St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
The Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35; 2Peter 1:13-21; Luke 9:28-46
August 6, 2023
Today we celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration when Jesus went up to the mountain to pray…and while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became a dazzling white… (v. 29). This passage in Luke is called the “Transfiguration of Jesus,” not the “Transformation of Jesus.” Jesus’ inner divine nature, of one being with the Father, did not change. Transfiguration is about outward, visible changes.
In the midst of this dazzling transfiguration, Jesus’s disciples, Peter, James and John, saw him talking with the prophets Moses and Elijah. Moses was representative of God’s covenant with the Israelites, which would soon be fulfilled in Jesus’ death. Elijah represented the arrival of the fulfillment of “all things.” The presence of Moses and Elijah pointed to the kingdom of God that had already come in the person of Jesus, and God’s kingdom yet to come, to be fully realized only when Jesus returns to judge all of creation.
At the time of God’s choosing, the disciples were divinely positioned, on that holy mountain, to receive the truth of God’s Son. In the holy collision of the cosmic and the temporal, the disciples’ human eyes saw Jesus’ outward appearance change as his divinity emanated from his human being.
What happened on that mountain was a theophanic event—a theophany in which there is a visible, human encounter with a deity.
When God acted upon Jesus, the disciples were not shielded from the outpouring of God’s glory; they were in the “splash” zone which resulted in a shared epiphany for the three chosen disciples about Jesus’ true identity. Think about sunlight and how it cannot be contained. As the sunlight pours forth from the source, those uniquely positioned might be splashed with the light, and some might be bathed in it.
In our Old Testament reading, Moses had been bathing in God’s glory for 40 days and nights on Mt. Sinai. When he came down from the mountaintop, the skin of his face was shining with God’s glory because he had been talking face to face with God. God chose to transfer His glory onto the most visible part of Moses’ body to be witnessed by those who would be led by him.
Similarly, the disciples in our gospel lesson, as spectators in close proximity of the conversation between Moses, Elijah and Jesus, were splashed with God’s glory. And, when they entered the overshadowing cloud where God said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” they were bathed in God’s glory, and were forever changed. Having been forever changed, Peter attested to his own transformation in our epistle, in which he gave a first-hand account of the disciples’ experience as eyewitnesses to Jesus’ Transfiguration, and as those who heard God’s voice from heaven. The result, Peter said, was that, for them, their prophetic message that Jesus was God’s son, had been fully confirmed.
When I think about the Transfiguration of Jesus, I think about the transfiguration of His body, the Church, on Earth. It is no secret that the Episcopal Church has, since her inception, reflected this society’s worst institutional forms of oppression—racism, sexism, classism—all of the isms, plus the phobias. Not only has the church reflected the opposite of Jesus’ inclusive love for all, it has been complicit in upholding those forms of oppression—women being one of those oppressed groups.
In 1970, women were admitted to the diaconate in the Episcopal Church, but were not allowed to be priests. In 1974 there was a sound heard around the world—the shattering of the “stained-glass ceiling,” as it is called, when the unimaginable happened—the first women were ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in an irregular service (meaning the General Convention had not yet authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood) at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia on July 30th.
The priests were called the “Philadelphia 11.” Two years later, in 1976, the House of Bishops affirmed the validity of the ordinations.[1] When the stained-glass ceiling finally shattered, the Episcopal Church had had its own mountaintop experience. Before 1974, a female priest in the Episcopal Church was unimaginable. God moved through the unjust, and exclusionary, structures within our church, in order to raise up powerful leaders in order to bring about liberation for the oppressed, guided by the Christ’s light, as God chose to transfer His glory onto Christ’s Church to be witnessed by all with eyes to see.
The legacy of the Philadelphia 11 has manifested in ways that have forever transfigured the outward appearance of our beloved Episcopal Church, and has necessarily transformed her soul.
Three years after the impossible priestly ordinations of 11 female deacons was made possible, the civil rights activist and legal scholar, Anna “Pauli” Murray, was the first African-American woman to be priested. Twelve years later, in 1989, Barbara Harris became the first woman to be consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion. Seventeen years after that, the first female Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts-Schori, was installed in 2006. In 2017, Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows became the first African-American woman to serve as diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church. And, I am deeply grateful to God for the legacy of the Philadelphia 11 which shows up today in the form of this priest at St. Paul’s Wesley Chapel.
At the time of God’s choosing, God made the impossible possible, thereby revealing the Church’s true nature as the fundamental sacrament of Christ’s body to the world. When this Church listens to God’s voice, and repents of her sins, the Church is able to see God’s truth glistening from the faces of all people, recognizing them as God’s children.
While this Church is the body of Christ on this Earth, until Jesus comes back, this Church must reclaim her prophetic voice and, as Peter said in our Epistle today, “Refresh the memory” of God’s beloved Son, whose divine majesty was witnessed by human eyes and the voice of God heard by Human ears. This is the work of the Church—to be the prophetic voice in a society that is either hostile, or completely oblivious, to Jesus Christ and the life-saving gospel message. We’ve come a long way, as a church, and we are owning the reality that we are not “there” yet.
Perhaps you have had your own mountaintop experience which has so transfigured your outer appearance that people can see God’s glory reflected when you walk into a room. Maybe you have had encounters with God’s glory, through other people, that have splashed onto you, having the powerful effect of deepening your faith.
Recall that it was while Jesus was praying that God in Christ was revealed to the disciples. So, too, while we are praying, does God reveal God’s self to us. With prayer, we move from being spectators of God’s glory, to those whom God divinely positions to hear the voice of God.
With prayer, our earthly lives become reflections of God’s glory, used by God, to be in a world that cries out to be outwardly and inwardly changed.
With God’s help, and with prayer for steadfastness of faith, may God so use each of his sons and daughters—His chosen—to proclaim the life-giving and life-saving message of the good news of God in Christ. And may God incline the ears and the hearts of all who receive the message to listen to his only son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
[1] Philadelphia Eleven, The – The Episcopal Church, accessed August 5, 2023.
