Last Epiphany, 2026
Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Psalm 2
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes I wonder why it is we keep coming back to church. We all have our own individual reasons, of course. I mean, for some of us, it’s our actual career and vocation. But I know I would keep coming anyway, just as you keep coming back. And I think what brings us back has something to do with a shared experience. Like, there are moments of . . . you see it too! You feel it too! You sense it too! That is what binds us together in worship. The shared experience of something happening. Something out of the ordinary. As CS Lewis wrote, “The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one’.”
Sometimes, a worship experience is overpowering. Sometimes it’s just a glimpse. But even a glimpse says, “You saw it too!” The curtain is pulled back. There was a thin place, a liminal space. As someone once said to me after a particularly powerful worship experience, sometimes St. Timothy’s is a vortex. Something happens here.
There’s an old saying that, in worship, the priest’s role is to draw back the curtain . . . and then hide in the folds of it. In fact that’s why we wear these chasubles that match the Altar cloths. So the priest can disappear. In a perfect world, when the priest bows at the Sanctus, all you would see is the bread and wine above all the fabric. But when the liturgy “works,” it’s because we are doing this thing together. A thing that has nothing to do with you and me, except for our communal desire to glimpse the divine again. To make that connection again.
Today is the final Sunday after Epiphany. On Wednesday, we will observe Ash Wednesday together, where we mark our foreheads with ashes as a reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Or in plainer English, we will gather together to remember that we will die. It’s easy to get caught up in our daily life and the cares of this world and pretend that we’ll just go on living forever. But Ash Wednesday hits the brakes for us. We gather on that day to remember that we will all die. Which might explain why not many people come to church on Ash Wednesday! That day pokes a hole in the facade that we alone are immortal. But we gather as a community on that day to remember we are not alone in facing death.
And so, as we begin our Lenten journey next Sunday, our liturgy will change. As is tradition in the Episcopal Church, both services will start with the Great Litany. And then, throughout the season of Lent, we’ll begin our Rite I services with the penitential order, and in Rite II we’ll do away with the chanting and we’ll use Eucharistic Prayer C. You could say, after we watched Jesus be transfigured on the mountain, we will transfigure our liturgy for a season.
At its heart, the liturgy will remain the same as it has always been. But the outward appearance will change. It will look and sound a little different from what we’re used to, but it will be what it has always been. You could say that we will witness a transfiguration of our liturgy. Which leads us to look at the prefix, “trans.”
Trans comes to us from Latin, and means across or beyond. You can see its use as “across” in words like transaction, transport, and transform. You can see its use as “beyond” in words like transcend, transuranium, and transubstantiation. However, the word “transfigure” is different. According to most definitions, to transfigure means to change appearance in a way that exalts or glorifies. The Transfiguration of Jesus changes his appearance in a way that reveals his glory.
Transfiguration is a difficult concept to wrap our minds around. If Jesus is one thing, how can he become another thing? Jesus was fully human. I mean, it’s right there in our Creeds. If Jesus had a birth certificate, it would have said, “male, human.” Not “deity, glowing on a mountain.” And yet, there he is, transfigured on the mountaintop. By outward appearances, it seems a pretty good indicator that people can change.
But, of course, we intuitively know this. When we are born, we are absolutely 100% dependent on the people around us, for everything. But now, here we all are, having dressed ourselves, fed ourselves, and mostly having driven ourselves over here. That’s a pretty big change from the moment we were born. People DO change. All the time. All of us.
But, did Jesus change on the mountain? As we heard, Jesus took a couple disciples up the mountain with him and “he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” So did Jesus himself actually change? Or is it more like the disciples got a glimpse of who Jesus was all along? As I read it, Jesus did not change. It’s more like, the curtain was pulled back. It’s more like the people around him finally caught up to seeing him as he always knew himself to be. He is not different. He is revealed. As the writer of Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever.” (Heb. 13:8). Not changed—revealed.
So why is it so hard for us to understand this Transfiguration? Why do we naturally assume that Jesus had to become something else in order for this story to make sense? Maybe because it doesn’t happen to us. It happened to Jesus. Not to us. We don’t have the same experience as Jesus because . . . we are not Jesus. But do we insist on seeing the birth certificate of Jesus, in order to prove that he was born male and human, and not glowing on a mountaintop? No we do not. He was transfigured in appearance, but he is the exact same Jesus he has always been: yesterday and today, and forever.
If we can accept that things can happen with Jesus’ appearance that we do not understand, maybe we could also learn to accept that changes happen in other people’s appearance that we do not understand. What happened on that mountain was that Jesus’ true nature was revealed. What the disciples finally saw in him was who Jesus was all along. Who he knew himself to be. In being transfigured, Jesus shows others who he is. Turns out, it’s not a change. It’s a revelation to the world. A pulling back of the curtain.
And this is why all the suggested hymns for this day and the proper preface are from the feast of Epiphany. The Transfiguration of Jesus is not a change or a new thing; it is a revelation. An Epiphany.
Transfiguration is revealing what is already there, not creating a new pretend thing. This is Jesus. Revealed as he truly is. And in our blindness we have a hard time accepting it. Revelation is not a threat to reality. It is not a menace to the created order. It is just revealing what is already there. What has been there all along. Just as God intended. Transfiguration is pulling back the curtain, to see things and people as God created them to be. And God said they were good, and so they are good. Not changed, just revealed.
Amen.
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