March 2 2025 Transfiguration Sunday
Luke 9:28–36
8 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus[a] took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen;[b] listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Sermon
Let us pray: May the words of our mouths and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
How many of you have someone you wish you could be like? Maybe its someone in the public sphere, and you wish you could be articulate like them or artistic like them or fast like them. Or maybe it’s someone closer to home – you wish you could make biscuits like your grandfather, or frame an argument like your best friend, or create the perfect spreadsheet like your boss.
Some of those goals are achievable, with practice and hard work and just being in the right place at the right time. Some of them are dreams, but they are dreams that lead you to keep striving.
When I think about my call to ministry – which started very young. I had never ever seen a woman in ministry – I didn’t even know women could be ministers. Then one of my mother’s friends said that her daughter (a very cool college student) was thinking about becoming a minister. I remember thinking: Women can be ministers? I could that!
That was a long time before I actually saw a woman in ministry – but I think I always imagined being in ministry like that family friend would be in ministry – she might have faced a lot of discrimination and sexism, but she was one of my models for ministry as a woman. And that made ministry possible for me.
The Transfiguration story is a story with six characters: Here is Jesus, dazzling with the presence of God and, alongside Jesus, two ancestors in faith from history, Moses and Elijah, who talking to Jesus and basking in his transfigured light, glowing with God’s glory. And then, there are three disciples, snoring away at the most critical moment, misinterpreting the situation, sticking one big sandalled foot in their mouth after the other.
Show me at least one of them that we can identify with! Our choices go from the sublime (Jesus, Moses and Elijah) to the ridiculous: those bumbling mistaken disciples. Isn’t there an option somewhere in between? Someone who I can admire, but still relate to? Someone who does something believable, but is still a visionary.
I think the whole story of the transfiguration is a story about IDENTITY.
Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?’
And it was God who answered Jesus’ question from the heavens, saying: “You are my child, the Beloved (or Chosen One).”
“You are my beloved.”
Whatever the stories we tell about someone, or the stories that people will tell about us, the things that are told change depending on the storyteller’s perspective – your backyard neighbour might have a very different perspective then your boss, for example, and your kids will see you in a different light than your parents. And yet there is this one thing about us that never changes:
From God’s perspective, God tells us: “You are my beloved.”
Today is Transfiguration Sunday – that is a fancy-pants church word for something that transforms and changes right before your eyes. Our gospel story is set in a time that was very turbulent and unsettled for the followers and friends of Jesus. They had so many questions! Why would Herod persecute a healer and miracle worker? Why was Jesus so sweet on outsiders who didn’t count for anything and then sour to the people he should be trying to impress?
And why did he talk about dying all the time – honestly, he was such a downer!
Peter tried his best to keep those six characters at the top of the mountain in that transfiguration moment, to dwell forever in that light and the glory and never go back to those dire predictions of suffering and death.
But it was God who replied to Peter saying “This one is my beloved.” Healings and miracles, confronting Herod and the Pharisees, talking about death, being the light of the world – all wrapped up together in my chosen One who is Beloved.
And so they went all the way down the mountain and started over again: healing, offending, welcoming, dying, teaching and loving.
It was all wrapped up together as One Beloved child.
Frederick Buechner, in his book Whistling in the Dark, described the Transfiguration this way:
It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. Even without the voice from the cloud to explain it, they had no doubt what they were witnessing. It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the same man they'd tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they'd seen as hungry, tired, footsore as the rest of them.
But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it they were almost blinded.
We tend to think of any Transfiguration, or any Holy moment as something that could only belong to Jesus – it’s a sign of holiness that could only be Christ’s domain in God.
But Buechner didn’t stop there – he continued to find signs of God’s beloved child at work not only in Jesus, but also in others around him:
Even with us he wrote something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing.
And it’s all because God says to each and every one of us: “You are my Beloved.”
Most days we are not thinking that way. We are mad at the bank teller, or the co-worker, or the driver that just cut us off. We are not finding them particularly loveable or beloved.
We get mad at the world too: We cannot believe anyone would vote that way or think that way or give up on finding a solution to the climate crisis.
Then God says: “That is my beloved child. And this is the world I love so much that I sent my own beloved one, to reset it and renew it and recreate it. Don’t ever give up on my beloved creation.”
When the world asks us: Who do you think you are?” God responds for us “This is my beloved, forever and for always.”
When we ask ourselves “what will become of me?” God says “you are already my beloved, whatever happens, that is who you are.”
When we feel bereft by loss, or beaten down by failure, or we are confronted by a painful reality – the gospel tells us not to give up hope. Not try to gloss over that broken heart. For we know we are God’s beloved, and no darkness will ever overcome that holy love.
Instead, Jesus says: set your sights on the light that is already alive within you. That light, is God’s love for you, and that love has the power to banish all the shadows, and that power will open for you the path to wholeness again.
Who do you say that I am?
Am I parent, grandparent, athlete, or artist, am I neighbour or colleague or friend? Am I indigenous, settler or newcomer? Am I gay or straight or trans or CIS-gender? Am I a worker, retired or professional, am I student, unemployed or a street person?
Yes, I may be all of these things, but at the end of the day, only one thing matters: I am God’s beloved.
Christ is the source of our transformation, just as Christ is the witness to each transfiguration. May the light of Christ shine in us, that we might share it with the world God loves, Amen
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