Transfiguration Sunday 2026

Sermon: Transfiguration Sunday 2026

Text: Matthew 17:1-9, Exodus 24:12-18

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

Considering today’s readings, I’m lead to the thought that everything has the potential to be transfigured. We know the saying that says “everything changes”. Indeed, things transform and change and grow and wither, either for good or for ill. In many ways, we are experiencing at a global scale, exactly what it means to be transfigured, changed, metamorphosized, from one state of being to another, and it ain’t always pretty. But if one thing we should be reminded during this feast of the Transfiguration, is that in Christ, we are living through the greatest change of all: our lives reflecting the glory of God. It is true, as human beings, it is often difficult to see this metamorphosis. Often we fall into the same old patterns that perhaps show more our shortcomings rather than our strengths, thus we put ourselves down. Perhaps when we confront fundamental changes to our lives, we can suffer from the pessimism like what is reflected in Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis; the protagonist Gregor Samsa one day finds himself changed into an insect! Can’t get any worse than that! Kafka thought modern life reduced human beings to an alienated and ignoble existence. Unlike this view, this feast we celebrate is the time to remember, you are not meant to exist in the pessimism of the world, you are meant to reflect God’s glory. Your body and your mind and your soul are waiting to shine out with the glory of God, to manifest His love and goodness in full.

A great early Christian theologian, St Irenaeus of Lyon, said that the “glory of God is man fully alive”. Our lives are yearning to reflect that life-changing light of the mountain emanating from Jesus. God wants us to shine with His light! But like the

disciples that see the transfigured Jesus in dazzling white, we misunderstand the moment. We can take the glory of God as something we can control or set down, but no. The glory of God is a wild thing waiting to break out. The glory wants to shine through all around, and it doesn’t want us to set the limits. The glory of God changes landscapes, including the landscapes of our hearts, and even of those we never thought the glory could shine from. A desolate valley becomes a lush and overflowing stream. Perhaps we are beset by downcast thoughts, and God shines the sun of His eternity upon our dark night. Whatever the situation, when God shines His glory, we are captivated to a new imagination that does not remain doing what it had done before. It is a new thing.

I can imagine Peter, James and John with their jaws dropped at what they saw on the mountain. Jesus gave them a glimpse of His eternal divine nature, and this image they wanted to preserve. Even more so, they wanted to remain in the light of this shining eternal light Jesus was showing. But to reflect the eternal light of God, we cannot remain in the same old dynamics. We are called to go out, so that the light of Jesus’ being can be cast wider and wider. So that love may be present in every corner, so that in all places there might be at least one who testifies to God’s love in Christ.

In our Gospel today, there are two responses from God to the disciples: “This is my Beloved Son, Listen to him!” and “Get up and do not be afraid!”. The experience of the mountaintop, of witnessing this transcendence of God, is not without action. We are not meant to keep staring at God! Often it is said that contemplating God in His glory can lead to passivity, we are out there hidden in the clouds. But God’s command to listen, get up, and follow Jesus is meant for us to enter into the fullness of human life

with the assurance of God’s working out His love in our lives. Contemplation is always followed by action, and our actions require of us to look back at God. God desires an active humanity exercising the gifts of Christ’s life. We have responsibilities that call for our attention, responsibilities that can’t bear us staying up on the mountain. The light of the mountain wants to shine below as well, it wants to illumine the dark corners of our world and act out the new reality God is preparing. Let us never sequester the glory of God, beloved!

Great spiritual experiences that do not lead us to love our neighbors are as Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians, a clanging cymbal, empty and purposeless noise. But spirituality coupled with love for others is the perfect recipe according to our Gospel. A beautiful aspect of the Transfiguration is that the glory of God shines through Jesus. That means that God’s glory is Jesus shaped. When we experience God’s presence in our lives in through the different spiritual practices that carry us, we can be assured that they lead us to the things Jesus did. A spirituality that reflects God’s glory in Jesus leads us to heal the sick, they lead us to visit the sick, prisoner, and the lonely, they lead us to give food to the hungry, they lead us to love and pray for our enemies, and to be ambassadors of reconciliation. In all, they lead us to keep the commandments of God. God is glorified in this way: “This is my Beloved, listen to Him! Get up, and do not be afraid!”

I can testify for myself, that it wasn’t until I grasped this reality that God manifests His glory in the love of Jesus reflected in our lives, that I started living into what a radical life the Christian is called to live. Indeed, my initial response is fear and trembling! How can I act in this way, can’t I just see the glory and forego the getting up part? But God

knows us, He wants us to realize, that to partake in His divine nature is to go down from the mountain. It is to meet your neighbors and love them. It is to live fully the life of Jesus in you. We are called to be transfigured into this Christ life. And it all begins here, in this gathering of people. Transfiguration is never just individual. It is a change of the whole community, it is a communal table. God gives us our siblings in Christ as the ones that can help you on the way to glory. And that inevitably entails the cross. To struggle through the messiness, to see beyond the surface into the depths of your neighbor, to see them in new light. And it all begins here at church. This is the place where it begins, the first contact with our change into the Body of Christ. So Beloved, do not stay up in the mountain, the glory of God in Jesus Christ is, as in the words of the theologian Henri Nouwen, in the downward way of God’s love. We go down like Moses from Mt. Sinai, bearing in our faces the results of our encounter with God, which changes everything about us. It makes us a different kind of people, the people we were always meant to be. A human being fully alive, loving, living, forgiving, feeding like Jesus. So let us pray that God shines His light in us, and send us out with renewed strength and courage to participate in the re-imagining of the landscape of the world into one of eternal love and light. Let us then pray: