Sermon Archive

The Transfiguration and the Cross

Fr. Mead | Festal Eucharist
Sunday, August 07, 2005 @ 11:00 am
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The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right, that we, who cannot exist without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 14)


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Festal Eucharist
11:00 am
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 9:28-36

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The appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. 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.

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop is an intense Gospel incident recounted by the Evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke as well as the second epistle of Peter, and which is observed as a feast of the Church. The festival is on August 6, yesterday. At Saint Thomas we are taking the opportunity on Sunday to reflect on Jesus’ Transfiguration by hearing the Scriptures and music appointed for the feast.

If you were fortunate enough last year to have seen the Byzantium exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, you saw how important the Transfiguration is in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Many of the icons showed the Transfiguration as a great instance of the Incarnation of God in Christ – Jesus revealing his glory and divinity to Peter, James and John, who formed an inner circle of three within the twelve apostles.

I have been reflecting on that inner circle of Peter, James and John, and what they saw of the glory and deity of Christ. At least three other episodes, besides the Transfiguration, come to mind. First, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and their discipleship, they hauled in the great catch of fish at Jesus’ bidding, after they had toiled all the night before and caught nothing. (Lk 5:2-11) Second, the three were present in the house where Jesus raised the twelve year old daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler, from death back to life. (Lk 9:40-56) And finally, most important, Peter, James and John were present with Jesus on another hill, in the Garden of Gethsemane, during Christ’s night of agony on the eve of Good Friday. (Mk 14:32ff)

Interestingly, what those three disciples saw on the mountain of the Transfiguration prepared them for what they witnessed on the hill of Gethsemane; for, as Luke tells us, Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spoke to Jesus of his departure (that is, his death) in Jerusalem. What we need to see, along with Peter, James and John, is that the two glories, the transfiguration and the agony in the garden, belong together. The icon painters of Byzantium certainly saw this great truth and represented it in an art form designed to be an aspect of prayer – revealing something of heaven to the human eye, especially to the eye of faith.

The point of this sermon is that the glory which manifested itself in Jesus’ transfiguration (namely, the shining forth of his deity through his humanity) was supremely at work and in evidence as he sweat blood in the garden over the issue of the cross as his destiny. The crucifixion is an offense to human feeling in every possible way; yet it remains the supreme symbol of Christ, his faithfulness to God and his love for mankind, right into the next world. My point is that the dazzling glory on the mountaintop cannot be understood until we see that it is most incarnate in Christ’s passion and death; and then again it shines forth in his Resurrection.

In the Gospel the Transfiguration points and leads to the Passion of Christ. It shows that we cannot have Christ without embracing his cross. The cross is not a tragic ending to the otherwise blessed and glorious life of Jesus; the cross is the culmination of Jesus’ identity and mission. When Jesus cried out from the cross in his own hour of God- forsakenness, he was at his finest, most glorious hour. Saint John in his own Gospel calls Christ’s crucifixion the hour of his glorification.

The lesson for the Transfiguration comes from the voice from the cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.” Peter understandably wanted to preserve the moment by building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But the glory of God cannot be grasped and arrested in that way. Better to listen to the voice. After it spoke, they found only Jesus.

I can easily sympathize with Peter. It was Peter who was first among the apostles inspired to confess Jesus as the Christ. It was also Peter who rebuked Jesus for saying that Christ would have to be crucified. When Jesus warned Peter that by resisting the way of the cross Peter was speaking for the devil and not for God, he was also showing us the nature of God and of truly human life; namely that God is self-giving love, and that this sacrificial love conquers all.

Jesus unfolds the secret of both life and love: “He who would save his life will lose it. He who loses his life for my sake and Gospel’s will find it. What does it profit, to gain the whole world and to lose your own soul? What will you give in exchange for your soul?” In other words it is in giving that we receive.

The taking up of the cross, in our own lives here and now, is a specific investment in the glory of God. It is a glory that is hidden behind the scandal of the cross, but it is also openly manifested, as it was in the Transfiguration and as it will be on the other side of death. That is why the apostles told the story of the Transfiguration after Jesus himself was raised from the dead (as we heard in today’s reading from the second letter of Peter).

Down the mountain from the Transfiguration they would go, and on to Jerusalem and the cross. But the glory is most certainly still there, compressed in the small acts of love and courage – in Jesus’ cross, and in the lives and deeds of all those who listen, take up their own cross, and follow him. Let us “lose” our lives in that way and thereby “find” them. The way of the cross turns out after all not only to be the way of glory, but the way of life and peace.

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.