SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVD DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
26 FEBRUARY 2006
"Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let
us build three dwellings: one for you, one
for Moses, and one for Elijah." (Mark 9:5)
For the past two weeks, the NBC "Today Show" team
was in Turino, covering the Olympics, and every day Al Roker
taught the viewing public back home an Italian phrase of the
day. I thought that might be a practice I could adapt for homiletical
purposes, so here goes: Today's theological vocabulary
word is "theophany." The Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church defines it as "an appearance of God
in visible form, temporary and not necessarily material."
Theophanies, then, reveal Divinity to us in a special way. They
bring us face-to-face with God. Theophanies are at once beautiful
and terrifying, powerful and threatening. But the thing to remember
about theophanies is that they are rare; they occur only at crucial
moments in the history of God's people, presumably because the
Almighty believes that we could not bear a steady diet of them.
In a perfect world, the Old Testament lesson this morning
should have come from the Second Book of Kings, not the First.
It is in chapter two of the Second Book that we have a real theophany,
in which Elijah, before he dies, entrusts the ministry of prophecy
to Elisha, Elijah's mantle (incidentally, the title of one of
the Rector's books available in the Calvary Bookstore) is used
to transport both of them to dry ground. Then, in a scene which
served as the inspiration for a popular movie 20 years ago, interestingly
enough about Olympic Games, a chariot of fire and horses of fire
appear and Elijah is taken up into heaven.
It was this story that Mark had in mind when he writes in
today's Gospel of another theophany, the Transfiguration of Jesus.
Six days after another important turning point in the Gospel,
the Confession of St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi (when Peter
correctly guesses that Jesus is the Messiah) Jesus takes not
the whole motley crew, but just the disciples' executive committee,
Peter, James and John, up to the mountain. And there, Mark tells
us, a blinding light engulfs them, and Jesus is transfigured
before them. Jesus' raiment becomes dazzling white, as no one
on earth could bleach them. (The KJV says "as no fuller
on earth can bleach them," but no one knows what a fuller
is anymore). And to make the picture complete, Moses the Lawgiver
and Elijah the Prophet appear and have a conversation with Jesus
who is the fulfillment of the Law and the One about Whom the
prophets spoke. It would be interesting to speculate what they
talked about. Perhaps Elijah said to Jesus, "I'm glad
our prophecies came to pass." Perhaps Moses said to
Jesus, "You did a good job of reinterpreting my laws."
Anyhow, the disciples were treated to a vision, as it were, of
the whole Bible, an embodiment of the entire history of salvation.
Now Peter, who at Caesarea Philippi had correctly blurted
out what theologians call the "Messianic secret," decides
to press his luck. So impressed was he by this Son et
Lumiere extravaganza, that his impulse is to freeze this
moment in time. So he interrupts this high-level conversation
and suggests to Jesus that three dwellings be built on the mountaintop
--- one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus himself.
Here I must admit that the new translation is better than "booths"
in the KJV --- we think of booths as some temporary structure
erected for a county fair --- but the word Peter uses connotes
permanent dwelling places. He in fact wants to erect a shrine.
And notice that Peter prefaces his suggestion with the statement:
"It is good that we are here." What he is really saying
is "I am grooving on this scene, and I don't ever want to
leave."
Peter on behalf of the disciples demonstrates, I think, a
natural human tendency, to make permanent that which is temporary
or fleeting. So a shrine is erected at Fatima or Lourdes to commemorate
an appearance by the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is erected over the place where our
Lord is said to have been buried. Shrines (although we tend to
call them "memorials") have been erected in Oklahoma
City and Columbine. When people become victims of random violence,
within hours, vigils are held, and votive candles and flowers
and teddy bears mark the spot.
Shrines, unlike theophanies, are permanent, visible, objective.
Theophanies point to a significance beyond themselves. The Transfiguration,
like Jesus' miracles, doesn't happen for its own sake, but is
intended to be suggestive of a deeper truth, a more profound
reality. Peter, bless his heart, misses the point. He doesn't
understand that theophanies, by definition, cannot be grasped.
His suggestion would change a dynamic reality into a lifeless
museum.
Like Peter, we want to seize our mountaintop experiences
and freeze them in time. Falling in love is a mountaintop experience.
We remember seeing stars; we remember the euphoric feeling; we
remember basking in the knowledge that we have found somebody
with whom a relationship is holy and inviolate. But we know that
relationships fail sometimes precisely because couples expect
that euphoria to be like Elijah's mantle, and to transport them
through life. They expect to experience the "better"
but not the "worse," the "richer" but not
the "poorer," the "health" but not the "sickness."
Sometimes we expect our faith, our relationship with God,
always to be a mountaintop experience. It is too easy to forget
that even when Peter guessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus
felt the need to explain to him what that really meant: The Son
of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected, and be killed"
--- a fact that Peter found difficult to accept. And if
we read a little further we see that Jesus reminds us that to
be worthy of Him, we have to be willing to pick up our cross
and follow him. Those who forget that suffering and cross-bearing
are part of Christianity are quick to abandon the faith when
things don't go according to their plan. So when we create mountaintop
shrines in our human relationships or in our relationships with
God, we should not be surprised if either or both of them cease
to be dynamic realities and become instead lifeless museums.
Now Al Roker only introduced one Italian phrase a day, but
having had ample evidence of the level of erudition in this parish,
I will introduce a second theological vocabulary word of the
day, and that is "pericope." It comes from two Greek
words which mean "to cut around" and so could be translated
"clipping." It is used by Biblical theologians to describe
a discrete Biblical story. The Gospel passages we read each week
can be called pericopes. The problem with them, however, is that
we often don't know what precedes or follows them, since Episcopalians
don't bring Bibles to church. We have already seen the Transfiguration
in light of what precedes it, Peter's confession. But I would
suggest that the Transfiguration pericope is best understood
by what follows it.
Immediately following this great mystic experience, Jesus
is confronted with a problem. When he came down from the Mount
of the Transfiguration, he finds the disciples in a dispute with
the scribes. He discovers that the problem is that a father has
complained that his son was possessed by a spirit, causing him
to foam at the mouth and to become rigid, which caused what we
today would diagnose as epilepsy complicated by catatonia. The
disciples had been unable to cast out the demon. Jesus summons
the child to himself, rebukes the evil spirit, and gives the
healed child back to his father. So we leave the solitude of
the mountain and wade into a great crowd. No more Moses and Elijah
in glory, but instead a distraught father and his sick son. Instead
of a reassuring voice from heaven, we have a complaint about
the failure of Jesus' disciples. On the Mount, Jesus had been
communing with God; but on the plain he had to minister to those
in need.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, as St Paul reminds us,
we must "know how to be exalted and how to be abased."
We must be able to take the bitter with the sweet. We must be
sustained by our mountaintop experiences, and see them as glimpses
of the heavenly Jerusalem, and use them to strengthen us as we
deal with the ordinary things of life, which, if we hadn't noticed,
take up most of our time. God in his wisdom sends theophanies
rarely so that we may relish them. He sends them so that
when we do encounter the mundane, the ordinary, even the ugly,
our sights may be lifted to the crest of the mountain where we
are assured that there is indeed a balm in Gilead.
Let us pray:
Not always on the mount may we
Rapt in the heavenly vision be:
The shores of thought and feeling know
The Spirit's tidal ebb and flow.
The mount of vision: but below
The paths of daily duty go,
And nobler life therein shall own
The pattern on the mountain shown. AMEN.
Frederick Lucian Hosmer, The Hymnal 1940,
571.