Transfiguration Sunday, 3/2/2025

Texts: Exodus 34: 29-35, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9: 28-43a

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Human beings never carry just one single expression on their faces. Throughout our lives, we will experience all kinds of shifts and changes of appearance. We grow older, we hopefully grow wiser. We experience love and heartbreak, and our faces show the traces of such moments on our hearts. I remember times when grief and worry strikes, and a face that once beamed with happiness is now struck by sorrow and concern. There is the change of trauma, when a life is shattered by great experiences of suffering. And lastly, there is the change caused by great joys. I remember a good friend of mine who once he met his beloved, I remarked: man, your face is shining! The change in appearance was obvious! Our faces tell plenty of our state of being. Thus, something that always strikes me from the Transfiguration readings we heard today, is precisely that physical manifestation of change, how bodies show that something has transformed them. In Luke’s account of the transfiguration, Jesus “changes” appearance while praying, revealing the glory of His divinity. Luke uses the word “heteros” in Greek, meaning he was made different or other than what the disciples were accustomed to seeing Him. In Exodus, Moses’ face shines and needs to be veiled after speaking to God on the mountain, as a kind of aftereffect of God’s divine presence. He was made other or different by his encounter with God. When we meet God, our appearance cannot but be transformed, or made different. Meeting

God will never leave you numb or without affect. There is always a before and an after.

So when we hear this word transfiguration, let us not get bogged down in abstraction. Instead, we should relish the potency behind this encounter, and see how transfiguration is this very real process that we experience and will experience when we meet God face to face. The Christian life, in a sense, is to be “transfigured” or transformed into the unique human beings God envisioned us to be. Jesus’ transfiguration revealed not only His divinity, but it is a glimpse of what will happen to us. It is a gift that God shows us where everything will head towards, that in the end, the promises that God has made to His people are coming to fruition, and that we are standing in the awesome presence of the God that envelops us with His love and Being. And thus, following this way of life, we will be made different in Christ. Everything that we practice in Church is to follow the traces that Jesus’ transfiguration reveals. We are here in church, like Peter, perhaps trying to understand this mystery of God in Jesus Christ, we are drawn to reverence of this transcendence and we try to honor it the best way we can, but there is one essential action that is prompted of us that receive this gift of God’s presence: that once we come down from the mountain, after we have been awed by God’s presence, that we listen to Jesus and follow Him in the challenges that life in the world brings. Christian life does not remain in the mountain, but brings the experience of the mountain down into ordinary human life. Here in church, we don’t come here to remain the same, we

come here to be changed. That our hearts may be changed according to God’s Will, that knowing who this God is, that our sorrow may be turned to joy, that our despair may be transfigured into hope, that our inaction may turn to action, that hatred might be changed to love, and our apathy into compassion. Do not think that church is some mere habit, church is for us to be made and remade constantly in the otherness of Christ, in which our true identity lies. That Christ’s radical life of liberation and mercy might be something that the world might glimpse through us. That is why Paul talks about the removal of the veil, God’s free gift of grace and life is for all to see. We do not lose heart because we know that we are entering into an ever deepening life of a love we are only beginning to understand. Our faces cannot help but reveal such changes that God is making in us. Like the crowd when Jesus liberates the young boy from an unclean spirit, we are to be testaments by which others might be astounded by God’s greatness.

So Beloved, how important it is, that receiving here the gift of God’s love, our lives transformed day by day through Christ’ life, how are we following through after witnessing the great mystery? Once we come down the mountain of transformative spirituality, how is the light of that experience going to shape our life in the ordinary days? The divinity we partake in Christ is not some lofty mystery that remains on top of the mountain, it is not meant to be kept safe in an altar, like Peter trying to make booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, no matter how well meaning the act. Our veneration for the mystery of God prompts for a change in perspective. It means that

once, we were entrenched in our limited perspective, we kept our prejudices close, we liked to keep up barriers and walls against others, and we liked the feeling that power and control could grant us. But in the presence of God, we realize there is so much more that we cannot control and understand, that we were not created for such a life. This same presence that overcomes us is telling us that, instead of deepening our trenches in the sins of hatred and the arrogance of power, that we deepen into the mission of God’s Kingdom, a mission that seeks to liberate the oppressed, and to tear down the walls of self-interest. The glimpse of the transfiguration is saying to us, see who you are really with, see what the Creation was made for, see the sacredness and beauty that sustains it, act in harmony with this reality. Act in harmony with the God that says you are my beloved, that says love your enemies, that sets free the captives from earthly and spiritual powers. Transfiguration is a wonder as much as it is a call to action. That people might come in and say, this person has something different, something about this person shines with deep compassion. Such is the reality we are invited to witness in this life. If you’ve heard the musical from Les Misérables, the last song says, to love another person is to see the face of God. And I take that to heart, for when we act in harmony with God’s love, when we put all our energy into love instead of judging and measuring other’s worth, those are small transfigurations we get to experience, God showing up in myriad ways. So, do not lose heart, God’s love and mercy sustains our common ministry, keep being a mirror by which others can see their God-given worth, that God is reaching out to all of us. He is not secluded on

top of the mountain, He has reached out to the deepest parts of our spirits, and lights up our lives for spiritual and existential abundance. There is a great traditional benediction in both Jewish and Christian traditions, often called the priestly blessing, you can find it in the Book of Numbers chapter 6, and it says: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” To witness the Lord’s countenance is a blessing, and thus may we ever be changed and made more loving, more peaceful, more just, by the shining presence of Christ in our midst. Let us pray: