SERMON FOR TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2021

          The best parts of our high school yearbook were the candids. We’d already seen our senior pictures — the girls looking vaguely seductive in their velvet drapes; the boys awkward in ties. We already knew who was on which team and who belonged to various clubs, so those posed group portraits would hold no surprises. But the student photographers had been prowling the buildings and the grounds for months capturing the denizens of Annapolis High on film unbeknownst to us. The afternoon the year book came out our American history and government teacher let the day’s topic wait for tomorrow and joined the flurry of page turning, exclamations and laughter. One of my friends dropped her copy on top of mine and pointed to a striking picture of a classmate, turned around in her desk to help the person behind her with whatever, solving for “x” in an equation or conjugating a French verb or locating the right    page in a text book. Her eyes, her warm smile were clearly focused on the other person’s face; she had’t noticed the photographer. My friend obviously expected me to recognize the classmate, but I didn’t. Our senior class had around 500 members, our paths might well not have crossed. “Who is that?” I asked. “What do you mean, who is that?” my friend replied. “Well, I don’t know her, but I wish I did. She looks so kind.” “Seriously, you don’t recognize her?” “Seriously, I don’t.” “Duh, it’s you Jane.”

          Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, the season of light. It began with the shining star that led the magi to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. It ends with Jesus on the mountaintop, radiant with heavenly splendor in the presence of Peter and James and John. Epiphany is defined as “the manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.”    A manifestation is “an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something.” Dictionary synonyms for epiphany include revelation and discovery. The Gospel texts we have read over the past six Sundays have all been stories of revelation and discovery. They record events in Jesus’ life that clearly show who he is and experiences through which he discovers the truth about himself and reveals that truth to others: John the Baptist announcing that “one who is more powerful than I is coming after me”; the heavens torn apart at Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit descending like a dove and the voice from heaven proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”; the temptation in the wilderness; the calling of the disciples; the many healings.” All of these occur in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel.

          On this last Sunday of Epiphany we jump way ahead to chapter 9, to the critical turning point in Jesus’ story. Something new has come to light. Today’s Gospel begins, “Six days later . . . .” The Transfiguration is not an isolated event. It is inseparable from the revelation made shortly before, after Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the Messiah” (8:27-29). Mark writes, “Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’”    (Mark 8:31-38).

          Now    six days after Jesus has predicted for the first time the rejection he must endure, he takes Peter, James and John up the mountain to behold him in his glory. The revelation continues. He is flanked by Moses, who brought the good gift of God’s law from the mountaintop down to the people of Israel, and Elijah, who embodies the prophetic tradition. The continuity is made clear, but so is the difference. As precious as Moses and Elijah were to God, only Jesus is transfigured. He alone is declared to be the beloved Son with whom God is well pleased. God commands the disciples present to listen to him, not them. They are to hear what Jesus has told them about the inevitable suffering to come and take it to heart. But they are to hear it within the context of what they are now witnessing.

          This radiant Jesus on the mountaintop is the same person who foretold his passion on the way to the village of Caesarea Philippi. The disciples see him outwardly in a different light and discover something more about who he is, something they hadn’t realized before, something they do not yet fully understand. The season of Epiphany is ending, and Lent is about to begin. But the revelations, the perplexity, and the enlightenment are ongoing. Mark tells us, “As they were going down the mountain, [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean” (Mark 9:9-10).

          Moses went up on the mountain to receive the law, and when he returned his face was so radiant with God’s glory that the people could not bear it. Moses veiled his face to insulate them from the divine power. Now the Son of God is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, yet at the same time hidden — “veiled in flesh the Godhead see/Hail incarnate deity/Pleased with us as man to dwell/Jesus our Immanuel,” in the words of the Christmas carol. The power of God is disclosed in surprising ways through a lifetime of epiphanies from the manger to the empty tomb. Jesus stands before us, radiant with hope and blessing. The brilliance that transfigures him washes over us as well. Take a good look at yourself in that different light, the candid light of God’s love. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed Into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Amen.