There's been a lot of heaviness in the news lately. The prior occupant of the White House has been indicted now for a third time, this one dealing with the very serious crime of attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
There's been the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Niger.
The war in Ukraine continues.
The climate is no longer experiencing "global warming but global boiling" according to a United Nations report.
And, closer to home, I'm sensing an uptick in the "othering" of the LGBTQ+ community...again.
I guess I needed some good news, and words to encourage me. I hope I did that for others with this message.
Text: Luke 9: 28-36; 2 Peter 1: 13-21
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Sometimes…the church calendar…the lectionary… and our lived experiences as creatures walking on the face of the earth all seem to come together in a wonderful and fortuitous way.
For Episcopal Church nerds like me… this is one of those cool times when one of the feast days actually lands on a Sunday… and mixes things up in our lectionary readings.
No Jacob.
No Paul.
No parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Nope. We’re not even in Matthew’s Gospel.
Instead, it’s Luke…and the drama that took place on a Mountain top…with Moses and Elijah flanking Jesus and talking to him.
With all the things happening in the world and with school having started or about to start for so many…it seems like perfect time to interrupt our normally scheduled readings and join with the three disciples inside the cloud on the mountain top.
Because this mountain top moment is a beginning.
It’s the beginning of Jesus’ mission to confront the corrupt and the self-centered powers of his day in Jerusalem… as he takes a stand for God’s love, justice, and mercy.
As I was looking at this Gospel lesson… I thought about Peter.
For me, Peter often stands in as the near-perfect archetype of any of us who believe and want to follow Jesus.
Immediately before the reading we just heard this morning, a couple of things have happened.
Jesus has asked, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter has piped up with “You’re the Messiah.”
Jesus then tells them what happens to the Messiah in Jerusalem.
Basically, nothing good is going to happen.
To be the Messiah means to be rejected.
There will be a sham trial followed by a brutal execution.
And then resurrection.
Jesus goes on to say that this is the way things are for anyone who wants to be his disciple.
Take up your cross and follow me.
Follow me into hardship.
Follow me into suffering.
Follow me into those places you do not want to go.
Follow me into deliverance.
In other Gospels… we hear that Peter doesn’t like all this talk.
He tries to get Jesus to take it back, but that’s not what happens in Luke’s telling of the story.
We don’t know how Luke’s Peter responds.
But we do know that he goes up with Jesus and James and John to the mountain to pray.
“Praying” is that opening for all kinds of revelatory things to happen.
And what could be a bigger thing for Peter and James and John than to suddenly see Jesus transformed into the biggest…brightest…most shiny object in the world?
Well… maybe something bigger is to see bright shiny Jesus AND the two major pillars of Judaism Moses and Elijah standing next to him and speaking with him.
For Peter…this is clearly such an amazing and unbelievable moment.
It’s so huge that Peter wants to capture it…hang on to it… and never let it go.
“Let’s build booths…just like at the Jewish Festival of Sukkot! We’ll all stay up here and eat meals and hang out together!”
And then…the cloud descends and envelops all of them on that mountain top…and the voice booms out of the cloud…”This is my Son, the Chosen, listen to him!”
If seeing shiny Jesus with Moses and Elijah wasn’t big enough… having the presence of God…the cloud… and the voice come at them like a Dolby-surround sound system… must have been beyond comprehension.
And perhaps that’s why when it was all over and they only saw Jesus…they went silent.
How could they possibly describe what they saw, what they experienced?
Sometimes when we experience something so incredible…words fail to fully convey what happened, don’t they?.
It’s like we’re reduced to a stumbling and bumbling, “you have to see this to believe it!”
But having seen it… having been in the presence of whatever it was that knocked our socks off… we are changed.
The changes might not bear fruit right away… but they will show up.
In the case of Peter… this mountain top moment planted a seed.
We hear in his second letter…which scholars believe were words a student of Peter’s gathered together from things that he had said while in Rome before his death… that this moment wasn’t some cooked up fantasy.
He remembered it.
But even Peter… the one who so boldly stated to Jesus… “You’re the Messiah”… didn’t fully grasp the depth of the meaning of what that meant.
Even having heard the voice in the cloud…seen the figures of Moses and Elijah at Jesus glimmering sides…didn’t quite make sense for Peter.
Peter would still have to undergo the grief and suffering of turning his back on Jesus at the time of the crucifixion.
He still needed to go through the emotional upheaval at the word that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Then… after going through those rings of fire… Peter began to understand the meaning of a Messiah who is the Chosen One.
We hear in the Book of Acts that Peter grew even more bold and daring once the Holy Spirit blew open the minds and opened the mouths of all those people locked away in the upper room.
The change that happened on that mountain top came alive in Peter.
That seed that had been planted in him began to bloom.
The light to which he and the others had been a witness to… burned brightly in his heart…as Peter took his place as a leader of this movement toward more love…more justice… and compassion for all people…Jew and Gentile alike.
Having been enlightened by being a witness to the presence of Jesus… Peter… and even James and John… had what they needed to be a light to others at time and a place in their history when things were looking pretty bleak and dark.
In so many ways… that is what the role is for all of us in the church.
We come here week after week… we get fed through the words of Scriptures… through prayer and music… bread and wine… and even in the fellowship of the coffee hour.
All of it in the hopes that we will take what we have received here…let it light a fire in us… and let it shine through us when we encounter a world that too often looks for ways to snuff out that light through both active negativity and passive uncaring.
Brother James Koester of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge Massachusetts shared a reflection about letting our enlightened hearts shine in the world around us.
Brother James said, “ I wonder how differently we would live if we were conscious that the glory of God not merely shines upon us, but like an electric flash pulsates from within us, filling the world with the grandeur of God. For Jesus, and for us, ‘now’ is the time to shine with the grandeur and the glory of God.”
As we enter into a new school year… and as we go forth from here back to our homes and our jobs…may we carry the light that is within us and be a lamp to those looking for some kindness in their lives.
In the name of God… F/S/HS.
