Good morning! Today we welcome back the Ike Sturm Ensemble. They were here with us last year, and we're happy to have you with us again. Nobody wants to hear a long sermon when you can listen to jazz instead. I promise to be brief.
Thank you to Victoria for organizing this day, our parishioners who donated to make this possible, and of course, our ensemble this morning.
This is the final Sunday of the season of Epiphany. In just a few days, Lent begins, when we turn inward and do the work of examining ourselves in preparation for Easter. If you come here this Wednesday morning or evening for Ash Wednesday services, or if you're here next Sunday, you'll notice an abrupt change in the atmosphere: the altar and clergy will be decked out in plain, unbleached linen. There won't be any flowers. The liturgy will be more solemn and simple. We'll begin our service with confession. There's a calm and quiet to Lent that allows for the kind of deep work within that we're called to do.
But we're not there yet! Today we'll say plenty of alleluias, feast on lots of food, and generally stock our spiritual larder for the lean weeks ahead. Which is kind of what this day is all about.
Our story on this last Sunday of Epiphany is always the Transfiguration, depicted so vividly on our north transept windows over here. Jesus, Peter, James and John climb a mountain, probably Mt. Tabor in the Jezreel Valley, partway between Galilee and Jerusalem.
When the four of them arrive at the top of the mountain, they're rewarded with a vision of Jesus radiant, surrounded by two of the most important religious figures in their tradition, Moses, and Elijah. At the height of the moment, Peter proposes building booths, tabernacles--an attempt to capture, hold onto, this experience. It's important here to know that, not many days before this, Jesus had told these same disciples that the road ahead would be difficult, that it would end in his death. That's looming in the background of this story. In light of which, to want to capture this moment, and stay right here, is a very understandable human impulse.
Eventually Moses and Elijah disappear. A voice from heaven is heard saying “This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him,” pointing us not only back to the halcyon days of Jesus’ baptism, but also to the days ahead when God’s voice will become harder to hear. One commentator I read this week pointed out how Jesus, from the cross, was thought to have been heard crying out to Elijah--only then, unlike here, he would have no vision, receive no answer.
We read this twice in the year--it's an important moment in the Gospels: once in the height of summer, August 6, which is the official Feast of the Transfiguration. When I preach it there, if I’m not already on vacation having my mountaintop experience, I feel like I’m sending us out into the riches of August, to dwell on the mountain and bask in its glory.
The other time we read it, though, is right before Lent. It’s when most of us are used to hearing this. Its placement here on the Sunday before Lent, with winter settled deep into our bones, invites us to dwell on the use and meaning of these mountaintop moments in the longer, larger stretches of harder or just mundane days that make up so much, and the far greater portion, of our lives.
In Joseph Campbell's book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, he covers all the phases of a spiritual quest, the “Hero’s Journey”: the calling, answering the call, the setting out, the climb/ascent, the revelation--and also the descent (going down) and eventual reintegration into daily life of a moment of clarity, and illumination.
It's not just having a profound spiritual experience that matters. It's what we do with it afterward that gives it meaning, and direction in our lives. This can be the hardest part. ("In anything the hardest part is to keep going." I read that recently and didn't cite the source, but it's so true: the hardest part is to keep going.
One of the books I re-read on my sabbatical was Henri Nouwen's Genesee Diary, about his seven months spent at the Genesee monastery in upstate New York. Nouwen was a spiritual writer and teacher who, in a time in his life of profound burnout, felt he needed to step away and re-engage with his faith, with God. People who make religion and spirituality their life's work also need such moments. (Even the Dalai Lama gets exhausted!)
And so Nouwen left his job (at Yale Divinity School) and made the trek to upstate New York. He worshiped with the brothers, lived a simple life, and sought guidance from the abbot there. Things that had confounded him about life began to come clear, and a sense of peace and well being slowly settled back in.
It's a lovely book. Maybe the best part is the epilogue, written seven months after he returned to regular life as he struggles to articulate what difference that time on the mountain actually made in his life. It’s a beautifully honest account of how unimpactful these moments can be, unless we’re deliberate about drawing from them. Like Wordsworth overlooking sublime Tintern Abbey: “in this moment there is life and food for future years.”
Let me share a little bit from that epilogue of Nouwen’s. He writes:
Perhaps the greatest and most hidden illusion of all had been that after seven months of Trappist life I would be a different person, more integrated, more spiritual, more virtuous, more compassionate, more gentle, more joyful, and more understanding. Somehow I had expected that my restlessness would turn into quietude, my tensions into a peaceful life-style, and my many ambiguities and ambivalences into a single-minded commitment to God. None of these successes, results, or achievements, have come about …
Why was I there? I don’t know fully yet. Probably I will not know fully before the end of the cycle of my life. Still, I can say that I have a most precious memory which keeps unfolding itself in all that I do or plan to do. I no longer can live without being reminded of the glimpse of God’s graciousness that I saw in my solitude, of the ray of light that broke through my darkness, of the gentle voice that spoke in my silence, and of the soft breeze that touched me in my stillest hour. This memory, however, does more than bring to mind rich experiences of the past. It also continues to offer new perspectives to present events and guides in decisions for the years to come. In the midst of ongoing compulsions, illusions, and unrealities, this memory will always be there to dispel false dreams and point in right directions.
[He concludes] When Peter, James, and John saw the Lord in his splendor on Mount Tabor, they were heavy with sleep, but the memory of this event proved a source of hope in the midst of their later hardships. Maybe there can be only one [Mt] Tabor-experience in my life. But the new strength gained from that experience might be enough to support me in the valley, in the garden of Gethsemani, and in the long dark night of life…
And so … as we prepare for our descent into Lent, and the wilderness, and eventually, the cross, let us pause one last time up here on the mountain to appreciate not only today, but all such moments in our lives.
May they truly become for us “life and food for future years.” Amen.