Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, February 14, 2010
Solemn Mass
by the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year C: Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99;1 Corinthians 12:27--13:13; Luke 9:28-36

My memory of the Transfiguration passages from seminary is that they were generally considered to stories from the time of Jesus’ resurrection that had been transposed first by Mark[1] – and then copied by Matthew[2] and Luke. There is no account of the Transfiguration in John.

It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. Like almost everything else the evangelists write about Jesus, this story denies any easy explanation. Like Jesus’ healing, his teaching, his knowing often the thoughts of human hearts, the Transfiguration is an invitation to faith.

For the student, our gospel passage presents lots of interesting questions. First, if it is a story taken from the time after Jesus’ resurrection, what are Moses and Elijah doing in it?[3] Second, the Greek word used in our English translation for “departure” is “exodus.” But perhaps most interesting of all, Jesus’ “glory” is never mentioned or seen in any of the resurrection accounts.[4] In John, his wounds visible,[5] but when he himself meets Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection she recognizes him only because he speaks her name.[6] In Luke, when Mary Magdalene and the other women go to the tomb, they don’t meet the risen Jesus, but two men who say Jesus has done what he told them he would do – rise from the dead.[7] In Luke’s two appearances of the risen Jesus –on the road to Emmaus[8] and then an immediate presence afterwards with the eleven,[9] Jesus is not recognized. His resurrection appearance is absolutely ordinary – and there is no mention of his wounds. If Luke’s risen Jesus is so ordinary, what is the purpose of the Transfiguration – especially since Peter, James and John do not understand what it means?

At Daily Morning Prayer we are hearing Genesis right now. Almost every year when we read Genesis I seem to hear or be interested in something new. This year, I’ve been paying attention to who is marrying whom. Abraham marries his half-sister Sarai. Their son Isaac marries his first cousin’s daughter. It’s made me wonder how else all of the first families may be related. Isaac has two sons by the same mother, Esau and Jacob. Jacob wrongs his brother so much, that he spends a good deal of time fearing his brother will kill him. By the time the Hebrew people emerge, the wider human family has become so dispersed, so divided, that human life in most of the world has become very cheap.

In the story of God’s people Israel, there is an unfolding of a new vision of relationship among God and among us human beings. It’s a relationship about life in this world and life in the world to come. God’s new vision is revealed, unfolds, in history, in time.

Having grown up in a tradition of a certain fundamentalist – literalist interpretation of the Bible, I am keenly aware of trying to be honest about what the Bible says and doesn’t say. It’s possible, as it were, to pick at the Bible – its inconsistencies, its cruelties, its wrongs. But, the Hebrew tradition of learning engendered a Christian tradition of learning. There have always been Christians whose approach to the Bible has been much like the main tradition of the Episcopal Church – one that is honest about what the Bible says and doesn’t say – and honest about its enormous riches.

One might say that the primary purpose of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke is to root Jesus in the royal history of the family of David. That would be true, but there’s no reason in Luke to narrow that history. Remember, Luke is the gospel of the wider vision of the Church, of the mission beyond Israel. And unlike Matthew, Luke takes Jesus’ genealogy not just back to David and Abraham, but back to Adam and God himself, to one human family.

As different as the four gospels are, they share so very much. I think it’s more than fair to say that the kind of mystery Mark, Matthew and Luke approach in their accounts of the Transfiguration, shapes the understanding of God’s presence in Christ and the unfolding of God’s kingdom among us.

The late Raymond Brown in his great commentary on John, for purposes of understanding, divided John’s gospel into main parts, one he called, “The Book of Signs,” the other, “The Book of Glory.”[10] In the first part, some are able to see beyond the signs Jesus does – water to wine, feeding the five thousand, healing the man born blind, raising Lazarus – to Jesus’ reality: He is the Son of God. But it is on the cross, in John, that Jesus gives his Spirit, his life, not for the world as much as to the world, to those who believe.

I’ve mentioned before Canon Donald Allchin’s book, Participation in God: A Forgotten Strand in Anglican Tradition.[11] It’s a title that I would not have understood growing up Southern Baptist; I’m not sure it’s a title my Roman Catholic grandparents would have understood either. In both traditions, God was the judge. Our lives were tests of obedience, of faithfulness, of surrender. Certainly all of these have their place within Christian experience, but even in Matthew’s gospel, in the vision of the Son of Man judging between the sheep and the goats, I would argue that the gospels are about God’s presence and love, not his judgment and condemnation. Presence and relationship seem to me to be what Transfiguration is about.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.