O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son
revealed his glory upon the holy mountain:
Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance,
may be strengthened to bear our cross,
and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is the last Sunday in the Epiphany season,
and it’s always the same Gospel reading:
the story of the Transfiguration paralleled in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
The Transfiguration, we can say, is the ultimate expression
of what the word Epiphany means:
Epiphany meaning manifestation – the revelation of God through Jesus.
Epiphany is the season of light:
Jesus as the Light of the world
From starlight leading gentile wise men to Bethlehem
to the heavens parting at the baptism
and God’s voice declaring,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him,”
through each Sunday in Epiphany with a representative story
about the Kingdom of God revealed and manifested in Jesus,
finally to this event of glory and radiance
with the dead raised and standing and talking with Jesus.
I love preaching on the Transfiguration.
It is one of my favorite stories.
It’s one of my favorite stories because
there are so many different directions one can go in exploring it.
I’m sure you all remember each of the sermons on the Transfiguration
that I’ve already preached here at Emmanuel!
So this year I will go off in a different direction. There is always new material.
I’m recently back from a retreat,
my usual winter 2 week silent meditation retreat,
which is such an important resource for anyone
who claims to instruct others in meditation.
Meditation is very practical;
besides the usually touted benefits of relaxation and stress relief,
it’s about self-awareness – how I respond to life situations and relationships.
It’s about becoming more aware of reactivity and response-ability.
It’s about the veil being lifted and seeing the truth and telling the truth,
and when that happens you can’t go back to ignorance about yourself,
so you can’t be the way you were before.
Meditation is transformative.
That is what I have found.
This is one way we can be “changed into his likeness from glory to glory”
as the collect for the day puts it -- becoming more like Jesus.
But transformation is not a self-improvement project;
actually it’s a process of self-forgetting.
Because transformation is not my work
but the healing work of God’s mercy and love moving in the individual.
Hence in meditation it is important to cease doing,
to sit still and awake and aware in utmost trust,
breaking through the illusion of who’s really in control
and who am I.
But transformation, you might see, is a different spiritual process
than transfiguration.
Look at the Gospel account of transfiguration:
Jesus is transfigured and begins radiating intense, bright light,
and who shows up? Moses and Elijah,
the two key figures representing all the Law and the Prophets,
figures who represent the full revelation of God
and of God’s relationship with humankind.
One can only imagine what sort of incredible conversation is going on
between Jesus and these extraordinary personages.
Then Peter bursts into the conversation, interrupts,
and what does Peter say?
“Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let’s make 3 dwellings.”
Let’s enshrine this extraordinary event.
Let’s contain it and preserve it, capture and cage it.
The point is
Peter is pulling back from this stupendous display of Light and glory,
this revelation of Divine Presence
that outstrips all that Peter had previously considered Jesus to be.
It’s too much and he can’t bear it going any farther.
This is so typical, and we all do this –
to pull back in our experiences of the Divine,
self-contraction in the presence of such huge expansiveness of Being.
Even when we intend not to,
the fear of the loss of self into the Divine is so great.
Truly, you cannot see the Face of God and live.
But this Epiphany continues to expand.
Now a cloud engulfs them -
a cloud that connects to the stories of old from the sacred texts,
the cloud that led the Children of Israel through the Sinai desert, the cloud that engulfed the Tent of Meeting,
the cloud that, in Isaiah 6, engulfed the Temple of Solomon.
And the Voice that speaks says,
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
The Word of God from the 1st Sunday in Epiphany
at the baptism of our Lord in the Jordan
is repeated on this last Sunday in Epiphany:
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Hear him!
At the heart of the Jewish faith is the Shema:
Deut. 6:4 Hear [listen], O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.
Deut. 6:5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
This is what is written on the door posts and placed in the phylacteries
and recited daily.
And now
in the words spoken by the Divine Voice, the Voice of the Creator,
there has been a colossal appropriation of biblical history made here,
shifting from Moses and the Shema to Jesus.
Jesus is much more than Rabbi or Teacher,
not containable by any of the known titles we give him
out of our limited experience of him.
The Transfigured Jesus is an ultimate Epiphany of Divine Presence,
and, we could say, if God were to fully self-manifest,
the world would be destroyed, disintegrated, blown away,
for if you see God face to face, you die.
One can see this as true when we examine what happens in meditation:
when awareness expands in meditation,
it can be like a revelation of God in that the self disappears.
The idea of an identified and distinct self disappears.
Now we should note, however,
that Transfiguration is not unique to Jesus
There is the story about Moses and his face shining
when he comes down from Mount Sinai after being face to face with God.
Elisha witnessed Elijah carried off in a sudden flash of radiance
that Elisha could only describe as a fiery, speeding chariot.
Part of the spiritual tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church
is the Prayer of the Heart, or the Jesus Prayer,
from which the Prayer of the Lamb derives,
in which tradition, transfiguration was known.
There are stories of this from the Desert Fathers.
Then there is St. Seraphim of Sarov
[b. July 19, 1759, Kursk, Russia – d. January 2, 1833]
We have a verifiable eye-witness account of his transfiguration.
This is sharing in the inheritance of the saints in Light – Col. 1:12
or 1 Thess. 5:5 says that, “We are the children of Light.”
and in Eph. 5:8 we are told to walk as children of Light –
Some, a very few, like St. Seraphim of Sarov,
have actually walked as children of Light.
Well, very few of us – none that I have encountered –
radiate Transfiguration Light.
I haven’t seen anyone literally “aglow with the Spirit” in that way.
Although some radiate to those around them such love or aliveness or joy
that this can be perceived and recognized as extraordinary,
imparting spiritual light.
Some, very few,
because when we encounter this in anyone, it is quite unforgettable.
We have not lived up to our inheritance of the saints in Light.
We have not so emulated Jesus in our lives
that we also radiate Source Light manifesting the Divine to others.
But, and this may be of some relief,
transfiguration is different from transformation.
The One who appeared transfigured in the energy of brilliant Light,
is the One whose revealing presence
brings transformation to those who turn to him and follow him.
We prayed in the collect for today that
“we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance,
may be strengthened to bear our cross,
and changed into his likeness from glory to glory.”
Lent starts on Wednesday.
Lent is a good time to draw near to God,
to be more willing to have Divine Presence revealed,
to let Jesus touch and heal our lives,
transform us and change us,
so that we may, at the last, be able to behold his glory,
to look into the radiance of transfiguration Light,
Source Light, Divine Light,
and be blown away in the best possible sense,
and be changed into his likeness,…
…be changed.
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