Sermon: In Good Company – Transfiguration Sunday (Matthew 17:1-9)

We cap the season of Epiphany with one more story about a bright light. This time the light is emanating from Christ himself. This story is a very interesting one. You might even say it is a weird story. This story is one of the most surprising and fantastic, almost magical, events recorded in the Gospels. Jesus is surrounded by light and shining like the sun. The voice of God speaks from the clouds. The ancient prophets Moses and Elijah are there on either side of Jesus. It’s spectacular and almost outrageous. Quite unlike almost anything else in the Gospels. Perhaps because in this story, we have one of the only Gospel examples of God speaking directly to someone other than Jesus. Now you might hear that statement and think, “Wait doesn’t God speak at Jesus’s baptism? Doesn’t he say this is my son with whom I am well pleased?” Well, yes, he does. However, as you might remember, since we heard that story a few weeks ago, there is no indication in that scripture that God is talking to anyone other than Jesus himself. Those words were heard by Jesus and meant for his edification. When God speaks to the three disciples in this story, it is an echo of the events at Jesus’s baptism. So, in that sense, God is being very clear and direct with the message being conveyed to the disciples who went up that mountain with Jesus. Yet it is still a weird story, a mysterious story. I think the reason for that is because this is a story of revelation, and in the Bible any story about the direct revelation of God to this world is a weird story.

In the second testament think about the Book of Revelation, if you are familiar. It is a weird and mysterious book, full of imagery and metaphor. Of monsters and angels. Or in Genesis, when Jacob wrestles with a heavenly stranger. Odd. Or think about the stories from the Book of Exodus. When Moses first encounters God it is in a burning bush. Weird. Or think when Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. He goes up into a bright cloud and stays there for weeks. Unusual. Some will say this is because we humans cannot handle a direct and complete revelation of God. It would melt our minds or something. God is certainly beyond our understanding. So, we are given these weird and magical stories to try and help us engage. The writers of our sacred texts, like Matthew, provide their audience with familiar ideas and imagery that can help connect the faith to Jesus’s story. The same can be true for us.

The event of the Transfiguration is fantastical and mysterious, the context we get for understanding it is in the figures standing beside Jesus, which are the prophets Moses and Elijah. So, here we have echoes of Moses’s encounters with God on a mountaintop, as well as Jesus’s own baptism. Matthew continues to make the point of connecting and paralleling Jesus with Moses. Here he also compares Elijah to John the Baptist. On this mountain, surrounded by fantastical events, the action happening is that Jesus is simply surrounded talking with his ancestors, his predecessors. They are not just Jesus’s equals spiritually and as leaders, but they have descended from the same tradition of Abraham. They were forerunners in the work that Jesus has come to do. So, they appear there on the mountain.

Jesus could have been flanked by his direct descendent, King David. He could have been talking to a group of angels, part of a heavenly host. He could have been at the front of a line that included great leaders of the people of Israel like Abraham, Jacob, or Joshua. Instead, he is on this mountain with Elijah and Moses. Because, like Jesus, Elijah and Moses were both prophets of Torah, who in their time were doubted and questioned, and who the people believe did not die, but ascended to heaven with God. Jesus is part of an old story. A story of God’s love for us and the attempts made to connect with creation and usher us in to times of peace and justice. Jesus standing in a bright light, talking with Moses and Elijah, reveals the truth about how Jesus fits into that story. The light and the bright white clothes signify that God is upon Jesus. It also shows us that Jesus’s story is shaped and supported by the history of his people and their prophets. Jesus is able to be Jesus because of his relation to that history and those people.

And so, it is with us all. Consider how you are shaped by your history and your people? What does the company you keep say about you? How did those things bring you to this place this morning? Because, here’s the thing, maybe it’s true that our little human brains can’t handle direct contact and revelation of God. Maybe that is why the best the Bible can do sometimes is offer weird stories full of symbolism and metaphor. Maybe that’s all we can handle. Still, in this amazing story of light and transfiguration we are offered something else as well. Direct connections to the past. To the history and traditions of the people Jesus came from. So, this way-out-there story is still grounded in something relatable. It is grounded in history and in relationships. The people we have known and the company we keep. When we can’t understand the weirdness of faith, when we can’t stand to look on the face of the divine itself, we have our relationships. In our life, God has been reveled to us, in a way we can grasp, in our relationships and in our communities.

There are people in your life who showed you what it meant to live out the Christian faith. Perhaps you learned by observing your parents. Our maybe it was a Sunday School teacher. Maybe conversations with a friend or mentor. I find myself in a pulpit this morning not because of any burning bush moment or anything I would define as a mountaintop experience. I got to this place because of the people I’ve known. My family, the church I grew up in, friends in school, friends in seminary. I learned the importance of caring for the neighbor by observing my parents interact with some of our neighbors, or seeing how people from church cared for us when we needed help. My first great teacher of empathy was having a brother with special needs, but that also developed in other ways as my friendships with people deepened and diversified. As I studied and learned from teachers and colleagues my understanding of my faith and the world has changed. In all these ways, from all these people, I have seen God and heard God speak.

And I know, that not everyone has had the same experience in life I have. I know people whose church’s taught bad theology, or whose family life was disruptive and full of conflict, whose friends and neighbors did not have empathy for them. The world is a difficult and complicated place, and revelation can be hard to find and hard to understand. Yet, if you are here this morning, it tells me that you still seek to find that revelation and to understand it. Maybe these are realizations you have come to on your own, or maybe there was someone who you had a positive relationship with. They may not have been a Christian specifically, you may not have considered it a religious experience, but there was someone, in some way, that showed you what a peaceful, loving human looked like.

In our scripture, Peter is the one trying to understand this revelation. By calling Jesus “Lord” instead of “rabbi,” the text indicates that Peter has some understanding of the meaning of the Transfiguration, specifically that Jesus is a divine figure. However, he does not grasp the entire meaning of the story, such as the fact that Jesus knows he will have to be crucified. The other sign that Peter may not fully understand is that he wants to put up some tents and stay on the mountain. He wants to continue to live in that moment, rather than return to the difficult and complicated world at the bottom of the mountain. We can understand that instinct, I think.

However, if God can be revealed through relationship, then we can’t stay on the mountain. We have to go back down and find a way to make the message of peace and love and justice known to others. Especially to those who can’t see it yet. Those who can’t see the vision, not because the light is too bright, but because things are clouded and blurred. Who are having trouble seeing past the cruelty of this world, the oppression of its people, the harm and suffering inflicted on creation. People whose relationships are volatile or abusive and their communities are neglectful. From that vantage point a God that loves the world and desires the well-being of all creation can seem like magical thinking. Weird, even.

But that’s why we are given this vision on the mountaintop. God so loved the world that God’s only son was sent to live as one of us. This son, Jesus, was born into a family and community. He was born into a tradition that had known Moses and Elijah, prophets and leaders whose encounters with God led them to help the people know God’s peace and justice. Especially to those who did not know, or could not see it. So, when we are seeking to know and to understand, but just can’t get past something, whether that is pain, or hardship, or just the weirdness of it all, let us remember what God said to Peter on that mountain. “This is my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” The same thing that was said at Jesus’s baptism, but this time in a way we could all understand. So, look to Jesus, especially if you are looking to see what a good, kind human being looks like.

After all, in the end, Jesus is all that’s left. Elijah and Moses disappear, back to wherever they came from. The bleach on Jesus’s robes fades away. The blinding light dims. There is just Jesus, and the voice of God saying, “Listen to him.” It is just Jesus, the one man who contains all that history, but also, all that mystery and magnificence (or weirdness). What’s left is just a person. A person that we can talk to, touch, and relate to. A person we can empathize with. And this is important because this is where transformation happens – not on the mountaintop, but in relationship with Jesus and with each other. Together we find ways to connect with the parts of the divine that we do not understand. Just as happened for Peter.

Because, after God had spoken over Peter and the other disciples, and given the command to listen to Jesus, we quite understandably, find the disciples bent over and cowering. Faces turned away in fear and in reverence. But, what does Jesus do? Jesus responds to the disciple’s amazement and fear by bending down to their level, reaching out a hand to them, and saying “Rise and do not be afraid.” A very personal, human response to the amazing, confusing thing that had just happened to his friends. And in that simple act of kindness at the end of weird story, we are reminded that God’s love was revealed most fully in the one sent to live, to teach, and die, as one of us. In that same way, let us go and help spread this light of revelation. Amen.