Like Wheat that Springeth Green

I think this has been my favorite sermon I've preached at St Simon's so far.  Since it was the fifth Sunday in the month, the service was morning prayer, so the sermon was extra lengthy.

Hebrews 5:5-10

John 12:20-33

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

This is our final Sunday in Lent, as next week, we will be celebrating the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem, welcoming him with palms and our loud hosannas, and next Sunday we will read the Passion Gospel, telling of the Christ’s suffering and death.  Next week is a week for paradox: triumphant and welcoming entry followed by betrayal and crushing death.

But this Sunday is paradoxical for a different reason: here at St Simon’s we are celebrating together today using Morning Prayer as our primary Sunday service, instead of the Eucharist, as we usually do.  This is the fifth week in March, and so, as is customary in some parishes, we are gathered this Sunday to worship using the liturgy of Morning Prayer.  As happens rarely, every single Sunday in Lent this year fell in March.  It will not happen again until the year 2020.

So, a few words about the use of Morning Prayer as the principal service on a Sunday.  This will be my actual first time even attending Morning Prayer when it’s used as the primary Sunday service, and at the 10o’clock service, I’m the officiant!  The Episcopal church I grew up in always had the Eucharist on Sunday, but that is due to the liturgical changes which occurred in the Episcopal Church during the 1960s and 1970s.  I’m sure many of you who are cradle Episcopalians remember Morning Prayer on Sundays.

It is an ancient tradition of the Church to break the day into parts, called hours, and assign specific prayers, known as offices, to each part of the day.  Traditionally, the hours begin with Matins, in the night, Lauds at dawn, Prime at 6am, Terce at 9am, Sext at noon, Vespers at dusk, and Compline at night before bed.  This was the pattern in most of Western Europe, and before the English Reformation, the primary service on Sunday  in England began at dawn with Lauds, and then the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.  It was uncommon before the Reformation for laity to receive communion more than once yearly, so after liturgical reforms were made in England, the importance of reception of the Eucharist was underscored, and the frequency with which the Eucharist was received increased.  But the principal service of many Sundays switched over to Lauds, which we call Morning Prayer in our Book of Common Prayer.  The tradition of celebrating Holy Eucharist monthly and receiving Hoy communion monthly was a drastic change from pre-Reformation practice, and was intended to make the Eucharist more accessible and more frequently received by the laity.

Over the centuries since the English Reformation, as the Anglican church spread across the globe and to our country, this tradition remained fairly common, until only a few decades ago.  There was a major liturgical movement in the 19th century, known by various names: the Tractarian Movement, the Oxford Movement, the Catholic Movement, which sought to reintroduce Catholic traditions back into Anglican worship.  And we shouldn’t think of necessarily Roman Catholic traditions, but Catholic traditions: those aspects of worship which belonged to the ancient Church.  But that movement stayed pretty small, in terms of relative numbers of parishes.  Those parishes are commonly now known Anglo Catholic or High Church.  The leading High Church in our diocese is St Andrew’s, in University Heights.  In those parishes, Eucharist began to be celebrated weekly as the principal Sunday service.  That change wouldn’t happen to most parishes, however, until our own lifetimes, and primarily happened because of the publishing of the new 1979 Prayer Book which encouraged weekly celebration of the Eucharist.

So, if our current Prayer Book encourages weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist, why are we celebrating Morning Prayer today?  The wealth of our Anglican tradition is most deeply expressed when we display the aspects of our tradition which unify and unite us:  we illustrate our continuity and we embrace our heritage when we celebrate Morning Prayer as the principal Sunday service.  We are united to those who went before us and who passed on to us the tradition which shapes and informs us.  Continuity with the past is the primary reason why almost all parishes continue to use Elizabethan language when reciting the Lord’s prayer, whether it’s Rite I, Rite II, 1928, or any other prayer book.  By using the same words our ancestors used, we remind ourselves of the very real connections we maintain with them.  The Lord they worshiped at Morning Prayer is the same Lord we worship in Holy Communion.

In the Gospel today, we hear that same Lord speaking to Philip and Andrew, two of the apostles, using a pastoral theme to relate the message of his upcoming death: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

The people hearing Christ would have immediately understood the imagery he used, and though most of us here are not farmers, there’s likely to be a few gardeners among us.

My first experience of gardening happened when I was 5, at Winfield St Elementary School in Corning, NY, when I was in kindergarten.  I’m not sure what the practice has been here in Buffalo, but in Corning, we attended kindergarten for a half day for the first half of the year, then a full day beginning in the spring.  I had difficulties adjusting to the change of a full day of kindergarten, and remember feeling very homesick.  However, it got much better for me when we started a new unit in which we learned about plants and seeds.  Our teacher read to us about acorns and oak trees, and fuzzy gray dandelion heads.  The most exciting day, though, was when we each received a white Styrofoam cup with dirt in it.  I was something of a dirt eater, or at least, a dirt sampler, so I was very excited, but remembered that I shouldn’t eat this dirt, since my teacher told me we’d be putting a seed in it, and that the seed needed the dirt and water and the sun to grow.

Along with the cup, each of us received a few cucumber seeds: they were small, flat, pointy at one end, and smooth to touch.  We stuck our little fingers into the dirt and pushed the cucumber seeds down, poured a little water onto them, placed them on the ledge by the window, and left them there to grow. 

Each day, the first thing any of us did when coming into class was run over to the ledge to check our dirt cups with our sleeping seeds.  And cups of dirt they remained.  Each day: nothing.  The next morning, new bright expectation, a dash to the ledge: nothing.

Then one day, there was a tiny green bump in a cup in the first row, and 20 proud 5-year old parents peered into the Styrofoam cup, overjoyed at the tiny bump.  Each morning, more and more and more bumps in the Styrofoam cups, then stems, then leaves.  In my cup, one of my little plants came up and still had the husk of its seed wrapped around its leaf.  I recognized the smooth white skin of the seed, opened like a butterfly in flight, and the point pulled apart and separated.

Not since kindergarten has my gardening joy been so bright and buoyant, but each spring still finds me out there, with seeds or tiny sapling plants, still pushing them into the soil to grow.  My kindergarten plants actually produced cucumber fruit, and I was amazed when we first cut open the fruit and inside: dozens of smooth, white seeds!  The tiny little white seed I had planted had exploded out of my Styrofoam cup and blossomed into bright yellow flowers which became huge cucumbers replete with identical white seeds.  Miraculous.

Soon forgotten were the days of expectation and wonder: would the plant ever grow?  Would the seeds wake up?  Though I was a very precocious 5-year old, the results were far beyond even my imagination.  Gone was the anxiety of let down expectations.  Gone was the worry about if there was something wrong.  It was replaced wholly with joy in the form of a huge cucumber.  I was overjoyed because of the surprise: my teacher had told us the little seeds would grow into plants then into cucumbers, but she had not impressed on me how radical the change would be.  Then in such a short time, the Styrofoam cup was tipping over because of the weight of that radical change.  I knew something impressive was going to happen, but I was not prepared for how amazingly different, how overflowing that change would be.  From one tiny seed to a huge cucumber bursting with dozens of little seeds.  Miraculous.

My experience of the little white Styrofoam cup prepared me for my later encounters with the Lord as an adolescent, teenager and adult.  In the little Styrofoam cup, I lived what has been called “the wastefulness of creation”: God responds to the smallest effort, the tiniest seed with an abundance larger than the imagination could have formed.  My wonder at how impressive and unexpected the results of that little smooth seed would be mirrors my later wonder at God’s response to and action in the world.

As mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews read today, though God could have sent an angel, could have sent another prophet, could have appeared again as a burning bush, instead, he chose to clothe himself in human flesh and live upon the earth as Christ.  The response of God to the needs of the world was beyond anyone’s imagination.

Christ refers to himself as wheat that is planted in order to produce an abundant harvest.  It is as God the Creator that he refers to himself here.  Christ takes the smallest seeds, and creates from it more than any mind could have guessed, more than any heart could have hoped for.  But neither the cucumber seed in my Styrofoam cup nor Christ could bring out more than could be imagined unless they accepted change.  For the cucumber seed, it meant opening, breaking, and shedding its smooth outside, to let the plant inside shoot out.  I saw what remained of the seed on my tiny little shoot: opened, and empty.  For Christ it was the same.  He was wheat planted, and in order to become a field of grain, Christ needed to be opened, broken, and had to shed his appearance.  He achieved in the crucifixion the change in his body which would allow new life to spring forth, and to spring forth in abundance.

Next Friday, as we pass from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday and on to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, we witness the great change of Christ as he is buried in the earth, and as his death changes him and when he rises out of the earth, like my little cucumber plant, he will be other than we first saw him, bursting with life, and spreading, growing, and creating abundant life.

My favorite Easter hymn, which truly is a Holy Week hymn more than just Easter, is entitle Now the Green Blade Riseth.  It’s hymn 204, if you’d like to follow along with me:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,

Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,

Thinking that never he would wake again.

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,

 

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,

He that for three days in the grave had lain.

Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again;

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

Laid in the earth, like grain that sleeps unseen.  I was fooled by my little white seed, and worried that I had stuck it in the dirt and nothing would come of it.  Frequently, we wonder if the things we’ve begun, if the plans we’ve laid, the hope we’ve tried to give a grieving friend, or the love we’ve shown our children is going to be enough.  But the seeds we plant do not bloom overnight, and we may need to wait quite a while before the results show.  The hope and love we give others is like my sleeping seed, is like the buried Christ: a promise of change, of grace, and of abundance.

Christ uses the imagery of wheat because it was well known to those listening to him.  The image would have sticking power.  But he is also alluding to something else when he describes himself as a grain of wheat: he’s pointing to himself as present in the Eucharist.  In the Eucharist, Christ is a single seed who is multiplied over and over in order to give life to many, like in the parable in today’s Gospel.  It’s a bit ironic that today’s Gospel falls on a fifth Sunday, when we are celebrating Morning Prayer and not Holy Eucharist.  But maybe it gives us the opportunity to reflect on Christ in the Eucharist, since we will not be receiving communion today.  Will we feel different this week, since we did not have communion?  Is anything different? 

The Eucharist is not solely for us, but for those who are not here with us on Sunday.  The closing dismissal given by Fr Ralph commands us to go into the world, to love and serve the Lord.  We are to receive the Eucharist here at the rail, then become the Eucharist to those in the world.  In that way, we become the tiny seed which is planted, but which springs back up as a field of grain.

Our God comes to us every on Sunday in the form of bread and wine, as a tiny seed which has fallen to the earth and now is sprung up in multitude to feed many.  Let s take the opportunity this week, to thank Christ for his life shared with us in the Eucharist.  The small lamp burning above the aumbry reminds us that the Eucharist is here present, and that the Lord dwells here.  On Good Friday, though, the aumbry door will be open, the lamp will be out, and the Eucharist will be absent.  The church will be uninhabited by Christ in the Eucharist.  How much more complete our joy will be on Easter, when once again, we celebrate the Eucharist, joining with Christ in his resurrection, like wheat that springeth green.

The Great Enemy and Peter

It's the Second Sunday in Lent, and I had my second opportunity to preach at St Simon's where I'm interning for the first half of 2009.  I had a great Gospel on which to preach: Jesus and Peter get in a fight and Jesus calls Peter Satan.

Like many Christians who spend ay time thinking about our faith, Satan fascinates me.  He had a special attraction to Peter, apparently.  Peter, with one exception, is the only apostle who the Gospel mentions captures Satan's attention directly.  The other, of course, is Judas, and we know how poorly that turned out for Judas.

So, I talked about Satan and Peter: there was certainly fodder enough from Scripture to keep that fire burning.  I'm not very moved by nor interested in the concept of spiritual warfare, and I think it seems a little Dungeons& Dragons for me, but preached on it today.  It was an interesting process, for me at least.

Since I was preaching on Peter, I included a dig on the papacy, but hopefully it was subtle enough to be overlooked!

To the right is the image of a painting by William Blake, showing Satan rousing the rebel angels.  I had Blake and his understanding of Satan in mind as I tried to go over and preach on this Gospel.  Please comment!

Here are the lessons:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4: 13-25

Mark 8:31-38

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

Amen.

George Orwell, the British author who penned the well-known classics, Animal Farm  and 1984 is attributed with having said: “Good people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  What may first come to mind when we hear this quote might be the image of our military or police officers, sworn to defend us, and to do so even at the risk of their own harm.  Instead of our armed forced and constabulary in the role of rough men standing guard, I’d like to suggest Christ in that role.  Today’s gospel offers a picture of Christ as a rough man, ready to do violence on our behalf.

In Mark’s Gospel read today, as Christ discusses his upcoming Passion with his disciples, it become clear that Simon Peter is troubled.  The gospel reads that Peter drew Jesus aside, and Peter likely conveyed his displeasure to Jesus about the idea of Jesus’ death.  In fact, Mark’s Gospel today says that Peter even rebuked Jesus over talking about the Passion.  Then in turn, Jesus rebukes Peter.  In English, we render the word as ‘rebuke’, but the Gospels were originally written in Greek, and the word used both to describe what Peter did to Jesus and what Jesus did to Peter is epitimaō. It’s a word used often in the Gospels: when Jesus calms the stormy sea from the boat, when Jesus removed the fever from Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and in several different places when Christ exorcises demons, he rebukes them and orders them to come out. In the Gospel, Epitimaō is used to confront an obstacle or an adversary, and it’s used to describe the way that Peter talked to Jesus, and the way Jesus responded to Peter.  It is harsh.  Other words are used in Greek in the gospels to rebuke and chide in order to lead to repentance and a change of heart. Epitimaō is used only to silence, and to silence roughly.

It’s not recorded in the Gospel what Peter says exactly to Jesus, but we do get to hear what Jesus says to Peter.  Jesus is clearly displeased with Peter, and in fact, the gospel reads that he dragged Peter out in front of everyone in order to upbraid him publicly.  In front of the other apostles, Jesus calls Peter Satan, the ancient accuser, the opponent, the devil.  He goes even further and, as the Gospel records, calls in the entire crowd and makes Peter’s humiliation complete by rebuking Peter in front of everyone, and hints that Peter might be ashamed of Jesus because Jesus had foretold the necessity of the Passion.  And Jesus hints that he might be ashamed of Peter because of Peter’s reaction.

This is not a pretty picture.  In our churches and chapels, there are no stained glass windows of this scene, dedicated piously in memoriam.  It is an ugly scene of a public fight between Peter and Jesus.  We likely wonder, why would Jesus react so harshly?  Why would he publicize his violent rejection of Peter’s displeasure?  Maybe we can understand Peter’s position: Peter didn’t want to lose Jesus, Peter wanted everything to stay the same, Peter couldn’t imagine Jesus’ death as anything but destruction and mutilation.  Jesus is described frequently in scripture as being gentle, a loving and kind shepherd, but here Jesus slaps down one of his favorite and closest friends.  And does so in front of everyone.

But there’s more, of course to this story.  And there are more characters.  It’s not a coincidence, then, that Jesus chose the particular words he hissed at Peter: Jesus called Peter Satan.  And it shouldn’t surprise us.  The story of Simon Peter in the Gospels, is closely linked with the story of Jesus, but also is closely linked with the story of Satan. 

Today, when we read the Gospel, we may prefer to interpret Satan and the role he plays simply as the fallen state of man, or we think of Satan as merely the  general state of the tendency to be tempted and to sin.  We may prefer to replace the word ‘Satan’ in the Gospels with the word ‘evil’.  We may not think of Satan as a personal entity, but a catch-all phrase for difficulty and distance from God.  However.  However, the Gospels are explicit that this is not the way Jesus and the apostles understood Satan.  The Gospels portray Satan as a person, and as someone who converses with Jesus. And this is the context in which Peter comes up again.  Jesus and Satan were not strangers to one another.  They were well-known to each other, and regularly had discussions and encounters.  In a very telling exchange,I Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you like wheat: but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers."  There is a triangle of relationships between Jesus, Peter, and Satan.  In this Gospel, Jesus describes himself as standing between Simon Peter and Satan, shielding Simon Peter from Satan’s desire to sift him like wheat.  In Mark’s Gospel read today, Jesus’ acidic reaction to Peter portrays Jesus rebuking or casting out Satan’s hold over Peter.

Again, it is pretty evident that the writer of Mark’s Gospel felt that Satan was not a name under which was classified various evils, various devils and vices.  Satan was the ancient enemy, the tempter, drawing Peter to question and tempt Jesus to deny the Passion, as Satan had tempted Jesus in the desert, offering him kingdoms and power.  We see a subtle side of Satan here, working through Peter’s own fears in order to try to break Christ from his appointed mission.

Christ realizes the utter seriousness of the situation; the desire to abandon the Passion may have been a very real one for Christ.  Satan’s subtlety was ingenious in playing to that potential weakness in Christ, using the voice of Peter, a close and loving friend.  Turning Christ from the Passion was critical to Satan, and the means by which to turn Christ were unlimited; nothing was out of bonds, nothing untouchable, even a best friend and his best intentions.

There is, of course, a wonderful adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  And we could safely assume that Peter’s intentions were the best.  But when Peter was more concerned with his desire that things should stay the way they were, that Christ should not suffer and die, Peter placed his own preferences before the will of his God.  It sounds like the best of intentions, it sounds like a minor thing, the smallest of faults.  It was evil.  It was Satan, rubbing his hands in triumphant glee.  It was sin.

For Peter, and frequently for many of us, the small sins, the tiniest catering to our own pleasures, desires, gluttony, or greed are the ones we so easily overlook.  We’re not murderers, after all.  We don’t rob defenseless old ladies, of course.  We don’t steal nor blaspheme, we don’t commit sacrilege, nor simony, nor regicide, nor sloth, nor wrath.  We don’t destroy our neighbor nor seek to tear down Christ and His church.  True, we may sin in small things.  In small things.

And when Peter simply erred?  When Peter, in a small way, put his preferences before God’s will?  Jesus finds Satan lurking behind Peter’s seemingly innocent little fault.  Jesus sees Satan working at Peter, he sees Satan sifting Peter like wheat.  Jesus swiftly intervenes, rebuking Satan with Peter’s voice. “Good people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

We don’t imagine that we would ever be confronted with an encounter in which we could choose to sell our souls in order to gain the whole world.  However, Christ also tells us to guard against selling our souls for almost nothing.  He instructs us to guard against selling our souls for the tiniest bit of pleasure, or revenge, or just a moment of spite, or a selfish moment of putting our whims before God’s plans.  Souls are not so frequently lost to the sins of murder and arson and calumny, as they are lost to backbiting, to spiteful thoughts about the person next to us in the pew, to unkindness in our daily lives.  We, too, are being sifted like wheat.

But Christ prays for us, as he prayed for Peter.  Christ rebukes Satan when he speaks with our voice.  Christ is the rough man standing ready to do violence on our behalf.  That violence is the immolation of his own body and the destruction of Satan’s hold over us.  The hand of Satan on us is not heavy, and may rest so gently we are unaware of its clutch on our own shoulder, with it creeping fingers and its grasping palm.  Satan’s hand almost is gentle enough that it is unperceived, and we grow accustomed to it.  But Christ stands as intercessor, imposing himself between us and Satan’s hold, between Peter and Satan’s hold on him.  We work with Christ in opposing Satan’s reign in our lives when we seek to follow the divine mind in each of our daily interactions, and when we realize that even the seemingly smallest of sins is a rejection of God’s will, and an acceptance of a stronger embrace of those creeping fingers and that grasping palm.

Last week, the First Sunday in Lent, we prayed together the Great Litany, one of the oldest Anglican liturgical works we’ve inherited.  Since its conception in the 16^th century, it has changed very little, except for the removal of a prayer to be saved from the tyrannye of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities.  One of the invocations which remained, however, and which we prayed last week,

That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; to
comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up those who
fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

We still plead with Christ to strengthen us and to trample down the great enemy, who opposed Jesus by leading Peter to challenge the necessity of the Passion.  We still plead that we, today, will be strengthened and Satan defeated, that what may seem like the smallest of faults be exposed and converted, that the will of God might more completely encompass us and guide our hearts, that we may continue to sleep peacefully in our beds at night.

Lazy

So, I've not posted in almost a year...I'm lazy.

But, one of my Lenten disciplines is to post weekly.  And since I need to have a reason to post, I figured I would throw my most recent sermon up on my post, and elicit feedback!  I expect it to be unsuccessful, but baby steps are best.

I'm at St Simon's for the first half of 2009, doing my internship as I continue my discernment and formation toward ordination.  The building (pictured) is beautiful, eclipsed only by the people there.

So, here's the sermon I delivered last Sunday, Feb 22, 2009, at St Simon's, South Buffalo.  It was the Last Sunday in Epiphany, and the lessons were as follows:

2 Kings 2:1-12

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 

Mark 9:2-9

So, please read and comment!  If I don't grow as a preacher, I'll blame everyone else.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

A few weeks ago, when I had been here for a week or two, I was wandering around and enjoying the beauty of St Simon’s windows.  In the sanctuary, I stopped at the large window behind me, depicting the crucifixion.  It was created from an unusual angle, looking up from the side, rather than directly on Christ as he hung from the cross.  In my mind’s eye, I imagined who might have had that viewpoint of Christ as he hung dying.  St John?  Christ’s mother, Mary?  Fr Ralph mentioned to me then that the Christmas tree is displayed near that window, and he had reflected on the juxtaposition of the tree representing Christ’s birth growing next to the window illustrating His death.  I’ve been thinking, lately, of just those juxtapositions in the story of Christ’s life, when life is coupled with death, doubt with hope, revelation with missing the point, and like in Christ’s transfiguration in the Gospel today: divine glory with foretelling of ignoble death.

On January 6, we celebrated the great feast of the church that lends its name to the entire season that follows it: Epiphany.  On that day, we were mesmerized by a bright alluring star, and mesmerized by the Magi whom that star had coerced to leave their homes in the East.  Today closes the season that those Magi inaugurated.  The trip of those Mai is summarized in only a few verses, namely as they achieved their ultimate destination in Bethlehem, but their trip surely lasted weeks.  What were they thinking as they crossed difficult terrain, in pursuit of what must have seemed like such a tiny new glow far from their homes?  How sure of themselves were they as they trekked to the west?  What if they were wrong?  What if they had made a mistake?  How many times did doubts arise and how many times had they questioned during their long journey whether all their trouble would be worth what they hoped to find at the star’s resting place?  Imagine how weary they were, crossing barren and lonely desert, hoping against hope that their mission would be fruitful.  The Gospel speaks of the Magi’s success and joy, but that success and joy was only a result of the unmentioned struggle and hardship they endured to achieve it.  So, this is the juxtaposition of Epiphany: the entire season is named for their success, for their wonder and amazement; might it also be named for their doubt and insecurity, for their perseverance in the face of difficulties and contradictory desires?  This Sunday is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, and our Gospel today, then, points back to their work and travel to Bethlehem, least among the villages of Judah.  Our Gospel today, as Christ is transfigured on Tabor, is the last Epiphany in the season.

Our story of Christ today in the Gospel, like the Epiphany story, includes brilliant light.  Instead of a hovering star glowing above an infant Christ, now, on Mt Tabor, Christ Himself is the star.  The Magi came as Gentiles, and received the news that God had taken on a body of flesh, and appeared as an infant, with the star pointing and leading the Gentile Magi to come and worship.  On Mt Tabor, Christ does not reveal Himself to Gentiles as God to be worshiped as he did with the Magi as an infant: on Tabor, Christ reveals Himself to his apostles, sons of the chosen people, as God to be worshipped.   Christ’s first Epiphany to the Gentile Magi is perfected by his epiphany now to the Chosen people, as light to be followed, amidst difficulties and doubts, searing deserts and an almost painful expectation of joy.  Six days earlier, as the Gospel today recounts, Peter had confessed Christ to be the Messiah.  On Tabor, Christ confirms that He is Messiah, and that the Messiah is God enfolded in human flesh.

It’s pretty clear that Peter didn’t get the point.  He was overwhelmed by the events, almost babbling, and clearly not coherent.  Upon seeing Christ glowing, attended by the great Jewish heroes, Moses and Elijah, instead of falling down in worship and awe, Peter offers to put up tents.  Maybe the moment was so great that he wanted it to last forever, and so he offered to put up tents in order to make this epiphany on Tabor permanent.  But permanent things have a tendency to be fixed, Peter.  Permanent things do not grow;  permanent things do not change; permanent things are not Transfigured things. And Peter was never the best at change, it seems.  So, no tents were built, and Moses and Elijah went away.  The transfigured Christ became his everyday self again, and the Transfiguration was over.  But the change was not yet completed.  As they left the mountain, Christ told them that they were not to speak of what they had seen until He had risen from the dead.  And here is the juxtaposition in the transfiguration:  the White Christ, shining in supernatural and terrible light, returns to his normal life and then speaks of his death.  What a contrast: the divine Christ who converses with the giants of the Jewish past would be crushed in death.

The transfiguration is always the last Gospel every year as Epiphany ends and Lent begins.  It is a bridge that leads us and connects us to both glory and horror.  During Epiphany, we are reminded both of the cradle and of the cross, and particularly in the Transfiguration, we witness the resplendent God who shines through His human body and reveals his glory.  But in the midst of His shining through, He speaks of His death.  The transfiguration concludes Epiphany, and inaugurates Lent.

During Lent, we will hear of temptation, of opposition, of suffering, pain, bleeding sweat, whipping, betrayals, and crucified flesh.  And then.  There’s always an And then.  After the suffering, the pain, the death, and then there is glory.  After the blood and the whipping and the betrayals of Lent, and then there is the resplendent Christ, clothed in light like on Mt Tabor.  The and then of Epiphany is Christ’s death, but the And then of Lent is Christ’ s resurrection.

The life of Christ is a series of And thens: no joy is not coupled with sorrow and no pain is not followed by glory.  But this is not just a pattern in Christ’s life: it’s our story, too.  How many times in our own lives have we witnessed good come from a defeat?   I might lose my job, but then realize I want to do something completely different, anyway, and never would have taken the initiative to pursue my dream, had I not been encountered by the need to.  You might be wrapped up in the joy of having a new baby, which leads you to reflect on others who lack joy in their lives, and to pray for the joyless.  Our victories and successes are always balanced by sobering truths: no matter how accomplished, wealthy, admired I might be, I too will grow old, sicken, and pass the way of all flesh.  And no matter how sick, weak, and less autonomous I become as I age, I will pass into glory, prepare for me since the foundation of the world.  As a church, we may wring our hands, wondering why fewer each year turn toward the church for support and the living of a common life in faith.   We may think that these are the darkest of times, and  we may wonder if we will see in our own lifetimes the end of our tradition and if across our nation, no church will remain open.  But these dark thoughts must be coupled with faith in Christ and his work in the world as Lord of the Church: the Church has suffered worse challenges, and the Christ who was transfigured on Tabor is the one who guides the Church, and who will shepherd its ultimate end, all for the greater glory.  No worry or horror is without hope, and no success or triumph will last forever, and the challenges we face as individuals, as a community, and as a nation will end.  Each Christmas morning must be eventually followed by Calvary’s afternoon.  And every sealed tomb, will, in turn, burst forth again in new life.  Lent is not separated and disconnected from Epiphany.  Actually, in the Transfiguration glory is coupled with a prediction of suffering, and we see that Lent is Epiphany’s natural progression. 

How well, then, do we accept and embrace the transfigurations in our own lives?  When the things to which we’ve grown accustomed shake off their earthly appearance and display their divine nature, how frequently do we take notice?  Transfigurations happen everyday to us.  But do we notice them everyday?  Elisha witnessed a transfiguration, and immediately accepted and allowed himself to be changed by accepting that Elijah was leaving him, and that things would not be the same.  And Peter?  He struggled with transfiguration, and had difficulty with thinking that Christ could be something other than what Peter had experienced Christ as.  Peter fumbled when he witnessed Christ shining as God, and he stumbled when he heard Christ foretell his death.  Peter may not have wanted Christ as a gloriously shining God and may not have wanted Christ as a dead body.  He wanted Christ as the teacher and friend he knew; Peter was comfortable with that Christ, and any transfigured Christ disturbed him.

Don’t we find, sometimes, that we do not want to be transfigured, and don’t want transfiguration touching our lives?  As we have seen, transfiguration is disrupting, can be painful, and requires change.  I know that I rail against change sometimes and can feel that the stress and struggle that are part of transfiguration might be too much.  Maybe the Magi wanted to give up.  Peter certainly struggled with it for quite a while.  But each time we accept that God works to transfigure us, works to make our sorrows joyful and works to ground us in times of plenty, each time we work with God in our own Transfiguration, we, too, shine like Christ on Mt Tabor.  Rarely do we get to see it, and never do we get to build tents and bask in it forever.  But radiant light shines out of each of us, through the tiniest of cracks, and we can just catch a glimpse of the divine glory in all of our neighbors, in the person kneeling next to you at the communion rail or in front f you at Wegman’s.  It’s hard, sometimes to see that light of Tabor in those around us.  But nothing changes the fact that it’s there.  We are a transfigured people, and need to work diligently at becoming a transfiguring people, who accept change as growth, and are never afraid of the growing darkness of night, of storm clouds and distant thunder.  Our Christ is the White Christ, resplendent and glorious, who underwent all pain in order to transfer to us all glory.  In the crib under the Star of Bethlehem at Epiphany, shining with Moses and Elijah on Mt Tabor, and hanging from the tree and gasping lowly, Christ is Transfigured and invites us to accept our own Transfiguration.

Amen.