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The Last Sunday after the Epiphany If you were to go into one of our Godly Play classrooms, you would see on the wall a very large calendar of the church year. This calendar is circular, representing the cyclical nature of our church year, and it is divided into segments representing different seasons in that cycle—Advent, Christmas, Pentecost and all the rest. In the center of the circle is a large pointer used to designate where in the church year we are at any given time. Today you would find the pointer poised just at the edge, between the season of Epiphany and the season of Lent. If you follow the rhythm of this cycle for a few years, you might notice that there is not a direct correspondence between our secular calendar and our church calendar. While some events do occur on fixed dates—Christmas is always on December 25, and Epiphany on January 6 for example, others “float.” The cycle of our church year is based on the life of Jesus, and, it is shaped primarily not around the celebration of his birth, but around the celebration of his resurrection— Easter. Because the date of Easter is determined by a complicated formula—the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox (don’t worry if you can’t remember the formula—the folks who make calendars do the work for us!) it falls on a different date each year. Many other dates in the church year are determined in relation to Easter—Lent begins 40 days before Easter, and Pentecost occurs 50 days after Easter. The juxtaposition of these two types of events—fixed dates like Christmas and moving dates like Easter—means that the season of Epiphany is of varying length. If you look at the collects in the Prayer Book, you will notice that there are collects for eight Sundays after the Epiphany (Jan. 6), but depending on the date of Easter as few as four of these may be used. But no matter how many Sundays after the Epiphany are observed —4, 6, or even 8— the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is set apart –and that is where we are today. If you wonder where I am going with all this, there really is a point…no matter how many Sundays we have after the Epiphany, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, is set apart—it’s not just the 4th or the 5th or the 8th—it’s the Last. And in the Lectionary, the gospel for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is always one of the three versions of the story of the transfiguration. The story of the transfiguration occurs in all three of the synoptic gospels with only slight variation. It’s a familiar story—Jesus takes Peter, James and John and ascends to the top of a mountain where Jesus is transformed, taking on a brilliant shining countenance. Moses and Elijah appear to talk with him, and after their departure, Peter, James and John hear the voice of God. The disciples, of course, don’t know what to make of all this. When they descend to join the others, perhaps surprisingly they tell no one what they have seen. So what is it about this particular story that it is always the gospel on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany—the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent? In all three of the synoptic gospels, this story falls smack-dab in the middle of the narrative. Jesus has begun his ministry: teaching, preaching, healing. The disciples have had glimpses of who Jesus really is, they’ve had moments of almost understanding, almost getting it, but for the most part they still fail to grasp exactly what is going on. And the narrative is about to take a dramatic shift. Jesus is about to set his face to Jerusalem, to begin that journey from which there is no turning back. Jesus has instructed the twelve that they must be prepared to take up the cross, but the twelve likely haven’t a clue as to what this will really entail. It is at this point that Jesus ascends the mountain to pray, taking with him three of his most stalwart disciples, Peter, James and John. Peter and James and John were “heavy with sleep,” and it is easy to imagine that they thought they were dreaming when they awoke to find Jesus in the presence of Moses and Elijah and to find Jesus transfigured —his whole being having undergone a metamorphosis, his face radiant like the shining sun, and his clothes a dazzling white, almost too bright to gaze upon. It is easy to imagine their sense of awe, their fear as a cloud descends and a voice from the cloud says, “This is my son—listen to him!” It’s easy to imagine how they must have pondered these things as they came down the mountain, how they might have continued to ponder them over the coming weeks as events unfolded. It was Jesus who was transfigured on the mountain, but I wonder if the more important transformation was one that took place in the hearts of Peter, James, and John? I think that the transfiguration marks a turning point for these disciples; although they have had a dawning awareness of the identity of Jesus (a few verses back when asked by Jesus “who do you say that I am?”, Peter answered, “You are the Messiah of God) the transfiguration —seeing Jesus in the presence of Moses and Elijah, hearing the voice of God name Jesus as his son, hearing the voice of God command them to listen to him —this must have confirmed for them what they had been slowly coming to terms with—that Jesus was the Messiah...that he was the one. And although they perhaps did not realize it at the time, the transfiguration did give them a foretaste of what was to come, of the resurrection, when Jesus would rise again, transfigured in his full glory. For the three disciples who were there, this likely was a “mountaintop” experience, not just literally, but in the sense of a peak experience, one that forever changes the way you see things. In the dark days that follow—when Jesus is persecuted, crucified and dies, they have this experience, this memory, to sustain them. And that, I think, may underlie why we hear this story each year just before we move into Lent. On Wednesday we will come together to have our heads marked with ashes, and we will be called to observe a holy Lent. For forty days we set our faces to Jerusalem and we travel with Jesus on that road that leads inevitably to the crucifixion. As we make this journey, we called to a period of self-examination, and repentance, a time of prayer, fasting and self-denial. It is a somber time, an austere time; in some ways it feels as if we are descending down into the depths of despond. But today, on this last Sunday after the Epiphany, before we begin that journey, before we make that descent, we, like Peter, James and John, are given this glimpse of what is to come—we’re taken up on the mountain to see Jesus radiant with his full glory, to experience a foretaste of the resurrection, to be transformed by his presence. We are taken up the mountain with Jesus before we are asked to descend down the other side, and just as it did for Peter, James and John, this glimpse of the transfigured Jesus gives us strength for the journey that we must take through Lent. Even with the sure knowledge that the crucifixion was not and is not the end of the story, that the glory of the resurrection awaits us at the end of the road, the journey through Lent can be an arduous one. We begin with a stark reminder of our own mortality as we are marked with ashes. We are asked to reflect on, to name, and to repent of the many ways we fall short of being the people God calls us to be, and to help us to focus on this task we worship in surroundings stripped of all adornment. We attempt to come to terms with the persecution and death of our Lord as we relive the Passion. Yes, even knowing the end of the story, the journey is hard. And so, as we begin our Lenten journey together, may we take the vision of the radiant transfigured Jesus to heart; may it remind us through the long days of Lent of what we know and believe, so that when Easter comes we are ready with glad hearts to proclaim, “Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!” AMEN
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