2025 Sun March 2

I. Theme – How we can be empowered by our relationship with God 

“ The Transfiguration ” – Fra Angelico (1440-1442)

“About eight days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” –Luke 9:28:29

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm – Psalm 99
Epistle – 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Gospel – Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]     

Today’s readings help us see how we can be empowered by our relationship to God. The Gospels speak about experiences with God and Jesus. In Exodus, we witness the physical transformation of Moses after spending time in God’s presence. In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of being transformed into the likeness of God. In the gospel, Jesus is transformed, his glory revealed and his mission affirmed by a voice from heaven. Ultimately the disciples will need transformation also.

The season after the Epiphany concludes with one of the most powerful epiphanies of all – the Transfiguration. This story comes at the center of Luke’s story, between Jesus’ baptism and his resurrection.

Luke’s account of the transfiguration points back to Old Testament parallels and forward to Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension. As is such it brings in a new dimension of Jesus and a new relationship that the disciples would have with him. Their experience so far has been of Jesus the teacher, the healer, the miracle-worker. Now they are seeing a new vision of Jesus, a new understanding of him as the Christ – as one who would venture to Jerusalem , be killed but then resurrected .

They are still not on board. Peter, however, still wants to avoid the difficulty of the journey to Jerusalem and its ultimate consequences. The mission of Jesus is not about worshipping at shrines or even the practice of religion. The mission of Jesus is about death and resurrection.

The disciples found the journey in the beginning was easier—they left everything to follow him, and to follow meant to learn his teachings and to live his ways. But now the journey will become much harder

Even faithful Christians wonder if God is absent at times, or busy somewhere else. Massive evil, brutal violence and rampant greed seem to smother any slight glimmers of spirituality. Luke’s audience may have had similar concerns, so he stresses for them the necessity of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and eventual passion there. The transfiguration offers the disciples an experience of hope and confidence that will sustain them while they wait for Jesus to return.

As Christ laid down his life for us, so we are called to give of our life to him, to give up being first, to give up our wants and desires to serve others. And like Christ, we will be called to give all for the sake of God’s love of the world. How do we live this transfiguration in our lives? How do we share what our faith means to us? It is more than a conversation that can be controversial. This is our very lives. Do we let it shine, or do we hold it back? Do we still misunderstand? How will you live out your faith differently this Lenten season?

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1.  Transfiguration is transformation. No one and no situation is "untransfigurable" – Dawn Hutchings

In his book, God Has A Dream: A Vision of Home for Our Time, Desmond Tutu tells about a transfiguration experience that he will never forget. It occurred when apartheid was still in full swing. Tutu and other church leaders were preparing for a meeting with the prime minister of South Africa to discuss the troubles that were destroying their nation. They met at a theological college that had closed down because of the white government’s racist policies. During a break from the proceedings, Tutu walked into the college’s garden for some quiet time. In the midst of the garden was a huge wooden cross. As Tutu looked at the barren cross, he realized that it was winter, a time when the grass was pale and dry, a time when almost no one could imagine that in a few short weeks it would be lush, green, and beautiful again. In a few short weeks, the grass and all the surrounding world would be transfigured.  

As the archbishop sat there and pondered that, he obtained a new insight into the power of transfiguration, of God’s ability to transform our world. Tutu concluded that transfiguration means that no one and no situation is “untransfigurable.” The time will eventually come when the whole world will be released from its current bondage and brought to share in the glorious liberty that God intends.

2.  Transfiguration emphasizes the mission of Jesus -that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross

A. Travis Meir

"Jesus’ ministry continues with the trip back down the mountain. He will not take Peter’s advice and stay on the mountaintop. The mountaintop was a vision of the glory of God, but it is not to be confused with the way of the cross, the true ministry of Jesus. Jesus is to be found where the people are, leaning into their needs, and giving life back to those on the margins.  

The disciples do not understand this, and will not understand it until they here the message from the young man at the tomb, delivered by the women. “He has been raised…Go back to Galilee..he is going ahead of you to Galilee (16:6-7).” That is where the ministry of the kingdom of God continues to unfold" 

B. Lawrence  "Disclosing New Worlds"

 The shadow of the cross hangs over the narrative. And it is the cross, not the resurrection, which is emphasised here on the mountain… the Transfiguration is different from what most of us have been brought up to believe since we coloured in our first picture of the event in Sunday School. This is not a moment of glory, or of hope. It is confirmation of the second great cycle in Mark’s narrative: the Way of the Cross. The Way of the Cross is about engagement with the powers of the day. It will bring about suffering and death. It is the only way – both for Jesus and for would-be followers. The Transfiguration confirms the call to suffering discipleship issued in 8:34f. The divine voice underscores it: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to what he tells you!”  

.. At the end of Epiphany, we stand on the threshold of Lent and have to be prepared to hear the call to the Way of the Cross as shocking, new, uncomfortable, divisive and repellent. We need to commit ourselves to dealing with our blindness and our deafness. In Mark’s narrative, the blind and the deaf symbolise the disciples’ condition and response to Jesus. But it’s a narrative of hope, because the deaf hear and the blind see – and the disciples on the mountain do deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Jesus! That, too, needs to be our story.

3  Transfiguration without a plan – David Lose  "In the Meantime"

We desperately want an encounter with God – some sense that we are not alone, that there is something More than what we can see and touch – and yet in those very moments that God draws near we find ourselves afraid, unsure, and feeling suddenly very out of control and so we try to domesticate our experience of the Holy by fitting it into a plan.

Why? I suspect that as much as we want an encounter with God, we simultaneously fear the presence of God because we fear being changed, being transformed. What we have, who we are, may not be everything we want, but at least we know it, are used to it, have built a relatively orderly life around it. And so when God comes – perhaps not in a transfiguration as dramatic as Mark describes but in the ordinary hopes, encounters, and tragedies of our everyday life – when God comes and unsettles the orderly lives we’ve constructed we try to put those disruptive experiences back into line by cramming them into a plan.

But maybe, just maybe, there is no plan. Maybe there’s only love. And perhaps our job as preachers and leaders isn’t to fit our experience – let alone everyone else’s – into some kind of “divine plan,” but rather to create space for people to experience the wonder and mystery of God. Not a “safe space” necessarily – how could any experience with the God of the Bible be considered entirely “safe”? – but a space into which we will accompany them, neither building booths to make it neat and tidy nor abandoning them, but standing together in the mystery of God and God’s love

4. Transfiguration – an anchor to Jesus Identity  – Paul S. Berge

In the midst of Jesus’ threefold teaching on his forthcoming death and resurrection and words on discipleship (Mark 8:31-9:1; 9:30-34; 10:32-45), the transfiguration story anchors our lives once again in the one whose identity is spoken to us by the Father: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). This word of identity reassures us for our journey, even to our death. In this journey we are instructed by the Father to “listen to him.” Jesus’ journey to the cross during the season of Lent will also be our journey. But just as  death awaits us, as it did Jesus, so too do we walk in the hope of his resurrection. Jesus’ death and resurrection are paradigmatic of our death and resurrection; this is our identity as people of faith

5. The Transfiguration – see the Kingdom of God coming in power.    -Brian Stoffregen

One purpose is that it may be the event referred to in 9:1: "And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." These three disciples have seen the kingdom of God in all its power with the transfiguration of Jesus. 

Jesus is connected to the law and prophets and then Jesus who the prophets aniticipate. Jesus is at the climax of history, a picture of hope.

A Poem for the Transfiguration – “Flow Winds of Time”

Flow winds of time
Whilst the night takes a spin
Stars are falling in deep prime
As the darkness comes in
Feelings like river going
All is within dream reach
Night sky is now glowing
In its twinkling glow bleach

Flow on to a daybreak’s light
Reach the awaken call
In dreams blue and height
As the night must fall
Silvery dress of the day
Awaken in its true reality
Every dream’s now on its way
To become once more free

Flow to the sounds I heard
Whispers in the deep dark
Like ravens of a winged bird
Shadowed dancing embark
Life is like merry-go -round
Deep into their whole make
Until the light’s again found
As new cock-crows’ awake

Now is the night in its dancing
Humming a breeze melody
Dreams of bedroom romancing For a new tomorrow to be

– Peter S. Quinn

Bruce Epperly writes of Transfiguration Sunday in broad strokes:

“God knows, there’s healing to be done, and quickly. But, healing is for abundant life and celebration not just release and relief. Transfiguration Sunday says “take off your sad rags,” “ditch the frown and the furrowed brow,” “fire the thought police and arbiters of orthodoxy,” “give the inner police officer the light off,” and invite in imaginative “lovers, lunatics, and poets” to give us visions of new selves and new heavens and earths. God knows, we need them if we are to be God’s partners in transfiguring ourselves and the world.”

This week we are moving to Last Epiphany on March 2, the last Sunday before Lent begins.

Epiphany is about 2 revelations – Christ to the world through the wise men as well as revelation of Christ to us through baptism. On the first Sunday after the Epiphany, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. His baptism is seen as the primary baptism, the one on which all baptisms follow, the recognition that his followers belong to God as “Christ’s own forever.”

During the three to eight weeks after the Epiphany, we learned in the gospel lectionary readings about Jesus’ miracles of healing and his teachings. This is a continuation of the theme of the revelation of Christ to his followers. “Come Follow Me”. Jesus has not only arrived but through him the kingdom of God as one who fulfills and extends God’s teachings through the Sermon of the Mount. The last Sunday in Epiphany, the transfiguration can be seen as the bridge between Epiphany and Lent.

At the beginning of the Epiphany season, at the Baptism of Jesus, the liturgical color was white. In the Gospel reading in Matthew at his baptism said, “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In the Transfiguration which we will celebrate on March 3, the 8th Sunday after Epiphany, the Gospel of Matthew records, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The liturgical color once again is white.

Transfiguration serves as the culmination, the climax, of Jesus manifesting his glory and his identity as the Son of God. From this point on, Jesus sets out to Jerusalem, to suffer, die and be resurrected. We will see this story during Lent beginning March 2. This same glory he will return to, once he has completed the saving mission for which he came. Coming full circle, we will one day be in life with Christ as “Christ’s own forever.”