the boy. After voicing exasperation, Jesus (as the Gospel has it) “rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all we astounded at the greatness of God.”

This story demonstrates a different greatness than the kind of power and majesty the Transfiguration expresses, or Psalm 99 extols. In the account of the healing, we see God’s transformative power exercised in a small (but vital) matter: a child rescued from a debilitating disorder, restored to health and wholeness — another example of a close association with God changing a person. We needn’t get distracted into details; it doesn’t matter whether what the boy suffered was demonic possession or a seizure disorder. What is significant is the transformation, the change from broken to whole; and — if we look — we can see that kind of transformation in our own lives, in the lives of our friends, family, and neighbors, in the life of our community of faith. Association with God changes people; it transforms us; it heals us, strengthens us, challenges us, affirms us; and it does it spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, physically, as we grow in faith and deepen our association with God. We mustn’t dismiss small changes as irrelevant; we mustn’t fall into the trap of only recognizing God’s hand at work in big, dramatic, obvious things. God is present in the incremental, subtle things, as well as in the vast, obvious ones. It’s we who have to learn to see, to discern, God among us.

It won’t be simple. The glowing faces of Scripture, whether Moses’ or Jesus’, are metaphor; we will never know what Peter, James, and John — or the children of Israel — really saw when they looked at the transfigured face of their spiritual leader. But we do know, because the stories were important enough to tell and retell and write down, that they discerned something of God’s power, something of God’s presence. These stories encourage us to look for God in unforeseen places — in unexpected people, in unpredictable circumstances — because that’s where God is. In Scripture, we’re given stories of extraordinary events or circumstances; but Scripture is metaphor and folktale, deep truths and powerful insights — not fact, evidence, and objective history. We must never forget that God is present in the ordinary, day-to-day reality of our lives, and not confined to a magical world of burning bushes, valleys of dry bones, and astounding, miraculous healings. Just because God has never spoken to you out of the clouds doesn’t mean that God isn’t speaking to you — to all of us — in other, less dramatic ways. Instead of waiting for God to manifest in the ways Scripture recounts, perhaps we should be learning to listen and look for God differently.

In his second letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul writes: “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness … Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 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. Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” The Spirit is present, and the transformational power of our relationship with God is already engaged, at work in us and among us. Perhaps the veils we must remove are our limiting assumptions, that cover our faces and make it impossible for us to look beyond what we expect to see. Paul talks about our seeing “the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror…” — a distorted image, backwards, imperfect; even without veils, we still have to learn to recognize, discern, and interpret what we see of God. But in order for a mirror to hold a reflection, the original must be present; Paul’s imagery assures us of God’s presence, for if the Lord were not here, we could not hope to see even the reflection of the Divine glory.

So let us open our eyes, and trust in our hearts that God is present — even here — with us, in us, and among us. God is waiting, patiently, for us to recognize the Divine presence, to listen for the Divine voice, and to discern the mission and ministry to which we are, each and all, called.

In the name of Christ, AMEN.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich