Rector's Sermon - Sunday, February 10, 2002

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Exodus 24:12-18	2:1-13	2 Peter 1:16-21	Matthew 17:1-9

      Today we read Matthew's account of what is termed the transfiguration. Three of the disciples go up a mountain with Jesus and there they catch a glimpse of their journey ahead. It was probably Mt. Tabor with a stunning view of the Galileean countryside. An account of the transfiguration is always read the Sunday before Lent. After today we will take down the last vestiges of the celebration of Epiphany. If you haven't done so, it's time to take your dried out balsam wreath off the front door. Lent concentrates on the intense challenge of learning how to live in this world.

      It is common to speak of a journey of faith. We are undoubtedly a busy society that likes to be on the move. Travel and transportation is a huge industry and has played a pivotal role in United States history. It is no accident that the opening ceremonies of the Olympics incorporated trains from east and west meeting to connect the country, climaxing with the driving of the golden spike. The analogy of a journey becomes fairly easy for us with which to relate and identify. At the same time, to think in terms of a journey of faith has some drawbacks. When we travel we usually insist on a detailed itinerary. We want to be on time; lateness is not measured in a matter of days, but hours, if not minutes. We want to know our destination, expect to be routed in the shortest of distance with the minimum of stops and transfers along the way. Delays and lost baggage are inconvenient, and given the number of travelers on any particular day, are really the exception. Most of the time we go and return as issued and printed on our ticket.

      Most of us have had the experience as a child of being taken to a place that we didn't quite understand, yet we gained a sense of a larger world out there. School field trips sometimes did this. I remember once going to a woolen mill. The machines, belts and pulleys whirled over head. The noise was like standing next to a train at full speed. Workers seemed oblivious to the confusion. It was scary; we didn't need to be told not to touch and stay behind the yellow lines. We were afraid that if we got too close, we would disappear and within minutes be transformed into a mass of fluffy wool, packaged in a square cardboard carton shooting off the steel conveyer rollers at the far end of the building. I can't say that afterwards I really knew how wool was processed from lamb to blanket, but at the end of the tour, each one of us was given a fluffy ball of processed wool. I saved it for years, and I think it reminded me that there were connections out there in the future that I would learn to acknowledge and come to terms with. I've recounted before the story of my grandfather taking me to his brokerage house to watch the ticker tape. The lasting impression wasn't the understanding of stock markets, but that life was always deeper and broader than my immediate perspective.

      That's what the search, journey, or invitation of Jesus is all about. When we baptized Meredeth last Sunday, we were reminded that she and us are all related as beloved children of God, but Meredeth wasn't given a ticket moving her up to the first class section of life and a detailed itinerary of her journey. Like us, Meredeth is invited to join a community whose future, like a view on a high mountain, contains many things we can't quite make out or interpret yet. We know there is something off in the distance, but we can't name it. Hence I would caution you in interpreting the transfiguration as giving the disciples a clear indication of what was to come, of revealing to them their destination. I suspect it was no such thing, and raised more questions than the disciples ever thought possible to ask. I understand why Jesus told the disciples not to be afraid and why Jesus knew that it would be difficult for the disciples to talk about their experience immediately afterwards. They had no more idea what it all meant than I had of how the machines worked at the wool factory and what the workers did or what the numbers and letters of the ticker tape stood for.

      All of this is to say, the transfiguration is not like a message in a fortune cookie or a glimpse into a seer's crystal ball. The gift of the transfiguration involves God's assurance that there will be more in life to explore, to discover and to celebrate than we know now. People of faith can't deny nor doubt the struggles and dangers the future holds. Yet the Holy Spirit keeps calling encouragement, "Don't hold back, don't stop now. Remember those moments when the curtains of clouds on the horizons of life were drawn aside. Keep before you that vision! Choose an open ended journey in hope, over an anxious journey of sure destination." For our vision is yet to be complete, our life is yet to be completed.

       And I offer this to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen