Last Epiphany C
February 27, 2022, Luke 9:28-36 St. Mark’s
My husband’s father, Bob, calls. He is experiencing excruciating back pain and can barely walk. My husband and daughter are in Greece. I get off the phone and seek advice from colleagues who perform tests, and then I go with Bob to a specialist. As I impatiently and nervously wait, a lone older woman in the waiting room briefly reminds me of all those who do not have friends or family with them and must wait for long hours alone in emergency and waiting rooms in pain before answers come./
The specialist says that my father-in-law has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. The medical team starts Bob on a trial protocol. Two days later, on my way home from church, I realize the hospital has been paging me. My father-in-law is in intensive care and has had a reaction to the new drug. My husband and daughter rush home from Greece. Bob is put back on a more standard treatment for his cancer. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school and moves back home to help care for his grandfather. Six months later, Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through all the nursing home and assisted living decisions that many of you have faced. Each day presents a new, unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of how to minister to someone we so dearly love.//
The disciples in our story today also have faced one new challenge after another. They are exhausted by the nonstop demands of the crowds. Recently, they were sent off to cure and heal the sick. They have an amazing run of success and return to tell Jesus all about it. But when he takes them for a well-earned respite, more crowds interrupt them. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but we all know what happens next—“fish sandwiches” for 5000, or probably 15,000 if we add in the women and children.
The next day doesn’t feel like a vacation either, because Jesus starts telling them about his upcoming suffering and death, something they may experience as well. We can’t blame the disciples for missing the resurrection part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “When you think you are heading for the dungeon, anxiety, and panic tend to block out everything else.” 1
Eight days later, the disciples are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even if it is to pray, as Luke mentions. But there go Jesus, Peter, James, and John ascending up a steep mountain. You know they are wondering what is so special about praying on top of this unnamed mountain?/
If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. The world’s insistent demands make it challenging to find a spiritual focus. I, like Barbara Crafton, keep thinking of a million silly things, like did I send out that last email, what’s for lunch?2 If I make it, it is only thanks to many faithful companions beside me in community here at St. Mark’s,/, as well as the communion of saints, past and present, that constantly support and pray with and for us.//
On top of this mountain, Jesus is doing all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, which connects the disciples’ humanness on this mountain to their inability to stay awake later at Mount of Olives. Suddenly, just as sleep is about to overcome the three, a brightness startles them. Their eyes open wide. Jesus, who reached the summit slightly above them, now shines with the brightness of the sun, says Matthew, and his clothes become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them,” says Mark. The disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ They also see two other well-known figures talking to Jesus. All three synoptic gospels identify them as Moses and Elijah, who speak in Luke’s account to Jesus about his imminent departure in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence reminds us of the exodus of the Jewish people through the Red Sea from Egypt, suggesting that Jesus will now accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection,/ just as Moses parted the Red Sea, leading his people safely to the promised land./
But Jesus’ brief dramatic change in appearance from man to God/ is lost on the three disciples. They are mystified, dumbfounded. Peter expresses the confusion of his shocked companions and a lack of awareness of Jesus’ true divinity by suggesting they stay on the mountaintop to make similar dwellings or monuments to all three.1///
On the top of a mountain, we sometimes do see the world differently. In the Hebrew Bible, mountain summits are stages for life-changing events. Noah lands on Mount Ararat. Abraham nearly kills his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. God gives Moses the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, and today we hear about the transfiguration of Jesus on an unnamed mountain.3
We all have had mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even when we barely comprehended them, as did the disciples./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play, /where theological bones take on flesh. Flesh becomes divinity. / This is where we most often see the transfigured face of God, in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearance changed as they return to life from near-fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who have not accepted us as the gender God created us to be, where we see Jesus, the Christ, in the face of a homeless man at the traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/. In these times, for a brief moment/ we see someone as a real person, we see Christ in each other.
A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that in reality, Jesus, God, is transformed all the time, but only at certain moments can we see the likeness of God in each other,/perhaps most often when we live in the present moment/ or in stressful times where we are experiencing “altitude sickness.” We, humans, seem not able to bear much reality, wrote T. S Eliot. It is too incomprehensible to look God in the face/ for any length of time.2 ///
We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments. As I look about the crowded waiting rooms, again, I think of the ill who do not have family to support them. How do they get here? How do they survive and keep coming back?/
At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our son, who looks so much like his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the old man hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender, the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They are each transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountaintop. / “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it is almost beyond bearing.” 4
Transfiguration again occurs the night Bob dies, as he is cared for in his last hours by both of his grandsons. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/, but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain and he begins his ascent. //
Today, if we listen carefully, we can still hear the voice that interrupts Peter: “Listen to him.” Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words we will soon hear from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory/and on the brink of death. We have heard this voice before at his baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” Listen on this hill, but also listen soon on another hill when darkness closes in.1////
“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put yourself inside this story, listening for the voice that urges us to stop and listen for his Voice. When you are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured face of God in all you will meet./ The Beloved, the Son of God, the Son of Man, will always be there/ beside us/ and will shine in the darkness,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”
1Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment” in Christian Century, February 6, 2007, p. 16.
2Barbara Crafton “Last Epiphany” in The Geranium Farm, February 1, 2008.
3Thomas Jay Oord in Christian Century, January 17, 2017.
4Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com