Homily
By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 6 Aug. 2017, Transfiguration
Year
A, RCL: Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:13-21; Luke 9:28-36
What's
going on today?
We're in the church's green season,
yet we use our
white hangings
like we do for All Saints, Christmas, Easter, weddings
& funerals.
Today
is Aug. 6, the day we focus on Jesus' Transfiguration. [It
was last on Sunday in 2006.]
We use white to remind us of the brightness of God's Love we see in
Jesus, the Love & purity which shines so brightly in our Gospel &
our 1st
lesson, which tells us how people react when they see Moses' shining
face after he encounters God & brings the covenant to the people.
[The
Jewish Study Bible
calls the covenant the Pact 1.]
Our
scriptures shine with God's glory. In our 2nd
lesson, Peter reminds us of the Holy Spirit's work & his own
first-hand experience we hear in our Gospel.2
Notice how our Gospel demonstrates life in community: Jesus takes
disciples with him to do the work of prayer.
Jesus
relies on us to work with him.
Our
Gospel's focus on Jesus' transfiguration
we also read in Mark
9 & Matthew 173.
It
shows us a range of activity & reactions:
- The men go up the mountain with Jesus.
- Jesus prays. His face changes. His clothes shine. [The Revised Standard Version says, his clothes become white as a flash of lightning.4
- The disciples feel tired.
- A cloud comes over them.
- They feel terror & hear God say Jesus is God's Son, listen to him.
What
about the building project
Peter suggests?
How rash does he sound?
Offering
to build dwellings for Jesus, Moses & Elijah shows Peter, who
will be a leader of the church, “grasps the theological
significance of the event...”6
from his experience as one who observes the feast of booths specified
in Deut. 16:13.
[You
can read about the feast, with an interesting twist, in The
Year of Living Bibilically
by
A.J. Jacobs7,
which we will use as a monthly study starting in September.]
How
do we respond when we encounter significant events?
What makes your
face, your eyes shine?
How do we build & enhance community?
How
would you handle yourself working in outer space & seeing 16
sunrises & 16 sunsets in each 24-hour period?
I
learned about this reality reading about Astronaut Andrew Feustel,
who will be commander on his 3rd
mission to space, orbiting 6 months in the International Space
Station with his team conducting “over 250 research investigations
& technology demonstrations that can only be performed
in...space.”8
Preparation
with fellow astronauts, including a Russian cosmonaut, is spread over
2 years, including time in Russia, to enhance teamwork, and, the
article notes, language is one challenge.
The
commander says they really “are learning the language of
spacecraft.” “With the amount of time the crew spends together .
. . [before] their launch, a bond develops . . . they develop a blend
of nonverbal communication, anticipation & trust.”9
How
do we, how can we develop
&
enhance verbal &
nonverbal
communication,
anticipation
& trust?
Think
of the bond we have in worship. Like the reality Peter, John &
James see on the mountain, our worship “fundamentally is about the
definition of reality,”
as
John Ortberg says in If
You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat:10
“[In]
worship, at its heart,
"In
our daily life's distractions, we may tend to see God like looking
through the wrong end of a telescope [very small & distant.]"12
“In
worship [we] declare...God is real...our perception of reality
is changed, ... sharpened...[We] remember...reality is more
than what [we] can see & touch.”13
Like
the reality of seeing 16 sunrises
& 16 sunsets in 24-hours
[which
most of us will never experience],
reality
is more than we can see & touch.
Bibliography
Barclay,
William. The
Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Luke.
Revised Edition. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.
Boadt, Lawrence.
Reading
the Old Testament: An Introduction.
New York: Paulist Press. 1984.
DeMoss, Michael C.,
J.D. Bible
Briefs of the Old and New Testaments: The Bible Made Easy.
Minneapolis: Light & Life Publishing. 1999.
Harper’s Bible
Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1988.
Holy Bible with
the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
Hughes,
Robert Davis III. Beloved
Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Live.
New York: Continuum. 2008.
Jacobs,
A.J. The
Year of Living
Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally
as Possible.
New York: Simon & Schuster. 2007.
Jewish Study
Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation.New
York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
The New American
Bible for Catholics.
South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.
New Oxford
Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha.
Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger, eds. New York: Oxford University
Press, Incorporated,
1977.
Ortberg,
John. If
You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 2001.
Smith, Robert
Lawrence. A
Quaker Book of Wisdom: Life Lessons in Simplicity, Service, and
Common Sense.
New York: Harper. 1998.
Thompson,
E. Scott II. “Commander Feustel prepares for third mission to
space.” SigEp
Journal.
Summer 2017. Vol. 114. No. 2.
3
Note:
Aug. 6 is the day we commemorate Jesus' Transfiguration. It falls on
a Sunday in an odd sequence of years. Internet search shows it was
on Sunday in 1972, '78, '89, 2000, 2006 & now.
4
Scripture quoted by: Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible
Series: The Gospel of Luke.P.
123.
6
Hughes, Robert Davis III. Beloved Dust.
P. 260.
7
Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically.
Pp. 77-80.
8
Information from cover story by
E. Scott Thompson
II. SigEp
Journal. Pp. 24-25. [My husband's
fraternity.]
9
Ibid. P. 25.
10
Ortberg, John. If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get
Out of the Boat. P. 201.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
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