2025-03-05
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Betsy Wooster March 2, 2025 Sermon Federated Church UCC
SCRIPTURE: Luke 9: 28-36
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus[a] took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen;[b] listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
SERMON
Let us pray: Almighty God, in your light may we be light, in your truth may we be truth and in your Holy Word may we be called into holy work. Amen.
Let’s start with the obvious question. What in the world actually happened to Jesus on that mountaintop? There aren’t really words that are adequate to describing what happened. What the gospel of Luke’s transfiguration story conveys to us is largely the same as what the original experience conveyed to Peter, James, and John – a great sense of mystery. It both confuses us and draws us in at the same time. A great sense of mystery can be hard to pinpoint, to understand.
What is it that happened on the mountaintop. An experience of mystery cannot be fully understood by reason. Imagine if it were you. You’ve gone to the top of a mountain with Jesus and your two closest friends. Suddenly, Jesus’s appearance morphs into a “shining bright light version” of himself, and it’s not because the sunlight is shining on him. Try figuring out how to tell someone about that. We are not alone in our bewilderment. We follow those who have studied this scripture before us who were also bewildered.
The light coming from within Jesus, the son of God, the chosen one, as the voice from the heavens said, is burning so brightly that it fully transforms Jesus’ appearance. It’s confusing, but it also is alluring.
Try to imagine what this dazzling light could have looked like to our eyes. And you may wonder…why did Moses and Elijah also fill with the light of glory? Did the light within Jesus spill over into them?
As I’ve studied this passage, this has been my most ardent question. Why did they also fill with light? They were renowned figures, yes, Moses the liberator and Elijah the prophet, both key figures in God’s ancient story. But, they were human. My best guess used to be that the light of Jesus so reflected on them that they also glowed in the glory of divine light. But in thinking about it, my heart suddenly stood still. What if, what if humans can, like Jesus, shine like the glory of God?
What if Jesus was transfigured in light not just because he was divine, but also because he was human? Well, it turns out, this is an old idea.
Gregory Palamas, a 14th century monk and archbishop in what we know as modern day Greece, taught that when Jesus was transfigured in the light of God, what the disciples saw was not only the shining presence of God in Jesus; they also saw how all people may be transfigured by the presence of God. In the transfiguration, Palamas said, that what we see in Jesus is “what we once were and what we are to be.” What if our human journey is to be Godly? Let’s hold that idea and travel from Greece in the 1300’s to England in the early 1800’s where Alexander Pope wrote that “to err is human, to forgive, divine” in his poem “An Essay on Criticism.”
“To err is human, to forgive, divine.” It was a reminder that we all make mistakes, and a way of encouraging mercy for one another. But it’s a pretty low view of humanity. What does it mean to be human? It means erring, bumbling about, making a mess of things—according to that way of thinking. Sometimes we say “we’re only human.” Someone you’re working with really bombs a presentation, and you’re trying to be understanding and forgiving: you say “well, he’s only human.”And since it’s Oscar Sunday, The actress that you mentored and coached and helped to get the role for which she won the Oscar then forgets to mention you in her acceptance speech (you know how that happens sometimes?) and afterward she feels terrible, and you say “it’s okay, it’s okay: you’re only human.”
You’re only human. What did we expect, if that’s what it means to be human? To err and mess things up. So we expect people to be petty, and greedy, and to ruin habitats and to spread self-serving misinformation. And we expect people to litter when it’s easier, and when they are hurt to say things that they know will hurt others. That’s just being human, right? But that’s okay, because to forgive is divine. So humans: we mess things up, sometimes really badly. And God: God forgives; God restores; God makes new.
And that is basically the Christian message for a lot of people.
It goes like this: To be human is to sin. God forgives sin. Jesus died to forgive sin because what humans do is sin. Now, that message is simple and easy to understand. It does have truth in it. But don’t settle for that. Don’t settle for such a small, incomplete, misanthropic version of Christian faith. Remember the transfiguration.Jesus, who was human like us, held the presence of God in his very being.
This is what those three disciples experienced on the mountaintop.
The gospel says that Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”
It is a beautiful, mysterious, mystical experience, so don’t try to explain it all and explain the beauty and mystery right out of it. Maybe we’ve had beautiful, mysterious experiences like that too. Maybe we have had times when we see not just with our regular eyes, but with the eyes of the heart. And with those eyes we see the glory of a place, or of a person, and it glows before us. Okay, so I’m going to get a little Shakespearean with you for a minute.
Shakespeare, you’ve seen or maybe you’ve studied Romeo and Juliet, right? This won’t be obscure, I’m going for maybe the most famous scene.Juliet on the balcony. Romeo is below. He is already taken by her from when they met earlier that day. Now he sees her come out of her room to the balcony, and what does he say? Do you remember?
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun.”
Don’t over-explain what it means to see a person glowing with light.
It happens!
It happens when you see with the eyes of the heart. When you see with love. When a person is full of goodness, when a person is made in the image of God, when a person is full of the presence of God.
The disciples saw Jesus transfigured, and in that vision they knew who Jesus was, and they understood what it means to be human.
Remember that to be human is to be made in the image of God. The poem of creation in the first chapter of Genesis affirms that everything that God created is good! It is not essentially messed up and fragile and full of sin – creation is good, including humans, who are made in the image of God. When Jesus came, he called people to follow him, not just to watch him do things, but to learn to do what he did, and to be who he was: to be united with God so that Godliness shines through your own lives.
Jesus expected his disciples to heal people, just as he had, and to offer reconciliation in the name of God. Jesus knew us to be people filled with God’s light. In the simplistic version of Christianity I described earlier: “humans sin, Jesus comes to bring God’s forgiveness.” That version is all about what Jesus does. What’s left to us is simply to believe in Jesus and to benefit from what Jesus did. That’s not at all what you see in the gospels. We do not see Jesus calling people to believe in him. Rather, Jesus calls people to follow him, and to be like him. In a fuller understanding of Christianity, the life of faith is about a journey of becoming more Godly. Sure, we will err. We will mess things up and make mistakes and if our spiritual battery has run out of juice we might do terrible things. It’s good to remember this with a sense of humility, and to encourage our patience and mercy for others. But don’t stop there and just accept being stuck where you are.
There is a story passed down from the early centuries of the church, when men and women left the Roman cities to form Christian community in the desert. They are called the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
The story is told of a younger man called Abba Lot who went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards the heavens. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”
I’m not going to try to explain that story.
I’m just offering that story because I find it wonderful that our faith in God has such amazing and hopeful visions for what our lives can be.
Thanks be to God, for the eternal mystery and beauty of our faith, Amen.