Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

February 18, 2007 - Last Sunday of Epiphany

The Rev. Vicki L. Smith

Luke 9:28-36

If you’ve driven anywhere in the southern Midwest of this country, you’ve probably seen a billboard for the Big Texan restaurant in Amarillo, Texas.  Along I-40 they begin somewhere in Arkansas – It’s worth the wait, eat at the Big Texan!  I don’t know if it is worth the hundreds of miles wait, but I do know that the signs are huge, and they seem to become larger the closer you get to Amarillo.  The Big Texan uses big, big signs.

One might call this the Sunday of the Big Sign, not a billboard of course, but the Transfiguration – the biggest of signs until the Resurrection. Today we remember when Jesus took Peter, James and John, went up to the mountaintop and was transfigured before them.  Jesus looked like he was made of blazing light, and his disciples saw him talking with Moses and Elijah.  It was a spectacular, stunning experience.

Jesus had already fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish, he had healed the sick, cast out demons and taught with authority.  He’d already offered many signs, some of them quite powerful and still he heard, “Isn’t that Joseph’s son?  Don’t we know his mother and his sisters?  What’s up with this?  Who does he think he is?”

And so, THE BIG SIGN – the transfiguration, so that we can know, definitively, who Jesus is. 

The transfiguration was strictly for our benefit.  Jesus didn’t need that flashy demonstration, and he didn’t need to have a conversation with Moses and Elijah.  Peter, James and John needed that flashy demonstration and they needed to see Jesus having that conversation.  They needed to be shown in no uncertain terms, as we do, that Jesus is the messiah, that he is the culmination of the law and the prophets, that he is the Son of God, come into the world.   

If Jesus is not the Messiah, if he is not the son of God, then he is just another talented teacher, the beneficiary of some great coincidences and another unfortunate victim of Roman aggression.  And that is not enough.

If we are to give our hearts and souls to him; if we are to follow him in faith, we must know that the one we follow is worthy.  Jesus asks for our life-long allegiance. To give it, we must know who we are committed to and why.  Becoming Christian is not like deciding to become a Republican or a Democrat or joining the Elks; we commit everything we are and everything we have to Jesus our Savior. To do that, we have to be sure.  We have to know that when we see Jesus, we are seeing God; when we hear Jesus speak, we are hearing God’s words and when we follow Jesus, we are walking in God’s way.

The transfiguration, that miraculous appearance on the mountaintop, is given to the disciples and to us as our assurance that Jesus is who we think he is – he is the Son of God, the Messiah and therefore he is worthy of our devotion and commitment.

It’s worthwhile asking then, why now?  Why did the transfiguration happen in the middle of the journey? And incidentally why are we reading about it this particular Sunday?

The transfiguration happened only partly because the disciples, like us, sometimes weren’t very subtle and weren’t getting the message from the small signs.  More importantly, the transfiguration took place when it did because following Jesus was about to get much more complicated and much more difficult.  Jesus was on his way down off that mountain and up onto the cross.  The road to Jerusalem, the road Jesus walked, the road that led to the events of Good Friday and Easter, when we see Jesus at his most human and his most divine, that road cannot be undertaken lightly or uninformed. 

As one of the commentaries said, “faithfulness will require following Jesus to the cross, not commemorating the place of the transfiguration.” 

That’s why charmingly literal Peter was so wrong when he tried to build shelters for Moses and Elijah, because following Jesus, committing to Jesus, includes coming down off the mountain and walking with him on the road of love, service and sacrifice.  The road to Jerusalem, the road of following Jesus, is not an easy path; it has rough spots, hard times and difficult struggles.  We cannot walk it on our strength and by our own will.  We, like generations of disciples before us, have committed ourselves to this road, to following our Savior – the transfiguration is the assurance we need, in the middle of this journey, that the one we follow is God.  We carry in our hearts that glorious vision of Christ in light and it empowers us to walk the rest of the way; to follow Jesus over rough places and smooth and, ultimately, to stand both at the foot of the cross and at the empty tomb.   

We need this assurance every day as we embark anew on following Christ, but I think we need it even more today, as we stand on the cusp of Lent with its painful reminders and renewed commitments.  Especially as we walk through this season, we need the big sign of the Transfiguration, we need to carry it in our hearts not as a glitzy memento but as our assurance that our commitment is to God himself, as we know and serve him in Jesus Christ.

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