2026-02-17
Brooke Strong
Semon Text...
February 15, 2026
Transfiguration Sunday
Matthew 17:1-9
Please join me in the spirit of prayer:
Holy Creator, shine your light on us today as we listen for your truth and prepare our hearts to live into your glory. Amen
In our Gospel reading this morning, we share in the wonder and awe and maybe a little bit of disbelief that Peter, James and John experienced. What is being revealed to us? The prophet Elijah and Moses, the receiver of Laws, appear with Jesus in the Light of our creator. God speaks and then Moses and Elijah fade out of the picture.
Jesus shines.
Moses and Elijah show up.
God speaks.
The disciples are terrified and confused.
This is not just some holy fairy tale —it’s holy disruption. Peter wants to capture it; he wants to hold onto the moment by setting up shelters… but of course God’s voice interrupts this idea.
The Transfiguration isn’t meant to make immediate sense. It’s meant to interrupt our assumptions about who Jesus is and where God shows up.
Nothing changes about Jesus. What changes is how the disciples see him.
So, what is this saying about our own Faith?
It is not certainty— although Faith is believing something without seeing it…it is wonder, questioning, and staying present when things don’t make sense. It can change as we look and listen to see who Jesus is and always has been.
I get the impression that God continually brings His Glory before us and our human nature proves frustrating to God… we seem to miss the signs… God must keep shining God’s Holy Light… or as the saying goes, “knocking us in the head with a 2 x 4”. The truth is and always has been, that God doesn’t want us to only live on the mountain top… God wants us to recognize God’s Glory in our everyday lives. God has sent us His son. God Loves and is Pleased with Jesus… “Listen to Him”!
So, what distracts us from Listening, from Seeing? Our everyday busyness. Our work, our kids participating in every possible after school activity, our need to keep moving to stay ahead of the game. But, in that never ending effort we miss the light, we miss the call about who we are to be.
The Transfiguration is a mountaintop moment—but it is not an escape. Luke’s Account of this moment tells us that Jesus is transfigured while he is praying, reminding us that transformation is rooted in relationship with God, not flashy theater. The appearance of Moses and Elijah signals continuity in God’s desires for us: the Law and the Prophets are not discarded but fulfilled and reimagined in Christ. Elijah appears to show that the prophetic hope, the longing for renewal, and the expectation of God’s coming reign are fulfilled in Christ — and in that the time for listening and transformation has arrived.
The cliff notes version is that…Elijah’s life was about turning hearts back to God and Moses appears with Jesus to show that the story of God did not begin on that mountain — it has always been unfolding. Moses represents the Law, the covenant, and the first Exodus, when God led people out of slavery into freedom. Now, as Jesus’ face shines with divine glory, Moses stands beside him not as a rival but as a witness: the law is not discarded but fulfilled. The one whose face once reflected God’s glory now stands with the One who radiates it. And when the voice from the cloud says, “This is my Son… listen to him,” we hear that the story of Sinai finds its completion in Christ, who leads us into a deeper freedom — a new exodus of grace.
I share this Poem, A Blessing for Transfiguration Sunday…from the book Circle of Grace By: Jan Richardson.
When Glory
That when glory comes,
we will open our eyes
to see it.
That when glory shows up,
we will let ourselves
be overcome
not by fear
but by the love
it bears.
That when glory shines,
we will bring it
back with us
all the way,
all the way,
all the way down.
As we approach Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Season, we consider giving something up, symbolizing a sacrifice, a practice to acknowledge Jesus’s 40 days of prayer and fasting.
For most of my life and certainly as an adult, I have not been a fan of just giving something up.
I do believe there is something to be said for giving something up, to sacrifice something during this Holy Season, but only if it is to make room for listening, for seeing God’s Holy light and hearing God’s voice.
The Colorado Kids will be serving us today in Fellowship Hall… (earning a free will offering to raise funds so that they can embark on their own Mountain top experience) they will give up some daily comforts so that they make room for the light of God. The kids are asked to leave their cell phones behind, to be off social media and not be in constant contact with their friends at home. They will be letting go of basic creature comforts, like running water and flushing toilets. They are asked to be where they are, in the moment, open to listening and seeing where God fits in their daily life, on the mountain and at home.
What is it that we can do this Lenten season, what can we put aside for this time to make room for God’s voice and glorious light? And can we do it beyond the season?
We can use this time to refocus our faith… our constant busyness gets in the way…difficult moments in life might lead us to question our faith, we might abandon our relationship with Jesus… that is okay, we wouldn’t be the only ones. It is a little bit like wanting to make physical changes to improve our quality of life… but we don’t know where to start, or we think maybe it is a lost cause.
Anne Lamott says it perfectly…“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes,
including you!”
The period of time is not a few minutes in the Lenten Season… It is a commitment to focus ourselves on recalibrating our relationship with Christ for 40 days. Think about what that looks like for you… personally I don’t want to give up dark chocolate (it has health benefits!) but, I could put aside mind numbing activities, like TV (oh, wait… we already do that because our Dog Winston doesn’t let us watch TV) but I could turn off mindless games on my Ipad and fill that time with a dedication to prayer and journaling. What does that look like for you. If you and I can do this for 40 days we could carry this recalibration beyond Lent and into our daily routine.
It is not too late, we are not so far gone that we can’t unplug, wait for a few minutes and restart.
The light fades.
The voices stop.
They go back down the mountain.
The Transfiguration insists that faith is not just illumination but commitment—not just vision but movement.
We need to listen for Christ’s voice amid many competing voices, We Need to allow ourselves to be transformed—not for personal gain, but for communal healing, and to come down the mountain ready to engage the world’s pain with courage and hope.
We do not stay on the mountain. But we do not leave unchanged. We are to carry the light with us—into ordinary places, hard conversations, and faithful action—trusting that God’s glory is not confined to peaks, but revealed wherever love, justice, and truth take hold.
In my preparation for today I found the following… Justice Lessons from the Transfiguration- Taken from the Social Justice Podcast…
For Matthew’s audience, following Jesus meant stepping into a living tradition of liberation and prophetic courage that stretches back through Moses and Elijah and continues in our social justice work today.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses represented Gods decisive intervention on behalf of the oppressed. The exodus is not merely a spiritual metaphor; it is a concrete act of liberation from economic exploitation, state violence, and dehumanization.
To follow Jesus today, then, is to inherit his commitment to justice and freedom. It is to stand with those trapped in modern Pharaohs, systems of injustice and harm, and to declare that such systems are neither natural nor ordained.
Elijah embodies another essential dimension of this tradition: speaking truth to power. Elijah confronts kings, exposes the violence hidden behind religious and political respectability, and refuses to bless unjust arrangements. His prophetic voice in the stories insisted that faithfulness to God cannot be separated from justice for the vulnerable.
Jesus stands squarely in this lineage. He is bringing this ancient struggle to its fullest clarity and urgency.
In this sense, Christian social justice work is not a political add-on to faith; it is the faithful continuation of the work begun with Moses, sharpened by Elijah, and embodied in Jesus. Ours is a path that still leads from bondage toward freedom, from silence toward courageous truth, from death-dealing crosses of state violence to triumphant and overturning resurrections
God has been shining This Holy Light on us through Human History… yet somehow, we are not living into it, certainly not well… there is too much wrong in this world… we are constantly under preforming in his glorious light. We need to keep unplugging, rebooting the internal systems that prevent God’s Love from shining through.
Listen to this motivation, another poem of Blessing from Jan Richardson
Dazzling
Believe me, I know
how tempting it is
to remain inside this blessing,
to linger where everything
is dazzling
and clear.
We could build walls
around this blessing,
put a roof over it.
We could bring in
a table, chairs,
have the most amazing meals.
We could make a home.
We could stay.
But this blessing
is built for leaving.
This blessing
is made for coming down
the mountain.
This blessing
wants to be in motion,
to travel with you
as you return
to level ground.
It will seem strange
how quiet this blessing becomes
when it returns to earth.
It is not shy.
It is not afraid.
It simply knows
how to bide its time,
to watch and wait,
to discern and pray
until the moment comes
when it will reveal
everything it knows,
when it will shine forth
with all it has seen,
when it will dazzle
with the unforgettable light
you have carried
all this way.
We come down the mountain carrying light we can’t fully explain—but we carry it anyway, into classrooms and clinics, protests and prayers, kitchens and council meetings.
It is not belief alone; it’s ethical listening—to Jesus, to neighbors, to voices pushed to the margins.
Not shining at the world,
but shining within it.
God of dazzling light and deep shadow, help us recognize your glory
not only when the clouds part, but when the road grows steep.
Teach us to listen. Teach us to see. Teach us to follow—
Amen