Readings for the last Sunday after the Epiphany:
A lot of any kind of teaching and preaching is actually being aware of what you’re not going to preach about and what you’re leaving out- so I want to just lift up the complexity of the epistle today. It’s important that we actually read what’s in our Bible and wrestle with the difficult passages and the ways they’ve been interpreted in ways that hurt others… and standing in our space here which is also a synagogue, it just seems important to lift up that this passage is one of those, and that it’s our legacy to wrestle with it, and that we aren’t going to unpack this particular one on this day. But it seems important to also not just brush over it as we think about this day, and this journey of the faithfully Jewish Jesus up the mountain with his disciples.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land. One of the places we visited was the Church of the Transfiguration, on top of Mount Tabor, which is the site many have thought Jesus and the disciples might have climbed, in this story we hear today. I was with a group of other soon to be ordained or newly ordained pilgrims, and it was still at the beginning of our trip, and so we were a very earnest bunch as we made our way into this church, fully ready to meditate on the glory of God. It was a beautiful church, filled with light that reflected off gold mosaics and other lovely art. We learned a little history about it to begin with, which dampened the mood a little- it’s built on top of the ruins of other, presumably very beautiful churches that were destroyed during wave after wave of war and conquest in the area over the centuries. After that, we then got shepherded into one of 3 very small chapels- there was one for Jesus, one for Elijah, and one for Moses. We barely fit inside, and one of the male leaders of our group celebrated the Eucharist- it had to be a man, we learned, because the religious order that managed the church didn’t allow women to celebrate or even to check out the chalices that groups had to use. Then we got to walk around and explore a little bit, and we witnessed a beautiful sunset from the mountaintop balcony, from which you could also see the Sea of Galilee.
After that we all, again, still very earnestly, started heading back to the bus at the appointed time, and ended up kind of clustered together in a spot as we waited. We were all sharing our reflections on the glory of God, when a few yards away, outside the front doors, one of the monks who managed the church and a couple that wanted to take what seemed like an engagement picture somewhere overlooking the vista started having a screaming fight. None of us could understand the language they were fighting in, and it wasn’t super clear what the argument was about, but it was one of those fights that went on and on- they’d seem to stop and go their separate ways and then someone would get mad again and stomp back over. And then eventually, we all got on the bus and headed down the mountain.
Between the bloody history, and the sexist rules about who got to touch the church’s chalices, and the cramped chapel, and then the screaming fight, all right alongside the magical light on the mosaics and the glorious sunset, I actually thought it ended up being kind of a perfect visit through which to encounter this story. The disciples who climb this mountain with Jesus have an amazing spiritual experience- they see Jesus transfigured, they see Moses and Elijah, they are consumed by a cloud, they hear the voice of God. And then, right there alongside the divine glory, Peter’s full humanity comes on display- he babbles, out of fear, not knowing what he is saying. He tries to hold onto the experience, to make it permanent somehow. The disciples do not know what to make of this experience- they don’t even know how to tell anyone about it.
This story is a pivotal, transitional moment in the Gospel. Jesus has begun speaking about his death to the disciples. After this event, he will set his face toward Jerusalem, and begin traveling toward his crucifixion. The disciples go with him, committed to the journey, even though they do not, at that time, understand what is coming. The disciples’ humanity is so fully on display in this section of the Gospel- they do not understand, and they try to forestall the pain that is ahead, they do not heed Jesus’ warnings. And yet they follow, because they love Jesus, because they long for the healing and vision that he has brought them. They are not able to follow all the way through those horrible days of Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion- they scatter, they deny him. But they also were the witnesses to the resurrection.
And it’s clear that, as they continued to follow the risen Christ, they began to look back and to understand all these things in a new way. This story, as Luke and his community tell it in this Gospel, is meant to evoke the long story of God in relationship with God’s people, in all their flawed and beautiful humanity. Jesus’ face shines in this story, just like Moses’ does when he sees God and receives the law, also on the top of a mountain. And if you remember an earlier part of that story, while Moses is having one of his mountaintop experiences, the people at the base of the mountain are anxiously creating an idol- full humanity on display again.
There’s also a really important word in this story. It says that Moses and Elijah and Jesus were speaking of Jesus’ departure- but the word here is exodus- the same word used for the people of God as they cross the red sea, fleeing slavery in Egypt. Jesus’ crucifixion, his departure from life, will happen on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem not too long after this event. But by using this word- exodus- we get a moment of looking back and looking ahead, of seeing the long continuous thread of meaning- that Jesus’ crucifixion and death are about liberation, about salvation, about God setting God’s people free. The crucifixion isn’t really the departure, actually, in this story- the resurrection is. It’s about setting God’s people free from sin and death, and bringing them into new life, just as God has been doing throughout this long, long story of God with God’s people.
There is a comic effect to Peter’s very human babbling as he experiences the glory and voice of God- sort of like the comedy of witnessing the fight about engagement pictures on that same spot so many years later. But I think, viewed in light of what kind of remembering this story is meant to evoke, we can see how much God loves Peter and loves us, in our fully flawed and fully beautiful humanity. This is my Son, says God, listen to him. Yeah, stop babbling, and stop trying to make this experience of great mystery into something that can be controlled and institutionalized. But also- I have sent my son, and I am speaking now to you, as I have always done, in order to bring you into fullness of life. God is showing up here, to reveal God’s self, in service of healing and liberation and new life for all God’s people.
We’ve been talking and reflecting, in different ways, during this whole season of Epiphany, on healing. We’ve seen and heard of some of the ways that Jesus talked about and embodied healing in his ministry- through individual care and relationship, through his teaching about justice, through a vision of a kingdom and a life that we don’t fully experience here on earth, but that we get glimpses of, moments of, that we are growing and being formed for. We are turning toward Lent, toward this journey toward the cross, which is a story with so much hurt and pain in it. But here in this mountaintop story we get a glimpse of the glory, the life, the freedom that is beyond that hurt and pain of the crosses of our lives and of our world. Jesus is here to lead us out of all that oppresses and hurts us, into a life of healing, both for us as individuals, and as a community.
We’ve been praying each week in the Eucharistic prayer we’ve used this season that God might make us a people of hope, justice, and love. In some ways, we won’t ever reach those big, lofty, idealistic words and all that they embody in this life. But God has always called us as a people- as a human community full of flaws, who try to control and institutionalize the great mysteries of this life, who have huge conflicts with each other, who get a glimpse of glory and fall apart, all at once. God doesn’t require us to stop being human, or to have it all figured out, before we answer that call- God loves us, and God speaks to us, always in the midst of the beautiful glory and mundane terribleness of being human, both together.
And so God is calling us- in the middle of a world that is at war, in the middle of so many things that are falling apart- God loves us, and God calls us, right now, right as we are, as the precious and beloved humans that we are, and the precious and beloved community that we are as St. Clare’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor. We’ll have moments when we glimpse glory together, where we understand the whole story and hear the voice of God. Sometimes we’ll totally miss the point. We’ll keep healing, and we’ll keep making mistakes, and we’ll keep loving each other, and we’ll probably do the equivalent of yelling at each other and a monk on the top of Mount Tabor. God will keep speaking to us, God will keep sending God’s spirit to accompany us, in those moments of glory and in those moments when we get it all wrong. We may end up in some hard places; we may face moments that seem like death and the end. And yet the God of resurrection, the God of new life, has already made a way through to new life. We are a resurrection people, even now, in all our humanity, in all that we do not yet understand. God has always been leading us to freedom, to healing, to new life, and God isn’t done with God’s people yet.
Image by Dorothée QUENNESSON from Pixabay