The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette Kauffman's homily from August 6, 2023, at Christ Episcopal

 

Before & After

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph

Year A, The Transfiguration

Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Peter 1:13-21, Luke 9:28-36

Some stories just don’t mean much until you know the “before” and the “after. Here’s an example, a rather mundane one to be sure, but…

Wednesday of the last week of July, I was standing on a wide, sunny path in a section of the Kisatchie National Forest way down in Vernon Parish in the southwest area of the state. I was walking along slowly with several other equally crazy folks sweating bullets and counting butterflies on the wildflowers that bordered the path.

And my phone rings. Now, I’m pretty good at ignoring my phone. First of all, I do not like talking on the phone. I find it to be an awkward way to try to communicate. Second, I do not believe that I am so very important to the rest of the world that every call must be answered immediately regardless of where I am or what I am doing. Caller ID is my fave invention of all time!

So it’s a bit of a miracle that I even pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it, but I did. Lo and behold, the Diocese of Western Louisiana was calling. That’s the Bishop’s office! Oh, my. The Bishop does not call me very often. And so indeed I hastened to answer the phone.

Well, it wasn’t the Bishop. But it was the bookkeeper in the Diocesan office—the man who pays bills and keeps track of the money. And the Diocesan Treasurer was on the phone with him. And they had questions about checks to Canterbury@ULM that had not been cashed. I explained where I was and that I sometimes didn’t deposit Canterbury checks right away, and I asked them to please send me an email and I’d check into it as soon as possible. They said “sure,” and that was that. Or so I thought at that moment.

Later that day, after I was showered and cooled off and not focused on butterflies anymore, I began to reflect on that phone call. And the more I reflected on the phone call, the more concerned I became, and the more concerned I became the more conflicted I became.

So here’s the telling context: I knew perfectly well that I had allowed other priorities to push Canterbury bookkeeping to a back burner. Yes, I could account for how I had spent Diocesan funds, but… it was going to take me some time going through a box of receipts, bank statements, and deposited checks—maybe undeposited checks—to answer their questions.

And what happened next? The next day my concern overcame my desire to finish my vacation. That was the conflict! I was supposed to be on vacation through the end of the week. But I cut it short, went home two days early, and spent those days organizing and updating Canterbury records and answering their questions. Lesson painfully learned.

The Transfiguration is one of those kinds of stories. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray. He takes his closest disciples with him. They are heavy with sleep, but their sleepiness is penetrated by a vision of Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah. They might very well have thought they were dreaming.

Peter says something rather silly, and then it’s over and they go back down the mountain. They’ve had a mountaintop experience—as have most of us. And then life goes on.

Or does it? Does life simply “go on” or do true mountaintop experiences change things fundamentally? I’m going to offer some thoughts on that in a few minutes, but first, some backstory.

Our lectionary readings take a bit of liberty with the actual biblical text. We only read a short piece out of a longer text on Sunday morning, so adjustments are made to the text so that it will stand alone and make sense. For example, if the lectionary text begins in the middle of Jesus preaching or teaching, the words “Jesus said” might be added so that listeners will know who they are hearing.

For the story of the Transfiguration, some words have been removed from the biblical text. If you go to Luke 9:28, the first verse of today’s passage, it actually says, 

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.

What “sayings”? There’s a clue right there in the Transfiguration story. It says that Jesus, Elijah and Moses are discussing Jesus’ “…departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” In other words, the Transfiguration comes right after Jesus has tried to teach his disciples that he must undergo great suffering and be killed and be raised on the third day. And he has also just said that becoming his follower means taking up their crosses daily and following him.

Not a comforting message. Not “good news” to the disciples. It is not clear that the disciples understood it. They were certainly not eager to hear it. No wonder they wanted to linger on the mountaintop. It must have seemed a much more wonderful reality than that which Jesus had predicted.

So what comes next? Does the mountaintop experience change everything? Well, yes. And no. Yes, in that Jesus comes down off the mountain and sets his face toward Jerusalem. There’s no more wandering from town to town, no more sermons on the mount. No more agonized prayer to the Father asking if the “cup” he faced could be taken away. Just a steady march to Jerusalem, his triumphant ride into town on a donkey, his trial and his agony on the cross.

His disciples trail along. John stays with him, presumably the whole way because he is there at the foot of the cross. Peter trails and falters and returns and… we’re not sure where Peter is all of the time but we know he was ultimately faithful and faced his own suffering for the sake of the Gospel.

But there’s one thing that did not change, and I love this moment in the story. Luke tells us in verse 37, the very next verse after the passage we read this morning, that when Jesus comes down from the mountain, a great crowd met him and in that crowd a man who shouts out to Jesus, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son.”

Now Jesus has every good reason to just keep walking. To retain his focus on the agony that is to come. To get on with it. But of course he doesn’t. Of course, he goes right back to doing God’s work in the here and now. His compassion and commitment to his earthly work, his toil in the valleys of human experience, has not been changed by his mountaintop experience.

He responds to the father and his son. He calms the demon, restores the child and gives him back to the father… before he continues on his way to Jerusalem.

Brothers and sisters, may we be as steadfast in the work God has given us to walk in. I hope we all have mountaintop experiences—at the very least times or places we have met God, have had the glory of God revealed to us. For some, those times and places might be in church. For me, they tend to be out somewhere in nature. I hope we spend time in those places often. And may they fortify us for the long haul, keep us focused on the big picture.

But let us not be distracted from the work we have been given to walk in. Let us respond faithfully to the needs right in front of us, the jobs that need doing at the end of our nose.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.