GEC-Sermon-2017-08-06 - Transfiguration

Grace Church Sheboygan

Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ Exod. 34.29–35, Psalm 99, 2 Peter 1.13–21, Luke 9.28–36 May the Lord be in my head, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen. “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” And notice the reaction. “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.” The people—even Moses’ brother—are scared by the shining that our lesson describes a resulting from Moses being intimately close with God. Leave aside, for a minute, what this shining might have looked like, and how it might have related to the dazzling appearance of Jesus that so overwhelmed Peter and John and James. Leave that shining aside, for we are unlikely to see in this life except (to use St. Paul’s words) “as through a glass, darkly”. Although we are promised that one day we shall see face-to-face, in this life what we receive are little glimpses, little revelations of God’s glory. When we experience love, it is because love exists in and by virtue of the source and summation of all love—God. The beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, is the cause, embodiment, and end of all love, all beauty, all good, all truth, all being. The prevailing culture of our day and age and place is a mixture that can be described using catch phrases like “Life stinks, and then you die.”, or “That’s so random.”, or “Whatever.” Ugliness can even be celebrated, and truth defined to be no more than the exercise of power. None of these cultural phrases is nonsensical if all there is really is this life; if there is no God. If this is all there is, then the little bits in life that can be enjoyed and celebrated are just random. Except that they’re not. All human beings long for, yearn for, something outside of ourselves. We recognize beauty even when we argue about it. We want the good, at least for ourselves. We value truth, especially when we have been lied to. We seek love and are transformed by it. In all of these things we affirm that life is far, far more than just of so much ugliness, randomness, and suffering. And that’s just this life! Which brings us to the difference between what Peter does at Jesus’ transfiguration, and what we can do a disciples. Peter is with Jesus in His earthly ministry from the beginning. He is a part of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, upon the mountain with Jesus to pray. He is overwhelmed by Jesus’ glory, and so babbles about constructing dwellings for the transfigured Lord, and for Moses and Elijah. In other words, he is both an eyewitness and an eyewitness upon whom the weight of glory, the ...