Last Epiphany C, February 14, 2010
Trinity, Newark
Kathryn P. Clausen

Exodus 34:29-35
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36
Psalm 99 

Transfiguration

This is the last Sunday of the season of light, the Epiphany of our Lord. In visual terms, it is the climax of a gradually growing flame of revelation to the people of God of who Jesus really was. The Epiphany is the time of his ministry of teaching, healing, and preaching. He has reached out to the people, telling them of their place in history and of their place in the divine order. They have grown to love and trust him and he has developed a large following everywhere, except in his own home town of Nazareth. He has also been forming and instructing his apostles. He has a task in mind for them, but for which they were unprepared. They loved Jesus and gave up their own lives and vocations to follow him. But, like all the other people, they did not at first understand who Jesus was or what he really represented. Ultimately, it would be his death and resurrection that would finally convince them. They then would go out to take that message to mankind.

This scene on the mountaintop, however, was the next great step in the demonstration of Jesus’ glory to his apostles. It revealed to them their misunderstanding and taught them that, through God, the next step had been taken. Moses and Elijah were great figures in Jewish history, prophets who had had their own mountaintop experiences and who had be elect of God for a very special purpose in their time in history. They must have been in the forefront of the consciousness of these apostles. For Peter to suggest that Jesus was co-equal with them and could have a booth to share the mountaintop with them must have been a significant leap of understanding in his mind. But it was insufficient. God appeared in a cloud and fairly shouted at them, “THIS IS MY SON, MY CHOSEN”. I can only imagine the scene. Maybe they were blown right off of their feet, knocked flat by the power of that declaration. And Poof! Moses and Elijah were gone and only Jesus remained. The old era of Jewish law (Moses) and prophesy (Elijah) were over once and for all time. This was a new era, the age of Jesus and the ultimate revelation of God to his people. There is none other than Jesus, and he shone forth like the sun.

This miraculous revelation was kept secret by the apostles. It was for their benefit and instruction only. They were to carry the Great Commission after the final chapter, and they were the ones to whom this was revealed. The rest would understand later, after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But the apostles needed to know this now, so that they could make sense of what was about to transpire.

Without this foreknowledge and understanding, the events of Jerusalem would have been unendurable and may have destroyed their faith and broken their spirit. Without them to carry the message, it might all have been for naught.

The apostles were weighted down with sleep. I wonder if this all happened to them in a dream. There is a dreamlike quality to the whole story, isn’t there. It doesn’t matter. God spoke to Joseph in a dream. It was a gateway for God to reveal himself. If it were a dream, it was enormously powerful and effective.

Some of us have these kinds of dreams. I have had powerful dreams of encounters with God and with Jesus. They are not common, but they happen. In dreams, God has a freedom of expression unhindered by time, place, physical limitations or even common sense. We can experience things in dreams that we might reject as impossible in our alert and presumably more rational state of wakefulness. In dreams, we can have mountaintop experiences that might never happen otherwise. Dreams are freedom. Freud thought they were the portal to the mind. But perhaps they are also the portal to the soul. And dreams are a place where your unfettered soul can encounter God. Dreams can also be a place of terror where your greatest fears may be exposed. I am sure all of you can remember some vivid dream of danger, or of trying to escape but being able to move only in slow motion. Or of the classic exam dream where you go to class and are given an exam and are totally unprepared. We have erotic dreams. Sometimes in our dreams we see people long dead and greatly missed. Dreams can be a dangerous place that we might wish to forget, and often do. But this vulnerability also makes us open to God, uninhibited and exposed. This encounter with God can be terrifying, but it is also a foretaste of the kingdom. Do not be surprised that God might reach out to you sometime in your dreams. Do not reject this as foolishness or some little trick of the mind. Listen to what God is telling you, by whatever means he chooses to use. He could come to you in a dream, and you should be there to greet him.

Jesus shone like the sun, and eclipsed everything around him. This was the climax of his ministry, and marked the turning point when he began his progress to Jerusalem and his death on the cross. On Ash Wednesday, we begin our own journey to Jerusalem with him. The lights are put out. The great alleluias are silenced and will not be heard again until Easter. Beautiful decorations are put away and our attention will be turned inward for a little while. It is hard to prepare for death. But in Lent, that is what we are doing. If you have ever lived out the final days with someone you love, Lent must be a poignant reminder of what that was like. It was grieving in advance. But it was also the chance to say things that had been left unsaid, to make amends for past wrongs, and to say our good-byes. It was not easy, but it had to be done. Denial would have been a sin. So it is with Lent. It is our death vigil with Jesus, but also our greatest opportunity for authentic prayer and saying things to God that had been unsaid. It is the way of the Cross. Dying sometimes exposes the heart and soul in a way never possible in ordinary living. Jesus offered to us his own death as a way of opening our hearts to God. Do not let this opportunity pass you by. That is the meaning of a Holy Lent. Amen.