Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
This is a difficult time to write a sermon. The legal and social services systems are being weaponized against trans youth and their families. War and violence are very real and very present for the people of Ukraine and Russia, and the ways this conflict is being discussed in the media are retraumatizing survivors of other conflicts, especially those that received very little coverage by comparison. Another life was stolen by police serving a no-knock warrant and protests continue as Amir Locke’s family and community grieve. Black History Month, the shortest month of year, is coming to an end, and 57 Historically Black Colleges and Universities have received bomb threats so far in 2022. That includes Norfolk State and Hampton University here in Virginia. I have no doubt that in the 24/7 coverage that drowns us all, I have missed plenty just this week. On top of these domestic and global tragedies, our own community carries much. There are those among us who grieve both recent and long-ago losses. There are those among us struggling with unspoken health concerns, and those whose disabilities and illnesses are made visible by our absence from the sanctuary today. There are ones among us who struggle with anxiety, with depression, with loneliness, with our relationships with substances and with people. Families with school aged and young children have been yanked to and fro by guideline changes, positive tests, quarantines, cancellations, and the burden of the forced choice between embodied community and safety. Everyone here is missing someone, and everyone who isn’t here is missed. We are exhausted and frustrated with the pandemic, with our neighbors, and with this new unfamiliar normal. Yes, it is a difficult time to be writing a sermon, and maybe also to be hearing one. Our hearts and minds are heavy, and we may not even know whether we want to throw our burdens down or simply acknowledge the weight.
I remember this time last year, so many clergy and lay leaders voicing a disinterest in observing the austere season of Lent, the season we will enter into in just a few days. The entire year of 2020 had felt like a prolonged Lenten desert, and at the time of Lent 2021 our vaccine-driven resurrection had just begun. By the grace of God and the turning of the Earth, we are back at the threshold of the desert, the last Sunday of the Epiphany season. And again, we are talking about normalizing, masks are coming off all around us, and the old anxieties about attendance and growth and money and change are bubbling up. We humans like to think of ourselves as so above the rest of creation, and yet we continue our cycles and seasons just like everything else. Whether you notice your energy is flagging or building, I imagine if you look closely inward, you’ll sense a change.
That same change between seasons that so naturally occurs within us has been understood with wisdom by the leaders of the church since its early days. The liturgical calendar and the lectionary both reflect the reality that there are long seasons of ordinary in between the seasons of waiting and the moments of exhilaration. We are in the final days of the season of Ordinary time between the Christmas season and the Lenten season, and just as there was a moment of intersection between the summer Ordinary time and the Advent anticipation marked by the feast of Christ the King, so today we mark this turning point in our readings. If you look closely, you’ll notice a pattern, a relationship between the otherworldly holiness of God and the awe of humanity. At the end of the Epiphany season, during which we have basked in the miracle of God born as an infant and raised by a family of modest means, we have one final moment of appreciation of that miracle in the Transfiguration.
In Luke’s account, Jesus goes up a mountain to pray a few days after preaching the Sermon on the Mount, which we have heard parts of the past two Sundays. He brings three of his disciples, and as they pray Jesus’s visage begins to change. The disciples watch as his face becomes radiant and his clothing shines like the sun. They witness apparitions of Moses and Elijah, the heroes of their history incarnate before them in all God’s glory. This scene is often depicted in art as a dazzling white-robed (and white skinned) Jesus lifted above the disciples, sometimes even above the ground, with the representatives of the Law and the Prophets flanking him. What is difficult to capture in the paintings and is easily missed in the passage is that this is a moment of intimacy in the midst of glory. Elijah and Moses are not simply symbols, they are people, forefathers come to talk with Jesus as his friends. Luke tells us that the subject of the conversation which Peter interrupts is Jesus’s death, his departure which will happen at Jerusalem. Elijah and Moses are speaking honestly with Jesus about what he is about to undergo, the fate that Jesus has tried to forewarn his disciples about from the beginning of their journey. This transfiguration is a moment of clarity, a time to speak openly about the realities of betrayal and pain and death and grief. The glory which surrounds the three figures is truth, more real than reality itself. It is no wonder that poor Peter would rather delay the truth of Jesus’s death a little longer, and memorialize this mountaintop moment instead. He can’t possibly know that this is only his first glimpse of the Light of the World.
Our Epiphany, a word which means the manifestation of the divine, comes to its peak on this mountaintop, in dazzling light and blinding cloud and booming supernatural voice. As the light fades and the cloud dissipates and the voice quiets, there stands in our midst the entirely ordinary and extraordinary body of Jesus. Stunned into a strained and grieved silence, the disciples descend the mountain with him, reflecting on all they have seen and heard and grasping for ways to deny the truth of Jesus’s approaching death. They are forever changed by the events of the peak, and yet they must return to the valley.
Immediately, Jesus and his friends are confronted by suffering and desperation and evil. Perhaps this child is possessed by an evil spirit that torments him, perhaps he is disabled and is experiencing seizures, perhaps a little of both or neither is true. We do not know why the other disciples were not able to heal the child or why Jesus reacts so harshly to this news. What we do know is that those who love this child are watching him suffer, and they are begging a stranger to relieve him of his pain. The same Son of God who shone with the light of the sun on the mountaintop is confronted with the shadow of death in the valley, and the darkness does not overcome him. Jesus rebukes the spirit and heals the child, and all who witness this miracle understand it rightly to be an act of God.
The last mountain peak we reached was the birth of Christ at Christmas, a time when we may have experienced more worship and community and connection and hope and relief than we’ve seen in years. It was only days before we were brought swiftly down the mountain by health concerns and weather patterns and the breakneck pace of our secular world. The valley is where we are spending our days lately. Some of us may be moving through life with our head tilted upward toward the mountain, hoping for a glimpse of the light revealed there, pining for the last time we felt that glow. Others of us may be moving with our heads bowed, focusing on the excruciating task of putting one foot in front of another. And still others of us are wracked by our demons, or grieved by the suffering of our loved ones, floundering for a solution to the problem of pain. As we move from the valley into the desert of Lent, I hope you’ll notice one thing. Notice where Jesus is. Notice that God does not stay in the clouds or on the mountaintop. Our God walks through our valleys and into our midst, and goes ahead of us into the desert to show us the way. There is no place we can go that God will not be with us. Do not lose heart.
Mother A Writes 