The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of the Last Sunday after the Epiphany
11 February 2018
Readings:
2 Kings 2:1-12
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
Psalm 50:1-6
It is good for us to be here.
This morning, for the second time in six months, we join Jesus on the mountaintop where something profound is taking place.
Last time, our first reading for the day was about Moses’ mountain top experience. This time it is Elijah and Elisha’s—fitting that at either end of this six-month seasonal gap, both of those joining Jesus on the mountaintop have now joined us in their own context as well.
What is somewhat surprisingly more clear at the end of this Epiphany season, however, is that it is Elisha who is transfigured by this encounter in our first reading rather than Elijah who is taken up to God in the whirlwind.
Rent with grief at the passing of both companion and mentor, Elisha’s path through anguish and loss leads him into rebirth. Certainly, Elijah is the one taken away in the whirlwind beyond the fiery chariot, but it is Elisha who, after crying out and tearing his own garment in two, takes up Elijah’s mantle in the continuation of the story beyond today’s reading, uses it to part the Jordan himself, who was formerly the apprentice, and takes up his new and transformed role as God’s instrument. Transfigured in this powerful metamorphic experience, Elisha rises from the ashes of his mourning to lead God’s people in the next chapter of their journey.
Today’s Psalmist calls us to no less an opportunity for transfiguration as God calls out to all of creation, seeking for us and for our accountability as God’s children. With the ashes of this coming Wednesday looming on the horizon, we are reminded in today’s Psalm not only that we are called, but that we are accountable to that calling—whether we hide from it, veil it, to use Paul’s words, or allow it transform us into something new as we work in solidarity with God.
This past week at Clergy Conference we spent some considerable time in conversation around some of these same themes. Be it personal, communal, or church-wide, we each experience the pains of transformation in different ways. But it always seems to involve a process of struggle, introspection, and grieving before it leads us to enlightenment, realization, and eventually opportunity. While each of us shared some of our own personal stories, the overarching themes drew us back to looking at our church as one that has been in the midst of the first half of this process for the past many years.
It’s no secret that the church has been declining in most parts of the world. At the same time, our world is desperate for the kind of mission and ministry Christ led us into as his disciples. So what most of us have concluded is that we have to try anything to get our attendance back up, and this has only left us feeling at a loss for our own identity as a church.
Just starting to glimpse the hope of enlightenment, realization, and opportunity, we discover that what many people are actually looking for, particularly Millennials, is a community in which reality isn’t denied and yet where mystery is preserved, where beauty and wonder is woven into the fabric of worship, and where they can find something relevant that connects them relationally to hope, forgiveness, meaning, and community. But the key seems to be a paring of authenticity with a willingness to seek out connections that help people to know who we are and what we do.
This final Sunday in our Epiphany season, our Gospel draws us back to the Mountaintop to once again witness the transfigured Christ—joined by Moses and Elijah, dazzling white, and confirmed by God’s own voice as God’s own beloved son.
Throughout this season, we’ve been looking for the Light of God, looking for the new things God is calling us to do and to be, looking for those encounters with the divine that have changed our own lives. And it all leads up to this triumphant day in our readings. Like today’s first reading, it isn’t that Jesus is changed by today’s encounter with God, Moses, and Elijah—though certainly it is affirming! Rather, it is the disciples, who tremulously watch at a distance, see Christ’s face illuminated by God’s presence, see Elijah and Moses conferring with Jesus; who, true to form as the wonderfully human people they were, speak before thinking through what all of it means, and then are silenced by the overshadowing presence of God’s voice proclaiming God’s blessing on Jesus.
Peter’s desire to stay in that moment of encounter rather than moving on to transformation and transfiguration is one with which we are all familiar. There is no rebuke in that moment, only presence. The teaching comes on the way back down the mountain after the disciples own transfiguration has begun, when Jesus’ injunction against speaking of what had happened until after the resurrection would ensure the time for processing necessary for comprehension and transformation.
In the days ahead, for Jesus and his disciples, the path to Jerusalem becomes shorter and shorter. Like for Elisha, the transformation will be one that takes Peter, James, and John through the loss of their mentor and teacher, through anguish and the rending of garments and spirits. And from the ashes of despair and abject sorrow, these same seemingly blundering apprentices will find their transformations complete with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the taking up of Christ’s mantle, and the carrying on of leading God’s people into God’s reign.
Such seems to be the case with these powerful and transfiguring encounters—they lead us into a season of contemplation, of uncertainty and even anguish, before we are able to rise from the ashes of who we once were and become the new creation God has planned for us. Answering God’s call is never a simple process of saying yes. It is a process of God reworking us so as to work in and through us—and that is a resurrecting process of transfiguration that takes some time to get used to!
Finally ready on the day of Pentecost, the disciples, completing their transfiguration, don’t just stay holed up in their room with the dancing tongues of fire over their heads waiting for people to find them so they can tell them how amazing a transformed life feels… they go out into the market where the people are, proclaiming God’s love, and calling others to lives of transformation and meaning.
So too, we can’t just hope for people to come and find out how great and amazing this transformed community of Calvary is. Rather, it is time for us to meet our neighbors again and to re-form community, and not simply to welcome all who come through our doors, but to invite them inside.
It IS good for us to be here. Not so that we can set up tents and stay in this place, but so that we too might find ourselves in the presence of the divine. That we too might be changed by our encounters with God in this place, with each other in community, in relationships that challenge us to grow and become more than we ever thought we could be, and that we might find, on the other side, that we too are ready to take up the invitation to become God’s instruments in new and profoundly life changing ways.
The transfiguration, like Christ’s whole life of teaching, mission, healing, ministry, relationship, death, and resurrection, is not for Christ’s transformation, but for ours.
As we anticipate the season to come, may this day of Transfiguration be an invitation and a calling to us to rise up from our own ashes, to be reborn in hope and promise, and may we find ourselves taking up the mantle of Christ to carry on as instruments of God’s reign in our own lives and world.
Amen.