Last Sunday in Epiphany: Transfiguration

On the last Sunday in Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent, I preached this sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo, NY, based on the Gospel appointed:

Matthew 17:1-9

In ninth grade biology, I learned how to fill out Punnett Squares, to determine the likelihood of offspring having certain genotypes from their parents. Many of you may remember these ingenious little charts, maps of all the possible combinations that genes can be expressed in the children of two parents. We spent a lot of time concentrating on multiple generations of green peas; if I were to go on and become a green pea researcher, those hours with Punnett squares would have been invaluable, as I would strive to make fascinating green pea offspring that those little four squares could predict. But back then, I wasn’t much of a vegetable savant, and so I was much more interested in what Punnett squares could tell me about a more engrossing topic: myself.
If I were to design Punnett squares from my parent’s characteristics, and see what the potential children would inherit, I would occupy entirely different squares from my older sisters. They are blond, while I struggled with wavy auburn hair that turned silver when I was 16 (thanks, mom!) and my green eyes look nothing like their sky blue ones. They tan; I turn different alarming shades of pink. They made it through adolescence gracefully, going through their teens and becoming adults in a way that made it all look so easy. I didn’t hit 100 pounds until ninth grade. My eyebrows and ears grew first, and then I grew an entire foot in a year. My adolescence was awkward, weird, and made me feel like a stranger in my own skin; I wanted to be different than I was, I wanted to look different than I did, I was inpatient with my imperfections and weaknesses; I wanted to be one of those shiny, happy people all around me.
If I could have selected my own Punnett squares, I would have made some dramatically different trait choices. My adolescence had me wishing I could change around some aspects of my face, of the way I looked, as easily as it seemed I could for green peas. Teen years are difficult enough, as it was difficult for any of us who wrestled with transitioning between two worlds: leaving behind a carefree childhood, and entering an anxious adult world with mysterious responsibilities and intimidating energy. And for some of us, not only do we have this psychological conflict of transitioning through our teen years, but we also to change the way we looked, to change the way we were changing: we want to control my transition.
On Mt Tabor, Peter, James and John witnessed the Lord Christ’s Transfiguration, his changing of appearance. We name this event the Transfiguration, because we single out this miracle of the rapid change in Christ’s appearance, and we name it from the Latin phrase transfigurare, to change shape, to change the way one looks. What Christ accomplished in a blink of an eye before the startled Apostles took me years. The inbetweeness and awkwardness I felt in high school was entirely absent when Christ changed Himself on Tabor’s slopes. That miracle of the Transfiguration, the miracle of Christ exposing His divine nature to the Apostles in a gleaming rapid change of his face, showed to those who witnessed that the power of God is always present with them, that the grace of God infuses all of His Creation, and that the Christ, as both our human brother and our divine Lord, rests always with us, walks always next to us, as both God and man.
But I really wish I could have just changed the way I looked as quickly as Christ did! How great it would have been to just be different, to be who I thought I should be. But I would have lost what I learned if I had missed out on those weird, awkward transitioning years. I learned to become more comfortable with in-betweeness, with incompleteness, with moving toward something new. I learned a bit about being more open to differences, to conflicting pulls and ideas; being an awkward teenager taught me to be less polarizing, and less polarized. And even Christ, in his changing on Tabor, was accompanied by two very different persons, representing two very different forces. Moses, giver of the Law, showing that rules, structure, lists are a divine gift. And Elijah, a shaker upper, a force for change and challenge and prophecy, witness to a God who speaks not though commandments, but through a small still whisper. Christ, alongside men who heard God through Law and through silent whispers: In betweeness, conflicting pulls and ideas.
Our Christian life is more like adolescence than it is like anything else. We frequently call the Christian life a journey, and it seems to ring true that we travel along in our life of grace, rather than arriving at it. A journey not yet completed, a walking of a path with opposing ideas, with law and with whispers, sometimes with awkwardness, with struggles, with feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, and sometimes with confidence. Our Christian life as journey can help us to reflect that we are all incomplete, all on a path to greater wholeness and to further change. We walk this path of life together, all gangly teenagers, trying to see how we fit in individually, and together.
There will always be things with which we struggle to overcome and change as we travel on as Christians; we’d like to be more humble, more caring, less irritable. But we need to own those faults, offering them up as characteristics that help shape us as who we are; our journey will help smooth out those rough spots, but they won’t disappear, they’ll be changed into a different and more complete wholeness. Christ’s wounds did not vanish from his Resurrected Body, but were changed into banners of sacrifice and love. So, too, will our journey in this life and its change into the next life, alter our faults and failings into Resurrected wounds, banners of struggle. Instead of looking at our spiritual Punnett squares, and wishing we could exchange some of our souls' less than perfect DNA for something a bit more glorious, we need to learn to be more comfortable and less judgmental about our own shortcomings, trusting in Christ to change them from weakness into strength.
Eventually, the rest of my face caught up with my eyebrows. Eventually, in life and through death, God perfects each of us, each solitary one of us, walking a pilgrim road; but we do not walk on that pilgrimage alone; we are surrounded by our brothers and sisters, by those who have gone before us, accompanied by Moses, by Elijah. We do this journey, we walk this path as a people, loved by a Transfigured Christ who strengthens us on our Christian journey to perfection.
This week, on Wednesday, you will be invited to begin a Holy Lent. We are leaving the Epiphany season, begun with a mysterious Child in a manger, featuring foreign kings with startling gifts to crown the Child as King, to worship Him as God, to anoint Him for His saving death. We heard proclaimed Christ’s love turn water into wine, we heard proclaimed that Mary’s heart would be pierced by a sword. We heard proclaimed bright gleaming divinity on Tabor, and now, in Lent, we enter a time of reflection, of preparation, of further journeying. Of preparation for the great sacrifice on Calvary, to which we will attend as witnesses that Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.
Lent reminds us that sacrifice and joy are never disconnected. Christmas must be followed by Good Friday, and then by Easter. Our Christian life also will include wonder, and sorrow, joy and loss. Lent should help us learn to reflect upon and learn to more tenderly embrace that conflict, that uncertainty, that inbetweeness. We are still spiritual adolescents, pilgrims along a path together that will bring us to completeness through the grace of Christ, grace given at Bethlehem, at Cana, on Tabor’s heights, through Calvary’s pain, and Easter’s trumpet. Our journey shows that we are the same person, even though our outward appearance will change, even though we are transfigured, we remain the same kid in high school who struggles to figure out his place in the world. And, in Lent, we must not be so penitent that our memories of Christmas fade. The entirety of the Christ story as one story should remain with us all year round. And our own stories are each one story, for we never stop being the person we were as children, as teens, as young adults: we simply add on new experiences. The same is true in Christ’s life, for He is our human brother. The baby’s voice that cried out from the manger for His mother was the same voice that cried out to His mother on the hard wood of the cross.
Though we’d like to change our lives around, arrange them to be more consistent, so that our lives would be less confusing, all joy, all neatness and clear lines, we must learn from the Transfiguration and from Lent that each of us is an amalgam of conflicting ideas, desires, strengths and weaknesses that Christ is always blessing, always lifting up, always working toward perfection. One day, as we pass through this life into the perfect life prepared by our loving God, we will see that our mismatched experiences, struggles, and awkwardness are transfigured into radiant glory, and are given as our offering, as our sacrifice to the Christ who sacrificed all for love of us.