Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Guest Preacher:
Kelsey Davis,
Curator of Emerging Ministries
Diocese of El Camino Real
Let us pray:
God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Just for today. Amen.
For the past five years, I have spent many hours and cups of coffee, listening to people explain why they do and do not attend church. The stories are some of the best and hardest to hear. One of my favorite encounters came from a woman in Nashville. She is a poet, queer woman, young-ish. She is as out of the box as you might imagine, with purple hair that rotates to red and bright blonde, depending on the season. She has a sharp tongue full of wisdom and accountability. She considers herself a devout Christian and a sometimes Episcopalian. She had been raised in the church her whole life, and when she came out, faced incredible shaming for her orientation and gender identity. She has spent her young adult life seeking out healing, reclaiming sexual ethics in the church, advocating for the belovedness of LGBTQ siblings, and holding us all accountable to a loving-lifegiving-liberating Jesus Movement.
We met to have our conversation at a honky tonk bar in downtown Nashville. It was around 4pm and the start of happy hour. She asked if it was okay for her to order a cup of coffee and a beer, because she felt like she needed both. Of course it was okay. As she stated what she needed, I reached for my voice recorder, eager to capture her perspective.
So, I asked… why do you go to church?
She shot back, why do I go to church? Or why am I a Christian?
Hmm… both?
She replied “I’m a Christian because I love poetry and mystery. I need a story bigger than myself, that helps me be myself.” I believe Jesus wants to help us heal. And I go to church because it’s the only place where I can receive a casserole and hold a baby all within an hour.
—
I’m not sure of why you are here, or when you left the church and what has brought you here this morning to dip your toes back in the water of this ancient way of gathering. But what I can share with you is that if you are longing for mystery, to be reminded that the spiritual and material aren’t so separate, after all— then you have come to the right Sunday.
I come back, mostly week after week, because I need to be thrust into sacred stories that dazzle and provoke transformation. I come hear because I need to hear these stories in community, and wrestle in them with you. I need these sacred stories that remind me of what is still possible. That God can do, and is doing, marvelous stuff with dust and matter…that, as the mystics call it, thin places exist— where heaven and earth collide so closely with one another, we cannot tell the difference between the two.
—
This morning, we sit between the season of Epiphany and Ash Wednesday. In terms of how the church keeps its calendar, Transfiguration Sunday, is the threshold that takes us from the season of epiphany into the season of Lent. The Transfiguration is the great sacred explosion of mystery, glory, and awe — it helps us remember the mystery that is woven into all we are, and all we live every single day. The Transfiguration is a sacred story that breaks through thresholds of time, space, and possibility.
Matthew tells us that Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain. In the biblical stories, going up a mountain usually signifies a holy encounter is about to happen. And so the disciples go up a high mountain and witness an intimate encounter between Jesus and God. The entire story of what unfolds next is reminiscent of Mount Sinai: the cloud, the light and the presence of God’s voice all point back to what happened to Moses.
Moses, that tongue-tied imperfect leader who led the Israelites out of slavery to the edge of the Promised Land. And so, Matthew takes us across the threshold of time. What enfolds in the Transfiguration would of made Jewish ears ring, associating Jesus with Moses, the great leader and liberator.
So, standing on this high mountain, looking around across the valley below— Jesus and his friends experience the transfiguration together. Matthew tells us that, somehow, Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and his clothes grew radiant.
This is spectacular. The flesh of Jesus, the human skin that he shares with us, shone like the sun—his simple clothes, his robes that were dusty and dirty from walking all over the place, the robes that had brushed against a dead girl and healed a sick woman, the hands that had touched the blind and mute, were now shining so bright you had to squint to see him.
As the disciples peered through squinted eyes, terrified, on the scene comes Moses and Elijah— a leader and prophet of Israel. Two guys who had been off the face of the earth for hundreds of years, are suddenly now alive, shoulder to shoulder with Jesus.
The Transfiguration is a sacred story that breaks through thresholds of time, space, and possibility because God breaks through thresholds. It is exciting, good news that God is not bound by time and space, death or life, heaven or earth.
Now Peter recognizes that something really good is happening and says, “Lord it is good for us to be here.” He offers to build three tents—one for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
Now, I’ve never been on a mountaintop watching Jesus shine like the sun, but I have experienced moments that feel like thin space. Moments where your body knows everything that is happening is holy—a gift so beyond you that all you can do is receive it.
Moments like when someone you love finally musters the courage to tell you a truth about who they are. Like a friend of mine a few years ago, who told me over a cup of coffee that they are transgender and had chosen a new name. And as they told me this truth that had always been there, they radiated joy, their face shone like the sun. And all we could do was smile and delight together in the gift of radiant freedom.
It was good for us to be there.
And so I understand why Peter wants to delight and set up a home in this moment of pure goodness. Who doesn’t want to stay in the moments that make us pause and say, “holy crap… what if it might be true?”
I believe that our mountaintops, that Transfiguration, the bursting forth of mystery, love, and warmth are all around us.They are in the faces of people we love and strangers we have yet to meet. This story reminds us that God loves to play with dust and matter—that clouds and bodies hold the potential to radiate, to shine new again and again.
But as we know, and as Peter learned, we aren’t called to build our home in these moments of sacred mystery. We cannot contain or preserve them. We can’t insure them with church buildings. Mystery is always moving beyond our grasp. It is gift. And these moments, where heaven and earth kiss, are meant to be received so that we can share them with others along the journey. Mountaintop moments are hope for valley people.
And so a bright cloud covers them and talks to them.
The cloud shares that he loves Jesus and is pleased with him. The cloud instructs the disciples to listen to Jesus. And when the disciples hear this, they hit the ground—face in the dirt, hands over their face, terrified. Jesus walks over cooly, places his radiant hand on their shoulder and tells them to get up- and to not speak of any of this until he has been raised from the dead.
I’ve always been struck by the cloud’s voice instructing the disciples to listen. Listening, that really beautiful, difficult art. As Moses received the 10 commandments on Sinai, the disciples receive the commandment to listen.
A researcher named Kate Murphy taught me about communication bias. Basically communication bias says that it is most difficult to listen to the people and situations closest to us, because we think we know what will be said. In other words, it is hardest to listen to the people we interact with the most because we assume the narrative.
Part of me wonders, if Jesus changed in the Transfiguration, or if the disciples were able to really see him for who he was, for the first time?
What if part of the mystery, the power of this story, is really about listening again? Listening to the people, to the places, to the circumstances that we feel like we’ve already figured out?
God can do incredible things with dust— with Jesus, with the people closest to us, with you. Dust that makes up your bones, that marks your mortality, that loves deeply and seeks meaning– all dust is capable of illumination and transformation.
Perhaps, Transfiguration is happening all around us, and all we need to do is look again— and listen with ears that welcome new possibilities.
So friends, I hope this week that you open yourselves to mystery, to look one more time…and let yourself be amazed…
I’ll close with a blessing for you that comes from Jan Richardson—
My hope for us is…
That when glory comes, we will open our eyes to see it.
That when glory shows up, we will let ourselves be overcome not by fear but by the love it bears.
That when glory shines, we will bring it back with us,
All the way
All the way
All the way down. AMEN.
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