SERMON FOR TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY
Written and delivered by Judy Pike
Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Bisbee, Arizona                          
February 9, 1997

SCRIPTURE READING:  Old Testament--Psalm 50:1-6
                    New Testament--Mark 9:2-9

“And He charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of
man should have risen from the dead.”

How difficult it must have been to keep such an awesome occurrence a
secret!   Have you ever been in that position?   Our daughter and
son-in-law told us just before Thanksgiving that they were expecting
their first baby in July--our first grandchild!  What exciting news that
was!  But then they asked us not to tell anyone until they could  to
tell Bob’s mother in person when she came to visit right after
Christmas.  Oh, how difficult it was to keep it a secret!  We were all
bursting with the excitement but couldn’t tell a soul until after
Christmas.  Our tongues were sore from biting them for the month before
we could share the news.   It wasn’t long after Bob’s mother was told
that it was no longer a secret because we shared it with everyone who
stood still long enough to listen!   And so it was with Peter as he
proclaimed in his second letter, verses 16-18:  “For we did not follow
cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For
when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was
borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I
am well pleased,’ we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were
with him on the holy mountain.”

Madeleine L’Engle writes in her book WALKING ON WATER, “As I read and
reread the Gospels, the startling event of the Transfiguration is one of
the highlights.  You’d think that in the church year we would celebrate
it with as much excitement and joy as we do Christmas and Easter.  We
give it lip service when we talk about “mountain-top experiences,” but
mostly we ignore it, and my guess is that this is because we are
afraid.  We are afraid of the Transfiguration . . . Madeleine L’Engle
remarks that when she was a child, it did not seem strange to her that
Jesus was able to talk face to face with Moses and Elija, the centuries
between them making no difference.  But we are not taught much about the
wilder aspects of Christianity and here we are on the border of the
tremendous Christian mystery that time is no longer a barrier.   We are
not meant to be separated from those who have gone before us and those
who will come after, nor are we meant to be separated from each other in
the here and now.  And it no longer has to be a secret because although
Jesus told Peter, James and John to tell no one what they had seen, he
added the stipulation that it was to be secret until the Son of Man
should have risen from the dead and He IS risen!  He is risen indeed!

And now Peter is telling us how it was! He is telling us, “You can
believe what I am about to say because I experienced it. I was there. I
saw and I heard everything, and now, NOW I can tell you about what I
kept secret for so long and I want you to be a part of that glory of
Christ also.”  

So what does the Transfiguration of our Lord have to do with our lives
in the 20th Century? What do we take with us as we leave worship this
morning as a part of the Christian church, the Body of Christ?  Does
this strange event really mean anything to us, or is it just a nice
story that Peter and others record for us? 

In THE IRRATIONAL SEASON, Madeleine L’Engle writes about the
Transfiguration:

Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
the way he really was all the time,
although they had never seen it before,
the glory which blinds the everyday eye
and so becomes invisible.  This is how
he was, radiant, brilliant, carrying joy
like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was--is--from the beginning, 
and we cannot bear it.  So he manned himself,
came manifest to us; and there on the mountain
they saw him, really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us?
Then, perhaps, we will see each other, too.

Too often we don’t see each other--Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians,
Chapter 13,  that now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  
The images we see of each other are dimmed by the surface dust of skin
color, diverse cultures, and different lifestyles, all of which get in
the way of our seeing each other because they make us afraid of each
other.  

In 1 Corinthians Chapter 12, we are told, “Now you are the body of
Christ and individually members of it.”  It does not say that we are a
group of Christians and each of us is an individual member.  It says we
are THE body of Christ--that body that was transfigured before Peter,
James, and John--the embodiment of Perfect Love, pure and shining.   In
his first letter, John says that “There is no fear in love, but perfect
Love casts out fear” and when we truly become part of the Body of
Christ,  we become part of that Transfiguration of Perfect Love so that
fear is cast out and we may see each other face to face as we really
are--the way God created us to be.  

John writes in his first Epistle,
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God!  And that is what we are!...Dear friends, now we
are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. 
But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see
him as he is...For this is the message which you have heard from the
beginning, that we should love one another...”

How can we NOT know each other if we believe that “if we love one
another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

In his sermon on the Transfiguration, the Rev. Ed Bierman, a minister in
the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, writes, “We see the glory of Jesus
Christ, of course, through the eyes of His disciples, His followers
during the time He spent on the face of this earth.  They faithfully
recorded His words and His deeds.  They enveloped Him in the words of
the Bible and described the events at the crib and manger in Bethlehem.
They recorded His words of love, care, and concern and of the power as
He proclaimed them to His hearers.  They reported for us His healing,
His touch, His concern, and His caring for the people of His day and of
ours. They announced that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead as our
living Savior and Lord.  By faith in that Word, we have  become
eyewitnesses of the glory and majesty of Jesus Christ. We have heard
again and again the beautiful account of His life, death, and
resurrection, and through this holy Word of God, by the power of His
Spirit we, too, with the eyes of faith behold Him as our Lord and our
God." 

Through the glory of the Word of God, we become the children of God; and
we have been called to share that glory with each other. That is our
call--it has been the call since the very beginning of the church. 
We have been commanded to show the world the same love that
Christ has shown to us--a love that gives rather than takes.
This is the church as it ought to be--proclaiming the Good News of love
and forgiveness through Jesus Christ; reaching out and touching the
lives of people who are hurting; caring for those who are poor,
desolate, lost, and wandering on the face of the earth,  and caring for
each other in our everyday lives.   Jesus told us, “As the Father has
loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love...This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The world indeed can only see the glory of Jesus Christ as it sees us at
work in God’s world.  Through his Perfect Love, we are empowered to go
out and genuinely care about and love each other and know each other.
And as we genuinely care for and love each other, we are in Christ--we
go doing His will. The deeds, the good works that we carry out, are our
response to what God has given to us freely--His love through His Son.
We do them not because they are necessary for salvation but because they
grow from a living faith in a Living Savior. Look at the church in the
world today and in the past:  we lead the way in establishing hospitals,
caring for orphans and widows, giving of ourselves in order that the
poor might be fed and the naked clothed. The Church of God knows about
caring for people better than any other group in the world because we
have been for centuries showing the love of Christ to others in what we
do as eyewitnesses to His Glory. 

This ministry of reaching out to each other is going on right here in
Covenant Presbyterian Church.  My family and I have been direct
recipients of the love and caring of our church family.  Here, in this
church, as we reach out to each other, the glory of God which is His
Love shines through; and when that happens, we are able to see each
other.

We have to confess that at times that the glory can be dim--faltering,
failing, and not always clear, brilliant, and beautiful.  We  often let
ourselves get in the way.  Our own selfishness sometimes demands the
limelight, and at times Christ is scarcely seen in His Church. But He is
here nevertheless, and when the church does what it has been called to
do, the glory of Jesus Christ is made known in the world.   Jesus
Himself said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if
you have love for one another.”

Peter reports that they not only saw the Transfiguration of
Jesus Christ but also heard the voice of God speaking from the cloud:
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” They heard
God. They heard His message of love so deep and vast that it moved Him
to send His own Son into this world. They heard the message of the Good
Shepherd, the message of the Father, the message of the Kingdom that God
desires to set up in the hearts and lives of people. They were stirred
with this message of peace and power, this message of love and concern. 
And as they heard that message, they proclaimed it to their dying day in
all that they said. This is what we have heard also; this is the message
that we proclaim--that Christ died for our sins and rose again that we
might live with Him forever. God accepted His Son and the sacrifice of
the cross. He has reconciled the World to Himself.   “For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life.”

Now we hear the Father also speaking to us through His Word, declaring
us acceptable; and we hear Him say of us, even as He did of His own Son:
“This is my son, my daughter, whom I love; with him, with her, I am well
pleased.” 

Does that sound strange? Isn’t that impossible because of our
imperfections? As we look at our own lives, our own actions, our own
thoughts, our separation from each other, we cannot help but marvel at a
God who would call us His beloved children and say that He is well
pleased with us. He sees us through the cross and the empty grave. He
sees us as people freed from self and claimed by Christ as His alone. 
He sees us as we really are, just as Peter, James and John,  for a few
brief moments, saw Jesus as He really was.   And through His Love, we
can also see each other--each of us beloved by God.

We are right smack dab in the middle of the Transfiguration today. 
Through the eyes of faith we have seen Jesus Christ glorified, risen,
and alive in our world. We have beheld Him and the Love that He is.  As
Jesus and His disciples returned from the mountain to their everyday
lives, so you and I now go forth into our daily living.  As we go as
people whose eyes have seen the King and whose ears have heard the
wonderful message of His Love,  we must remember that it is no longer a
secret and that we are not meant to be separate from each other!  Later
on--after Christ rose back into heaven --Peter stood before the tribunal
of his nation and was commanded not to speak of Jesus Christ any more.
He could only reply: “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen
and heard.” 

May God the Holy Spirit empower us to go forth speaking about what we
have seen and heard and seeing each other and loving each other for who
we really are--each of us beloved of the Father--today, tomorrow and
into all of God’s tomorrows.  Amen

Return to the Madeleine L'Engle WWW Resource

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