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Sermon for Last Epiphany A

February 10, 2002

Well today we come to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the balancing point or fulcrum in the church calendar between the season of celebrating the manifestation of Christ and the season of penitence and preparation for the Paschal Mystery. Today, as we always do on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we turn our attention to the Gospel story of the Transfiguration, that time when Jesus took his closest disciples up on a mountain to pray and while he was praying was transformed and shone on them with the radiance of God’s own glory.

With this Transfiguration story, the Epiphany season begins and ends with light. We started the season on the Feast of the Epiphany with the story of how wise men from the East were led to the infant Jesus by the light of a star: how God’s glory was made manifest in the light of a cosmic event to bring stargazers to gaze upon God’s Holy One. And we end the season now with light coming, not from a star, not from a cosmic phenomenon, but from Jesus himself: from his human face, and his human hands, and his human heart. The blazing light of the Transfiguration is the epiphany of God’s glorious love given within and through the human love of Jesus.

And of course the light that shines in Jesus on the mountaintop is not just a one-time experience, it does not somehow go dark after this Transfiguration moment. The light may not be so brilliant and so obvious in the down-to-earth, workaday, off-the-mountaintop world, but the light of God continues to shine in Jesus, and through Jesus to be a light for the world.

And that was the part of the vision that Jesus’ disciples had to struggle to understand. Peter and James and John responded naturally enough with awe and wonder worship when they saw Jesus shining with uncreated light, and they would have been happy to have stayed there, to have made shrines for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, to remain bathed in that heavenly glory in a permanent mountaintop experience. But that’s not what Jesus has in mind for them. He leads them back down the mountain, and he tells them not to speak to others of the light that they have seen—at least, not to speak to anyone yet—but the memory of that vision stays with them. And the call and the challenge and the blessing for them is to continue to see that light in Jesus, to keep on perceiving the radiance of God’s love shining in the ordinary, everyday, down-to-earth ministry Jesus does.

After this encounter on the mountaintop, Peter and James and John must begin to recognize the light they have seen in Jesus shining in all kinds of places—some of them very dark places indeed. They must recognize that light shining on the sick and the poor and the outcast and the unsavory who come to Jesus to experience the promise of their wholeness in God. They must recognize that light shining when the scribes and the Pharisees come to question Jesus and try to undermine his authority and discredit his teaching. They must recognize that light shining as they journey to Jerusalem in fear and anxiety for what Jesus has told them will be a life-and-death confrontation with the powers-that-be. They must recognize that light shining when everything else has failed, when the sky is darkened and their Master hangs dying on a cross. They must recognize that light shining when beyond all hope their Master comes and stands again with them in a room where the doors are locked, and he shows them his hands and his side, and he says “Peace be with you.” And eventually they must even recognize that light shining in themselves, when the Holy Spirit comes to them at Pentecost like flames of fire above their heads, and they are radiant and brilliant and aflame with the glorious presence of God.

The light the disciples first see in Jesus at his Transfiguration becomes a light that shines from God in them, and makes them part of God’s transfiguration of the world.

And it is that same light which by the power of the Holy Spirit is kindled in us, and which through the Holy Spirit we can learn to see God shining everywhere into God’s world. Like Peter and James and John in the story, part of our call to discipleship is to be witnesses to the light, and to learn to perceive the light of God’s love shining in all sorts of places, even the darkest places, even the most unexpected places.

Theologian and spiritual writer Roberta Bondi tells of seeing God’s light shining in a very unexpected place: her own face, seen one morning in the bathroom mirror. She writes that she “normally can hardly bear to look at [her] own face in the morning”—but this one particular morning her reflection returned to her a glimpse of something beautiful. She writes: “I don’t mean ‘pretty’; ‘pretty’ has nothing more to do with ‘beautiful’ than ‘nice’ has to do with ‘good.’“ No, “for a single moment I had seen myself as God sees me and sees each of us.... And I rejoiced in my face in the mirror.” Furthermore, Bondi sees a theological meaning in that glimpse of beauty: “Sixth-century Christian theologian Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (commonly called Pseudo-Dionysius),” she says, “talks about the nature of God and how that nature is reflected in the world: ‘God is given this name [Beauty] because it is the cause of harmony and splendor in everything, because like a light, it flashes onto everything the beauty-causing impartations of its own wellspring ray.’ Beauty ‘bids all things to itself,’ he says, and ‘gathers everything into itself.’ Therefore, ‘from this beauty comes the existence of everything, each being exhibiting its own way of beauty. For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.... The beautiful is therefore the same as the Good, for everything looks to the Beautiful and the Good as the cause of being, and there is nothing in the world without a share of the Beautiful and the Good.’“ Bondi goes on: “Whatever is truly beautiful, then, is objectively beautiful because it is God who bestows beauty on it. God flashes God’s beauty like rays of light upon the world and structures of our world so that all things can share in and image God’s beauty. Atoms and planets in their orbits, the changing seasons, the species of animals and plants, the wearing away of rock into dirt, the shifting tides of the oceans, the laws of mathematics, me looking at my face in the mirror—all shine with the glory which God as Beauty placed in them.”

Like Peter and James and John, Bondi speaks as a disciple who has learned to see the light of Christ shining in the world as harmony and sympathy and community in God’s love. And we can learn to see that way, too. We can learn to see the light of Christ shining in each other’s faces. We can learn to see the light of Christ shining in visitors and newcomers and strangers who come to our church, looking to share good news. We can learn to see the light of Christ shining in situations that challenge us and stretch us and get us out of our comfort zones to join in God’s love and ministry in new ways. We can learn to see the light of Christ shining in the beauty of nature, and in our responsibility to serve as priests in the sacrament of Creation. We can learn to see the light of Christ shining into the hurting and broken places of our lives and our world, wherever unity overcomes estrangement, and forgiveness heals guilt, and joy conquers despair. The light of Transfiguration shines in us, too, and calls us to be part of God’s transfiguration of the world.

And so we round out our celebration of the season of Epiphany. Beginning in light and ending in light, the season puts before us God’s call to be living epiphanies, personal manifestations of Christ’s light for the world. And together we can rise to that call, we can press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus—in Epiphany, and Lent, and Easter, and Pentecost, and for all our days.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.