Last week we talked about how Epiphany is a season of epiphanies in which we hear a different story each week of someone or multiple people having these special moments of God being made manifest to them in Jesus Christ. Today, on this final Sunday of the season, we have this climactic epiphany literally on a mountain top where Jesus takes Peter, James, and John. And there, before their eyes, he is changed as his robe becomes dazzling white in a way that defied all that was humanly possible. There Jesus stood with Elijah and Moses. Elijah, who in a sense embodies all of the prophets, and Moses, who in a sense embodies all of the law, are there talking with Jesus. I wonder what they were talking about. This moment is a pivot point between Jesus's Galilean ministry and Jerusalem, where he will be crucified. Were they trying to help Jesus understand what needed to happen? Were they giving him encouragement to keep moving forward on the dangerous path? We will never know what this moment meant for Jesus, but we do have a sense of what it meant for Peter, James, and John who were given this epiphany. In the short term we learn that this was glorious for them, and they wanted to stay there in that moment and bask in it. They wanted to pitch some tents and stay there. But was it more?
We call this moment the Transfiguration because Jesus was transfigured, but was it also a transfiguration for the disciples? A transfiguration of Peter, James, and John? In one sense it doesn't really seem to be as they haven't changed all that much after they come down the mountain. They still got a lot of things wrong. These three are, after all, the same three who fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. Listen to him, the voice said up there on the mountain, but clearly, they did not listen when he told them to keep watch. Instead, they fell asleep--three times, so in the short term or the intermediate term, no. There was no transfiguration. Perhaps in the longer term it did make a difference. Peter may not have had a lot of courage right there at the crucifixion, but eventually he does. In Second Peter the author talks about the Transfiguration as being a critical moment of his faith. Even though the moment was profound and intense, perhaps the real transfiguration took place slowly over time as the experience burrowed deep down inside of Peter, working on him until, with hindsight, he can say he, too, was transfigured that day.
We are also in a moment of transfiguration. It is not a glorious mountain top, and I doubt any of us would want to pitch tents and stay here any longer than we have to. But this pandemic is changing us. We do not know how, we might not even recognize it yet, and it is possible it might not be a transfiguration for the good. But we are being transfigured. As followers of Jesus, it is our task to seek out the epiphany in the midst of this moment and draw near to God and to listen.
How is God being revealed to us in this time? What is God saying? How are we being transfigured? As our Presiding Bishop so often says, if it is not about love, it is not about God. The transfiguration that this pandemic brings does not have to be divine, but it can be. The difference is love. Are we allowing ourselves to be transfigured in such a way that it draws us closer or farther from love? Love of God and love of neighbor, Jesus says, are the center of the law and the prophets. That same law and prophets that Moses and Elijah embody. Maybe that is what they were talking about up there on the mountain top. Love, the love of God found in the law. The love of God found in the prophets. The love of God found in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps they were talking about the love that would need to go to the cross. The love that would make sure that the tomb was empty on the third day. The love that would walk to Emmaus and break bread and nourish the disciples. The love that would show up in the locked room in the midst of their fear and their anxiety and offer peace. The love that would cook breakfast on the seashore and offer forgiveness to Peter for all the ways he had fallen short.
The love of God that still shows up for us. The love that nourishes us, that comes into the locked rooms of our hearts. The love that forgives us for all the ways that we have fallen short. Perhaps that is what they were talking about.
Can we be transfigured by Jesus in the midst of this pandemic? Has it changed us, whether we want it to or not? Like Peter, James, and John, the transfiguration does not need to be immediate. It might work on us slowly. We will likely still get things wrong during and on the other side of this pandemic, this transfiguration moment. God knows that I have and will. But by recognizing that this is a transfiguration moment and searching for God within it and trying to align ourselves with the God of love, we can be transfigured for the better.
AMEN
