Sermon Archive
Readings for 18 February 2007
Last Sunday After Epiphany
Year C
Exodus 34:29-35
Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, 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 spoke with them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Luke 9:28-36
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. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
The Rev. Cornelia Spoor, Dcn
“and they kept silence and told no one in those days what they had seen.”
In nomine patri…
What exactly is that they had seen? In today’s Gospel, true to his character, Peter wakes up, “heavy with sleep,” sees Jesus with Moses and Elijah and blurts out “Master, it is well that we are here, let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Peter, the rock, the foundation on which Jesus builds the Church blurts that out. The text says he proposes the idea “not knowing what he said.” So, as usual for Peter— both a strong rock and a fallible human-- Peter doesn’t quite get it. He has recognized the divinity of Jesus, and he surely knows that both Moses and Elijah are supposed to return before the final judgment. He overhears Elijah and Moses talking about Jesus’ ‘departure,’ so perhaps he thinks that the final judgment is about to take place. But nonetheless, Peter thinks life is still going to be the same as it was before, that Jesus is somehow going to be just like Moses and Elijah, and that, therefore, building a booth is the right thing to do for Jesus. It would be the right thing to do for another revered prophet; but it is not the right thing to do for God. God can’t be contained in a building or a booth. Poor Peter, at just that moment, “heavy with sleep,” he doesn’t get it. This is the Peter we’re familiar with, the one who tries to walk on the sea and begins to sink – stumbling and impulsive, almost comical in his earnestness and his unerring ability to get it not. quite. right.
And yet, what might we reasonably expect of Peter? Luke tells us that Peter, James and John went to the mountain with Jesus “about eight days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God.” And it was only a little longer since Peter, an ordinary fisherman, was working in his boat and rowed Jesus out from shore so Jesus could speak to the crowds. When Peter wakes “heavy from sleep” and blurts out an idea, it has been only a week since Peter nearly had his boat sunk by all the fish that Jesus brought into his nets—with a few words. It has been only a week since Peter then brought his boat back to shore and left everything and followed Jesus.
And here Peter is, seeing Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew tradition. Here Peter is, hearing a voice speaking from a cloud, reminding Peter just who is it that he’s chosen to follow. No wonder he blurts out whatever comes into his head. If it were you or I, what would we say? For me, being coherent enough to say something about building booths is all I could possibly hope for. And that’s only if I start by assuming that I’d have been clear-sighted enough, open enough, wise enough to lay down my nets and follow Him up to the mountaintop.
And no wonder that Peter and James and John “kept silence and told no one in those days what they had seen.” Did they keep silence just because they were terrified? Or for the same reason that Moses covered his face when it shone after talking with God, because it terrified the people and made them afraid to come near him? Did Peter and James and John have any inkling how Jesus’ departure would happen, much less what was to follow it? I wonder if they had some premonition, any idea at all, what would happen next. Might they have kept silent in the hopes that they were wrong, that some final judgment day was not about to come, or could be somehow be forestalled or avoided? In any case, perhaps they didn’t have the language to describe what they had seen.
Moments of epiphany, of understanding, are so often referred to as ‘mountaintop moments,’ which is a wonderful description of the “aha!” of suddenly getting it, and these descriptions usually go on to consider how to maintain the “high” of the epiphany once we metaphorically come down from the mountaintop. But this year, as we approach Lent, what I hear most clearly in this story is not so much the epiphany, the getting it, but rather, the not-getting-it. This year in reading and praying with this familiar passage, I am drawn to Peter’s fallibility.
And that makes sense: I feel am most like Peter, when I recall his fallibility. There’s not too much more Peter and I have in common. Today is not two millennia ago; and we’re not up on that mountain. We don’t necessarily get to go up any mountain and see Moses and Elijah, and then hear the voice of God from a cloud. I don’t think that I personally know anyone who’s experienced such a vivid epiphany; and if I had myself, I would most likely keep silence and tell no one what I had seen, for fear of being seen as delusional-- or to put it clinically, completely bonkers, completely honking bonkers.
For most of us, of course, epiphanies—if they come at all-- tend to be far less dramatic, smaller than Peter’s. Perhaps God knows about the “bonkers thing,” our fears or suspicions about vivid epiphanies. And surely God knows that we could not withstand the brightness of God’s power, face to face. Even to the disciples on the mountaintop, after all, He did not appear but came as a voice from a cloud. Our epiphanies may be not so much a blinding flash, seeing God on a mountaintop, as they are like a tap on the shoulder or a nudge in the small of the back… In her wonderful book, Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher describes her own epiphanies-- of rediscovering her faith through a trip to Nicaragua and working in a soup kitchen. She says
These were my epiphanies: no thunderclaps, no voices from heaven. A brief glimpse, a sense of release, and the world was righted, remade in a way that was upside-down from what I had imagined. … And I felt, in the end, an uncanny sense that all of this was happening because of a hand held against my back.(i)”
Such epiphanies are no less life-changing for being subtle.
But why might we have epiphanies, and why do we celebrate them? Let’s first consider the second question. The season of Epiphany is balanced – oddly, in our secular calendar -- between the happiness of welcoming the infant Jesus at Christmas and the sorrow of the forty days of Lent. Nora Gallagher calls the Epiphany “the season of the weird,” starting when the Magi “arrive at Jesus’ cradle bearing an odd assortment of gifts: gold, for a king; frankincense, an incense, and myrrh, the fragrant ointment used to anoint the dead.” Already, at the manger, the gifts of the Magi to the infant Jesus foreshadow his kingship and also his death. In the in-between, as today’s collect says, before Jesus’ passion, God reveals his glory to Jesus and to the disciples – providing, as Nora Gallagher says, “a dawning sense of what God has in store for [Jesus].” Epiphany is a celebration of God in the world; and the nearness of God is weird and wonderful and all too easy to forget, because we are busy and burdened and frankly fallible.
So that is why there are epiphanies. God reveals God’s self to us, because God wants us to know of God’s nearness and care. The season of Epiphany reminds us of what it means to live, as Gallagher says, “within a world that is mostly unknown outside its boundaries, to live in faith. “ Further, Christian “[f]aith is not about belief in something irrational or about a blind connection to the unreal. It’s about a gathering, an accumulation of events and experiences of a different order … a memory of a reality or of an experience that doesn’t quite fit with everything else, the longing the soul has to find its shape in the world.” Peter’s story is that story; and in this season, perhaps, we can see his fallibility and our own as an aspect of the clay out of which God has shaped the world. Nothing can be shaped that will not yield.
In today’s Gospel, what Peter sees and hears when he is “heavy” -- even goofy-- with sleep, doesn’t fit in with anything else in his experience. But the Epiphany is so powerful that he instantly longs to respond. That, too, is how God made us. Peter the rock and the fallible human responded to God as well as he could in the moment and in faith. As we begin the road into Lent, grant us, O Lord, the seeing, the epiphany, and most of all the faith, to try to do as Peter did: to lay down our nets and follow Jesus, still and again.
Amen.
-------------------------------------- (i)Nora Gallagher, Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith. Vintage Books, 1998.
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