Yes, I'm Still An Identical Twin

Brad Sullivan

Last Epiphany, Year A

Sunday, March 2, 2014

St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99

2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
 

After college, I worked for two years assisting the chaplain at the Episcopal campus ministry at U.T., and it was that priest and community that sponsored me to go to Seminary and become a priest.  So after all of the yes’s from the diocese and the bishop, agreeing that they thought I was called to the priesthood, I went to visit seminaries, and I was over the moon excited.  My first visit was Virginia Theological Seminary, where I ended up going, and it was everything I had imagined it would be and more.  I couldn’t wait to go there, and when I came back from the visit, I was so excited about it, I told the chaplain at U.T. that I felt transformed after that one weekend and if I were to go there for three years, I would be transfigured.

Ok, to be fair, it was a really great weekend, the professors, students, campus, all seemed wonderful, and I had just met my future wife that weekend, but it was still a pretty silly and pretentious thing to say, and no, I was not beyond changed with light emanating from me by the end of Seminary.  What I meant and thought was that Seminary would mold and shape me in such a way that I would be a dramatically changed person by the end of the three years, but that’s not what happened in the transfiguration.

Jesus did not go through some metamorphosis as a result of anything he did.  Rather, in the transfiguration more of Jesus’ complete and whole self was revealed to his disciples.  Appearing with Jesus were Moses and Elijah:  Moses, who gave the law of God to Israel, and Elijah, the great prophet of Israel whose expected return would herald the coming of the messiah.  Then we have Jesus, shining brighter and more majestic than either Moses or Elijah, visually showing himself to be greater than either, Jesus being God himself, the word of God which spoke to and through Moses and Elijah, the a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s son.  “Listen to him,” the voice says.

So, then seeing Jesus’ transfigured glory, Peter said he wanted to make three dwellings and stay up on the mountain with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, and I can’t say as I blame him.  Peter understood something of the enormity of what was going on.  Moses had died over a thousand years previously, and Elijah, darn near a thousand, and yet there they were, chatting it up with Jesus, who happened to be emitting light at the time.  Yeah, this was a pretty big event, and definitely tabernacle worthy. 

I totally get Peter’s reaction to seeing Jesus transfigured before them with Moses and Elijah. He was seeing something beyond miraculous and seemingly wanted to hold on to that moment.  If they had dwellings, they could stay.  The moment could continue.  During wonderful, pinnacle moments in our lives, we tend to want those moments to last forever.  We take pictures, build monuments, tell stories to remember these great events. 

So Peter wanted to make booths when he saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah.  With a dwelling, he could also have returned to the place where the encounter with God happened.  The dwelling could have helped them remember, but it also could have gotten them stuck in that particular time and place.  I could see if they had made the three dwellings, then the dwellings themselves would have become special and sacred. They would have to go back up the mountain to maintain the dwellings and maybe bring people with them in pilgrimages to the dwellings.  

Jesus, however, has other plans and tells Peter, James, and John, not to build three booths, but to get up and not be afraid and to tell no one about the transfiguration until after the resurrection.  So, no shrine building for Peter.  Jesus didn’t allow them to stay stuck in that moment, because after the light of Jesus was revealed to them, they still had a lot of living to do.

My hope and my guess for Peter, James, and John is that the life was not all downhill after the transfiguration, this pinnacle moment in their lives, but that life was continually made sweeter by the memory of the transfiguration and by their continuing to experience Jesus’ transfiguration through the rest of their lives.

Jesus’ transfigured glory was lived by them when they followed Jesus’ way, when they saw him resurrected, when the Holy Spirit came and began the church.  Jesus’ transfigured glory was re-lived by the disciples when they had opportunities to love and serve, to heal and forgive and they took them.  Jesus’ transfigured glory is lived and relived by us whenever Jesus is suddenly present in a situation in life.  Jesus, the sacrament happens when we love, forgive, bless, pray, share stories of God in our lives, serve others, are served by others.  All kinds of sacramental moments when the world appears unchanged, and yet somehow Jesus is present and a tangible way.  Suddenly wherever we are or whatever we’re doing is a sacrament.

We say sacraments are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace:  physical elements which also contain and reveal God’s full presence.  Jesus has been called the primordial sacrament.  Jesus was fully human and fully divine, his divinity not destroying his humanity, but bringing his humanity to its completion, Jesus’ divinity making his humanity whole and sound.  That’s what Peter and James and John saw on the mountain, Jesus’ divinity shining through his humanity, not destroying his humanity, but bringing it to its completion, making his humanity whole and sound.  Jesus’ transfiguration revealed something of what is in us as well.  While we are not fully divine, we too have God’s presence dwelling within us, and the more we allow God’s presence to thrive and live out within our lives, the more our humanity is brought to its completion, our humanity made whole and sound through God’s indwelling presence.

Throughout our lives, we may have little transfigurations, sacramental moments when God is suddenly present almost tangibly through the things and people of this world.  These moments are beautiful when they happen.  They are transformative and revelatory, and they strengthen us and enrich us.  These sacramental moments are not, however, meant to be captured and held onto forever.  We remember and are forever blessed by them, but after they are finished, we come down from the mountain because we still have a whole lot of living to do.

Seminary was not one of these transfiguration sacramental moments for me, despite my early claims.  I enjoyed seminary, the classes, professors, the prayer, the daily prayer together; I made wonderful friends, met and married my wife, but seminary was not a mind blowing, build three dwellings kind of a place or experience for me.  At first I was somewhat disappointed by this.  I had thought it would be this life-altering, pinnacle experience.  It wasn’t, and it wasn’t supposed to be.  The purpose of seminary was not to stay but to go and live as Jesus’ disciple strengthened and blessed by my years there.  When we do have these pinnacle, sacramental moments, these transfiguration moments we also are not supposed to stay.  The purpose of these moments is not to stay but to go and live as Jesus’ disciples, strengthened and blessed.  Amen.