II Peter 1:13-18 * Luke
9:28-36
It became trendy in the later part of the twentieth century to
infuse the word "religion" with negative meaning. People were accused
of being "religious" back then, in some church groups implying
something less then genuine and sincere. It appears that this trend has only
gotten worse, with some of the entertainment minded churches afraid to exhibit
crosses, afraid even to be called "churches," opting instead for the
designation "worship centers." In these "worship centers"
there may be very little worship, but a lot of musical performance. Among the
worst of these in recent years was the "Seeker Sensitive" movement,
in which the Gospel had no cross and God had no glory.
When
we look at the Gospel for this Feast of the Transfiguration, we cannot
appreciate its depths if we fear those things which are specifically
"religious" in its presentation. Christ our Lord was on the mountain,
a place that for Jews symbolized the revelation of God, going all the way back
to Moses. It was as He was in prayer that He was transfigured. This is very
important. For, the chief reason why trendy Christians step away from
their perception of "religion" has everything to do with a hesitation
to embrace and love that most important of all doctrines, that central
revelation of God, the Incarnation.
They
fear the sacraments, specifically the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the
Communion with the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In all of their
very sincere love for Jesus, there comes a point, nonetheless, when they have a
very difficult time with those aspects of our faith that involve the senses of
taste, touch, seeing, and hearing. Any honorable mention given to the Blessed
Virgin mother of our Lord is, for them, uncomfortable. They profess belief in
the two natures of Jesus Christ, that He is both Fully God and fully Man in One
Person; but in every practical way, they fear and step back from the
full implications of what that means. They fear to come close, fearing all of
the echoes and ripples of what it means that "the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us." They confuse the implications of this, and misunderstand
those things as if they were some sort of idolatry.
But
I say these things for your sake, that you will never fear to embrace the
saving revelation that "the Word was made flesh and pitched the tent of
His human nature among us." I say these things so that you will be
liberated in your heart to come close to Christ as He is known and revealed. I
say this, because of how Saint John
(one of those three apostles who are part of today’s Gospel reading) described
what the Church truly is, and what it shall continue to be for all time until
Christ returns on the Last Day. In the opening of his first Epistle, the
Beloved Disciple wrote:
“That
which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of
life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and
shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested
unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also
may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and
with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy
may be full.” (I John 1: 1-4)
You see, the
fear is that worshiping Someone Whom eyes could see, hands could touch and ears
could hear must be some form of idolatry. Let me help you by being very clear.
Once you know that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, it is idolatry to worship
only a god whom we cannot see. Idolatry is to worship the images we ourselves
make from our own minds, and therefore, it is to worship a god who is not the
One known by the revelation He gives of Himself.
We, who would
bow down at the feet of the Man Jesus, should He walk into this room right now,
would not be idolaters. But, a Unitarian, worshiping his notion of a god that
is pure of such "adulteration" as the taking of human nature into
Himself, can worship only an idol of the human mind, a god who did not reveal
himself. His god may very well be a creation of the doctrines of demons, or
simply a fantasy. But either way, such a god is not known by revelation, but by
imagination. However, our God is not confined to heaven. The true God revealed
Himself, most perfectly by taking human nature into the Divine Person of the
only and eternally begotten Son of the Everlasting Father.
This is why we
are not afraid to, as the hymn says, "touch and handle things
unseen"- nor even to look upon visible things that both effect and signify
what is invisible. We are not afraid of holy water, or visible representations
such as icons and crosses. We do not treat the Blessed Virgin Mother, through
Whom God the Son received His human nature, as some sort of outcast.
Furthermore, we know that the bread and wine that will be placed upon this
altar today, will be taken into the Person of the Son of God, and given back to
us as "the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of...our
Saviour Jesus Christ." And, as the Apostle John wrote, we will look upon,
and our hands will handle the Word of Life. In this way, you will have
fellowship with the Church of the Apostles, and in that fellowship you will
have fellowship with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, "that
your joy may be full.”
On the Mount of
Transfiguration, which Saint Peter called "the holy mount"- itself a
phrase showing the effect of the presence of the incarnate Lord upon all
creation- what the Apostles saw was not actually the Divine Nature itself,
because that remains invisible to the eyes of every created thing. What they
saw was the Shekinah, the
manifest Glory of God. They saw a manifestation of our ultimate hope, theosis. They
saw that human nature itself is transformed by the presence of God; a certain
kind of blindness, that protects the eyes of our yet fallen and imperfect
humanity, was removed for a brief glimpse of deified human nature. Christ’s
human nature was revealed to be glorious, because in His Person He is fully
God. Because of God's human nature in Christ, our transformed and resurrected
human nature is destined to be glorified by grace when we partake - κοινωνός (koinōnos) - of the divine nature.
In the Transfiguration of our Lord we
see our hope, and we see why we need have no fear of death. Christ let His
disciples see why His coming death should not fill them with dread. How strange
that in this scene, while shining with the light of His glory, the Lord speaks
to Moses and Elijah about the death He would accomplish at Jerusalem. Notice, His death would be His own
to give.
This was Luke’s
way of telling us the same thing that Jesus told us, as St. John wrote; That no
Man took Christ's life away; He laid it down freely, and freely took it again
(John 10:17,18). In speaking of His death to Moses, Christ showed that He was
going to fulfill all the Law, and be the One Who dies for us, to forever take
away all our sins; that in dying He would fulfill the types and shadows of every
sacrifice ever offered on the Old Testament altars. In speaking with Elijah, He
showed that He is the fulfillment and subject of prophecy itself. It is He of
Whom Moses and the prophets spoke. And, in this scene on the holy mountain, it
is He of Whom the Father speaks: "This is my Beloved Son; hear Him."
I want the
words of this sermon to ring in your ears, because my desire for you is that
you never fear to come close and touch the Lord; that you never fear to live
within the fellowship of the Church, and by that, within the fellowship of God
the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ; that your joy may be full.
And
now, unto God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed, as
is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion, glory and power, now and
forever. Amen
- Fr. Robert Hart
Fr. Laurence Wells "Bulletin
Insert"
Here we are, in the dog days of summer and nearly half
way through the long season of Trinity (the “Trinity Trek”), celebrating the
mysterious feast of our Lord’s Transfiguration. That word means a
change of appearance and refers to what Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us,
that “his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and
glistering.” This happened while Jesus was praying by night on a
certain mountain, alone with Peter, James and John.
This vision of Christ in glory (which Peter later
insisted was no “cunningly devised fable” but an event to which he was an
eye-witness) sounds almost like one of the appearances of the Lord after His
resurrection. But all three Synoptic Gospels insist that this took
place during the course of His earthly Galilean ministry (just as we celebrate
it in the rather dull season of Trinity).
One detail which sets this event apart is that all three
Evangelists made an unusual effort to date it within the
narrative. Luke says “about eight days after.” After
what, we have to ask. The preceding event must be important, since
the Gospels are mostly vague about the time-sequence of events.
The Transfiguration follows, after the interval of a week,
upon the critical event of Peter’s great confession, which is the hinge episode
of the Gospels, the great turning point of Jesus’ ministry before His
Passion. “Who do men say that I am? Who do ye say that I
am? Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Now, before they have caught their breath, the outspoken
Peter and the two ambitious brothers James and John , who aspired to high
position in the kingdom, are allowed to see a vision of exactly Who Jesus
Is. While this is a momentary change in His appearance, it is no
change in His person or nature, but a sudden revelation of His deity, as the
eternal Son or Word of the Father.
In this vision He is conversing with two personages of
long ago, Moses and Elijah, who represent the Law and the Prophets, the
Scriptures of the Old Testament.
Peter (who still has some learning to do) devoutly
proposes that they build three tabernacles or booths) in which Jesus, Moses and
Elijah might be enshrined. But at that suggestion, Moses and Elijah
disappear and Jesus is left alone with His disciples. The heavenly
voice repeats the statement uttered at His baptism: “This is my beloved Son,”
but adds the command, “hear Him.”
In Jesus Christ, in His humility and His glory, we see
Someone far greater than Moses and Elijah or any other “hero of the
faith.” He is unique. Therefore in His presence we are
commanded to hold our tongues, to give up our own religious ideas, and to
obey. LKW
The Transfiguration of
Our Lord
Re-Posted from August 6, 2008
A sermon by Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, Rector of St. Andrew's in Easton, and Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Chesapeake.
The Lesson: Exodus 34:29
The Psalm: 27, Dominus Illuminatio
The Epistle: II St. Peter 1:13
The Holy Gospel: St. Luke 9:28
+In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
¶Poor Peter. He had to decide which mountain
he wanted most, whether Mount Tabor or Mount Calvary.
As James and John went with him to Jesus’ prayers on Mount Tabor,
the brothers still were smarting from the fresh humiliation of their mother
having begged Jesus for thrones to be bestowed upon them; they were in no
position to side with Peter in his argument against the Lord’s revelation to
the twelve of his impending Passion. Fervent in denial, Peter’s expectations
were heightened on the suddenly fashionable Tabor.
¶As the Lord Jesus prayed there, he was
transfigured, or, as Matthew and Mark put it in the Greek, he was
metamorphosed. Their description of Jesus’ altered countenance was so intense
that King James’ word smiths had to coin a term to describe it: glistering.
¶Understand, this was no miracle, but the
sighting of the Lord’s normal appearance, the veil of his humanity momentarily
lifted; the robe of flesh clothing the Word who had chosen to be numbered among
the transgressors here parted to reveal Very God. No, there was no light
shining upon Jesus, but his deity radiating from within. This was how Moses and
Elias had seen Jesus, the vision glorious which they had known in him.
¶Then, just as the Father and the Holy Ghost
had joined Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry, at his Baptism, so
now did they join him at its close, the Three Persons of the Holy and Undivided
Trinity revealed in the same place and time. The Father again spoke from heaven
of his pleasure in the Only-Begotten Son; and just as the Holy Ghost had
appeared at the Jordan mikvah as
a dove, so now did he come in the cloud to be present with this holy Jesus,
whom these prophets had known intimately through the Spirit’s vision bestowed
upon them.
¶Why in particular was Jesus joined by Moses
and Elias? Simply said, it is because he was the fulfillment of everything they
had taught: the Messiah, the Chosen One of Israel whom they had known through
the revelation of the Holy Ghost, Moses having delivered the Law, Elias the
chief of the prophets. But if you want it said a little more complex, they were
‘types’ of the Messiah. By ‘type’, I do not mean they were sort of or kind of
like messiahs, but that by their beings and teachings they had ‘resembled’ one
like them but so much greater. God had revealed this much to Moses: "I
will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and
will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall
command him." (Deuteronomy 18:18)
¶Moses, in the closing moments of his
leadership, participated in the most telling prophecy yet of the Saviour, when
instructed by God to strike the rock which had followed them. "Hear now,
ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his
hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out
abundantly...." (Numbers 20:10) Now, this rock actually was the presence
of Christ among the people of Israel,
the water from it the symbol of his precious blood. We know this because St. Paul teaches us,
"[They] all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that
spiritual rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." (I
Corinthians 10:4)
¶There is a very peculiar fact about the
water from that rock. It is described by a strange Hebrew word, which
transliteratesmeribah, translating as the water of strife, or the water
of contradiction. It bespeaks the never ceasing stream of grace from God to his
people, even in their most rebellious and contentious moments against him.
¶Elias, Elijah if you prefer, was known as
the chief and greatest of prophets, and especially because he was drawn up into
heaven by a flaming chariot via a whirlwind. Many Jews (and remember that
Judaism, then as now, was a multi-sectarian religion) considered Elias to have
been a prophet in a sense so great that he was a messiah, and who, because he
departed this world alive, could return alive. Some Jews today believe he will
return again. In fact, there is even a Christian tradition that he will precede
Christ’s return, his purpose to convert the Lord’s own Jewish people, and then
their rabbis!
¶The Archangel Gabriel would comfort old
Zacharias by likening his son St. John Baptist to Elias: "Many of the
children of Israel
shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit
and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord." (St. Luke 1:16) You may recall, in fact, that the priests and
levites thought John to be Elias returned. (St. John 1:19)
¶So now, can you imagine how raced the
hearts of Peter, James and John? You would have thought that on the holy mount
they had learned so much of the Cross when hearing God in Christ, with the Law
and the Prophets, speaking of "his decease," of his redemption of the
world; and of the joyous joining there of the Father and the Holy Ghost! I must
believe that the brothers, the sons of Zebedee, had taken it in, because merely
a few years would pass after Jesus "decease" that the courageous
James would be the first Apostle to witness for the Lord Jesus in martyrdom;
and John, seasoned by time so many years later, would receive the apocalyptic
Revelation. You and I know that Peter would wholly understand these things only
after Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection, and especially at Pentecost.
¶But, my beloved, not today. As I have told
you that Peter was fervent to deny Jesus’ foretelling of his Passion, his
expectations for a bloodless Christianity were heightened on this day. And I
have told you also that Peter was torn over which mountain to choose: The
romantic garden spot of Tabor, or the stinking, blood-sodden rot of Calvary, where, by an old Jewish myth, was buried the
skull of Adam.
¶So Peter desperately appeals to his seeming
fatalistic Lord to build three shrines here, for each of the nobility in the
cloud. He thinks he can prompt God in Christ into self-aggrandizement. Satan
has tried this before, hasn’t he? And Jesus had called Peter ‘Satan’ in another
event, hadn’t he? "He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me,
Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be
of God, but those that be of men." (St. Matthew 16:23)
¶No way the Cross! Peter wants a bloodless
Christianity, a religion vacant of struggle against sin and the way of death.
He wants a religion of Mount Tabor, not a religion of Mount Calvary.
¶The unconverted spirit of the old Peter is
alive and well today, in the Church of Social Cachet, the Church of Sentimental
Footsteps Carrying Us on the Beach, in the Church of The Success Culture, and
in the Church of Sexual License and Better Bowling Scores: Such as these Jesus
calls the church of the whited sepulchre, the churches "that be of
men." It is a Mount Tabor Christianity with benign shrines. But the
religion to which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, calls us is that of Mount Calvary.
¶You see on Mount Tabor what you should want
to see forever, the radiance of his face (....it’s all right, go ahead, look at
him in Cimabüe’s crucifix over the altar, gaze into his loving eyes), that face
which in weeks after Tabor will bear the thorny crown of ignominy, soon to be
"sore wounded"; spattered with blood beaten out of him by the Roman
guards, the same blood’s Real Presence on our Altar this holy day and every
Sunday, each Sunday a little Easter. And look today on his glistering raiment,
because you won’t see it on Mount Calvary, stripped away to reveal him, in
Wesley’s words inspired by St. Paul, "robed in flesh, our great high
priest," that flesh which had been the tabernacle of his divinity, which
had come among us, full of Grace and Truth.
¶You know how I am forever telling you that
your religion must be as intensely practical as it is mystical. As with all
else, even the Transfiguration of Our Lord must speak to your heart.
¶Mine? On August 6, 1963, I paused for a few
days at The Abbey of St. John the Baptist at Collegeville, Minnesota.
(I know the arithmetic is a mystery to you young people, who have always known
that I am only thirty-nine years old.) In those days, St. John’s was the most populous Benedictine
monastery in the world. Well, I was en route to my undergraduate experience in Chicago and needed a few
days of prayer. So, at the Abbey on this day, the Feast of The Transfiguration
of Our Lord, I thought to myself: Goodness, it looks more like Easter, so
decked out in flowers and lights, ebullient to the ear in joyous chant!
¶I asked my old friend the choirmaster, Fr.
Gerard Farrell, of blessed memory, how this could be. And he replied in such a
way that I was reminded of the passage from the Revelation to St. John which we always read on All Saints’
Day. "These are they," he began, "who’ve seen death beyond
measure, and who’ve fled to Jesus, because they know he’s the only one who can
make sense out of Calvary, to know the one who died there, who’s still
alive."
¶Well, you know, I was a kid, and I’d thought
every monk was some kind of world-wise sophisticate like Thomas Merton. But Fr.
Gerard explained to me that most of the monks were farmers or common labourers,
ordinary people like you and I, who either had enlisted or were drafted into
two world wars. For them, there was no Mount Tabor
to which to return. They wanted, they lived for, the life-giving religion of Calvary, knowing this is the place from which Jesus
saves!
¶You see, just as Peter would have to decide
whether to choose Tabor or Calvary — rather,
whether his would be the Christianity of Peter or Jesus — you and I must
decide, too. The old Peter’s path is to one hell of a realm of materialism
where you fret over the meaningless vintage of your failure to redeem yourself;
whereas the other by simple humility and submission will lead you to the royal
wine of heaven. Simple as that!
¶My beloved, given that St. Andrew’s faces
some serious days ahead, I tell you we’re going to succeed because we have
chosen the right mountain. We will stand some ridicule because we have chosen
not to imitate the world’s vision of the Church, but because we have chosen
Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and so his salvation and sacrifice as the mission
and message of his Church. One day, rich or poor in the world’s sense, we’ll be
able to answer to the Lord Jesus in his Day of Judgement.
¶But listen, as Peter was transformed, so
shall we be transformed; Christ changes all things and all persons who come to
him. For here’s what Peter wrote years later of the Transfiguration. Please
read it aloud, and listen not only for the sublime poetry; but understand this
same Jesus can touch your heart, too.
¶"We had been eye-witnesses of His
exaltation. Such honor, such glory was bestowed on Him by God the Father, that
a voice came to Him out of splendour which dazzles human eyes. This, it said,
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased..... We, his companions on the
holy mountain, heard that voice coming from heaven, and now the word of the
prophets gives us more confidence than ever. It is with good reason that you
are paying so much attention to that Word: It will go on shining, like a lamp
in some darkened room, until the dawn breaks, and the day star rises in your
hearts." (II Peter 1:16-19; tr. Ronald Knox.)
+Joel
Marcus Johnson, Chesapeake
