The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 27, 2022
O God, who before the passion of thy only-begotten Son didst reveal his glory upon the holy mount: Grant unto us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Genesis 28:10-17
1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21:12-16
A couple of weeks ago, when I preached on the feast of the Church’s dedication, I talked about special places, places set apart that stand on the threshold between our world, bounded by time and limits, and the eternal world of heaven. These are places where we are able to see that ladder going up to heaven and the angels ascending and descending. Our Church is one such place. We come here so we may intentionally approach the divine, get a glimpse – if just for an hour or so – of the eternal world of angels and archangels who continuously sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” And when the mass is done, I kick you all out into the world, each of us sated by the Eucharist we share, reincorporated into the Body of Christ, so we may go about those several vocations that Saint Paul talks about in this morning’s lesson, prepared to do the works of love that Paul describes.
Coming to church, then, can be an experience where, away from daily life, we encounter the divine. In this way, it can be a kind of “mountain top experience” in which we go to a special place, stay a while, encounter God, and return to the world from whence we came somehow changed or refreshed. We only stay in church for a little while, we don’t spend all day here, we don’t hunker down hoping to prolong the experience. We are expected to go and use what we have learnt, be who we have become, back in the hustle and bustle of daily life. This is the pattern Scripture has taught us in the stories we heard today in the lesson from Exodus and our gospel from Luke.
The passage from Exodus begins with Moses, not going up the mountain, but coming down holding the two tablets upon which were written the law. His journey up and his time in the presence of God were not for his personal spiritual growth. It was not a private theophany. Rather, Moses went up the mountain, to a liminal place, where he encountered God for the purpose of bringing to the people the law that would constitute a covenant between God and the people of Israel.
And when Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. And afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai.
He came down into the midst of the people and encouraged everyone to gather around, despite their fear of his shining countenance; and immediately he shared with them all that had happened on the mountain. Indeed, Moses was privileged to go up to the mountain several more times and every time he went up, he came down and visited with the people “and told the people of Israel what he was commanded.” There was no secrecy, no holding back. The people were even able to see how he was changed, how his face shone. Even that was not private, just for Moses. The prophet went up the mountain, not as we might expect in today’s enviroment, suffused with New Age ideas, as a personal spiritual journey to go deeper into the self, but in order to strengthen the relationship of God with the people. What Moses did up there had a direct relationship with what was happening on the ground with his people.
Luke may conclude his version of the Transfiguration story by telling us that Peter and James and John “kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen,” but it is evident (as it is in other places in scripture where the silence of the disciples is either commanded or stated) that that isn’t what really happened. The whole purpose of the Jesus going up the mountain to pray and then being transfigured before those three disciples was to show them something, to teach them in the most dramatic of ways more about Jesus’ identity, and for that to have consequences for the world.
Indeed, the story of this trip up the mountain is immediately preceded by a discussion of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah who will be suffer, die, and be raised on the third day. That passage concludes with Jesus’ talking about the time “when [the Son of man] comes in his glory and the glory of the Father, and of the holy angels” and telling them that “there are some here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” Inevitably, we understand Jesus’ words here about “coming in glory” and of some of the disciples not tasting death “before they see the kingdom of God” to refer to his resurrection, and, indeed, we would be correct. However, it also becomes clear that Jesus gives Peter and James and John the chance to see this prophesy fulfilled just eight days later when they go up the mountain: “and behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Jesus appeared “in glory,” then and there on the mountain, well before his “departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Jesus tells the disciples who he is and then on the mountain shows some of them this glory before they have “tasted death.”
And in the midst of all of this, Peter is so excited about what is unfolding that he asks if they can stay there a little longer, stay in the presence of Jesus in his glory, Jesus as the Risen Christ. It is not to be, however, and this is when we hear the announcement by God that Jesus “is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When you go up the mountain, you have to come down and use what you have learnt, what you have seen and experienced, back into the world, for it is back in the midst of life that those disciples are put what they have learnt into practise. Jesus brought Peter and James and John up the mountain so they could experience Jesus’ glory, Jesus true identity, if even just for a moment and then come down and, refreshed, continue the work of the gospel, the good news, and of the kingdom of God as it unfolds towards Jesus’ passion, that which he would “accomplish at Jerusalem.” This experience was not to make Peter and James and John somehow personally better, but to reveal to them who Jesus is and make them better ministers, better equip them for the work that lies ahead. Coming down is just as important as being up there.
As I said at the outset, we have access to mountain top experiences in the course of our lives. We can have them quite by accident if we are open to the possibility. This is what happened to Jacob. We can seek these experiences deliberately every time we come to a place we already know to stand on the threshold between the world and heaven, like this church. What we must always bear in mind is that the mystical experience is not the end point, but rather the beginning of something that grows once we have returned to the mundane world. Do we glow when we walk out the doors having just received the Sacrament? Perhaps not externally, but in other ways we do shine bright with the love of God burning inside of us.
This is something important to bear in mind in these days, and not simply because Lent starts on Wednesday. Right now with war in Ukraine and a pandemic still menacing the world, we must always remember that God is closer than we think. At the very least, we have access to the inspiring, strengthening vision of God here at Saint Ignatius in the Eucharist we celebrate together. Here we behold and make part of ourselves Christ’s very body, broken but risen, in many ways a reflection of who we can be. What we see and do here fills us with God’s own love and this Love is that which Paul writes about in his First Letter to the Corinthians:
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
We come here and reaffirm our connection in baptism with God in Christ and with the Love that both is identified with him and in which we partake.
This patient, kind, unselfish, eternal, transformitive Love is what we take with us down from the mountain and into the world. Here, we reaffirm our faith in – that is our relationship with – this very Love that we have witnessed and felt here and find hope in its power to transcend the ills and evils we face in the world in this moment. We find on the mountain the strength to persevere as Jesus’ love bearers, full of the knowledge that the kingdom of God is unfolding all around us and that this Love that never dies inevitably triumphs.
Andrew Charles Blume✠
New York City
26 February 2022
© 2022 Andrew Charles Blume