LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR A

February 19, 2023

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Exodus 24:12-18

Matthew 17:1-9

 

One of the perennial questions of religion and philosophy concerns how we can know God. Some thinkers argue that since God is infinite, we simply cannot know God as he is in himself. For God infinitely surpasses our finite human understanding.

 

From this premise it follows that all our names and images for God are arbitrary symbols or metaphors that fall infinitely short of the divine reality they purport to describe. Some people draw the implication that no one religion can get us any closer to God’s inexhaustible mystery than any other, because all religious teachings are at bottom futile attempts to describe the indescribable. Others draw the further implication that if we find the received images and language for God unhelpful, we’re free to change them to make them more consonant with our own experience because, after all, they’re only arbitrary metaphors. God can only be known, if at all, in a mystical experience of silence and emptiness beyond all words and images.

 

Now, while I do believe that many mystics are blessed with real experiences of the divine, nonetheless I think that the approach to God that I’ve just described is fundamentally mistaken and misses the point on a grand scale. C. S. Lewis once remarked that talking about the human search for God is like talking about the mouse’s search for the cat. It gets things the wrong way round completely.

 

For knowledge of a God who transcends all our capacities of understanding can never come as our own achievement, but only when this God chooses to reveal himself to us. And the fundamental premise of traditional western monotheistic religion is that the unknown and unknowable God has indeed condescended to make himself known to us in a way accommodated to our limited cognitive capacities.

 

Today’s scripture readings illustrate how God makes himself known. The holy God of Israel reveals himself, first, in the Old Testament reading to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai and, then, in the Gospel reading, to the disciples Peter, James, and John on the Mount of the Transfiguration.

 

When we were children, we may have learned the mnemonic “Stop, look, and listen.” Or perhaps: “Stop, look, listen, learn.” 

Stop. In both our readings today, God’s self-revelation follows a pause in people’s regular activities. The Israelites stop at the foot of Mount Sinai; and God bids Moses come up on the mountain and wait. Similarly, Jesus interrupts his journey to Jerusalem to take the disciples Peter, James, and John up a high mountain apart—traditionally identified as Mount Tabor in southern Galilee. In a similar way, we need periodically to stop whatever we’re doing to give God the time and space to make his presence known to us.

 

Look. In both instances, there follows a vision of God’s presence and glory. A cloud covers Mount Sinai, and the glory of the Lord appears “like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.” Similarly, on Mount Tabor, Jesus is transfigured with the of divine glory in the presence of the three disciples. His face shines like the sun; his garments become white as light; Moses and Elijah, two of the great figures from Israel’s sacred history, appear talking with him; and a bright cloud overshadows them all.

 

In both cases, the supernatural phenomena of cloud, light, and fire function as the visual manifestation of God’s presence, known in Hebrew as kabod, in Greek as doxa, in English as glory. The larger point is that we begin to know God when God reveals his presence at particular times in particular places. It may not happen as dramatically as in these two readings, but I suspect that most of us remember times when we could feel God’s presence, and we knew that he was near.

 

But in both readings, the revelation doesn’t end with the visual. In the Bible, God never shows up just to give people meaningful spiritual experiences. Instead, he invariably makes his presence known to get our attention because he’s got something to say. So, after we stop and look, it’s time to listen.

 

On Mount Sinai, the fire and the cloud are the prelude to the gift of God’s law, given through Moses to the children of Israel inscribed on two stone tablets. Likewise, in the Gospel reading, the vision culminates in the voice speaking from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” In both cases, it’s as though God is saying, “Now I’ve got your attention: Listen up!” The revelation of God’s glory prepares us to hear and receive God’s Word. And therein lies a challenge for us. We need to come to church, say our prayers, and read our Bibles in the lively expectation that God has something to say to us. And we need to keep our ears open to hear God’s Word in our world today.

 

But even hearing God’s Word isn’t the end. For the Israelites encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai, the giving of the Law isn’t the conclusion of their journey but only the beginning. The long, forty-year pilgrimage to the Promised Land lies ahead. Similarly, for the disciples, the Lord’s Transfiguration isn’t the end but only the beginning of their journey. For they’re on the road to Jerusalem, where there awaits the Lord’s betrayal, arrest, condemnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. For this reason, we commemorate the Transfiguration on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, as we prepare to begin our liturgical and spiritual journey through the Season of Lent towards Holy Week and Easter. 

 

So, to return to our original question: We come to know God most of all when we respond in faith and obedience by following where he leads. It’s a dynamic process in which God always takes the initiative, but in which we also have our own definite role to play. 

 

Stop, Look, Listen, Learn. Then follow. And when the going gets tough, those initial moments of epiphany or transfiguration give us the assurance we need to persevere by affording us a glimpse and a foretaste of the glory that awaits us at our journey’s end.