LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR C

March 2, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Exodus 34:29-35

Luke 9:28-36

 

In the contemporary Episcopal Church calendar, the Gospel for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is always that of Our Lord’s Transfiguration—in which Jesus shines with resplendent light on the mountaintop in the presence of his disciples Peter, James, and John, with the Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah making cameo appearances. So, even though the Feast of the Transfiguration proper is traditionally kept on August 6th, today is nonetheless widely known as “Transfiguration Sunday.”

 

A standard line of interpretation has grown up around the Transfiguration’s placement at this point in the liturgical year. The vision of our Lord radiating the light of heavenly splendor culminates the season after the Epiphany – the wintertime of the year when we consider the various manifestations of the Lord’s glory, beginning with his baptism in the River Jordan and his changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee.

 

But just as Jesus and the three apostles must come down off the mountain to continue the journey to Jerusalem—despite Peter’s expressed desire to “hold on to the experience” by building three booths—so we also must come down from the season after the Epiphany to traverse the dark valley of Lent, which leads us inexorably towards Our Lord’s passion and death on Good Friday. And so, countless sermons warn us against trying to hold on to “mountaintop experiences” and admonish us instead to take up our crosses to follow Jesus in the hard way of discipleship.

 

Now, that’s a perfectly valid line of interpretation. I’ve preached that sermon any number of times myself and will almost certainly do so again. But this morning I’d like to suggest an alternative interpretation in which the Transfiguration doesn’t stand as much in contrast to Lent as it anticipates and points to the Lenten season itself.

 

Today’s Gospel opens with Jesus taking the apostles Peter, James, and John up on a mountain to pray. This detail epitomizes a distinct pattern in our Lord’s earthly ministry. As we read the Gospels, we notice that Jesus typically alternates periods of intense activity with periods of withdrawal and solitude.

 

Most of the time, the Gospels depict our Lord traveling from town to town, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, performing miracles, and engaging in debates with his religious critics. It’s an active ministry that requires enormous stamina.

 

But every now and then, Jesus goes off by himself to a lonely place apart. The pattern begins after his baptism in the River Jordan when he goes into the wilderness forty days and forty nights—as we shall hear in next week in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. And it continues throughout his ministry. For example, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray while his disciples set out in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, setting the scene for his nighttime miracle of walking to them across the water’s surface.

 

So, we see in our Lord’s ministry a pattern of alternation between what the Christian spiritual tradition calls the active life and the contemplative life. His ascending the mountain to pray at the beginning of today’s Gospel continues precisely this pattern.

 

Many spiritual writers observe that such alternation marks the Christian life as well. As baptized members of Christ’s Body the Church, we’re most of us called to alternate between going out into the world to undertake good works and returning to gather for worship as well as withdrawing into solitude and quiet for prayer. Moreover, the Christian life is marked by rhythms of alternation among different types of prayer over time. At certain times in our lives, we may find ourselves drawn to spontaneous and emotional expressions of praise, at other times to more formal liturgical prayer, or indeed to silent contemplation.

 

The cycle of the Christian year likewise takes us through a rhythm of seasons, feasts, and fasts – some joyful, some penitential, some ordinary. As finite creatures, we can’t do everything at once, so we designate distinct times and seasons, feasts and fasts, to concentrate sequentially on the manifold dimensions of our faith. Then, as we repeat the cycle year by year, we gradually build up a cumulative appreciation of the whole faith in all its multifaceted beauty and splendor.

 

Against this background, one way of looking at the Season of Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday, is as an invitation not so much to come down off the mountain as to go up on it! Jesus and the three disciples need to get away after the exhausting grind of their itinerant ministry. In the Bible, moreover, the mountaintop is the characteristic meeting place with the divine—as exemplified in today’s Old Testament reading about Moses and Mount Sinai. In the same way, the Season of Lent bids us find a space set apart from the busyness of our lives, where we may encounter God.

 

For example, we might make a point of coming to one (or more) of our Friday evening Stations of the Cross. Or join in the Lenten series on the Nicene Creed that we’ve scheduled for Sunday evenings by Zoom. There are many other possibilities for disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that we might take on. The true point of all our Lenten practices is to create a space in our lives where we can be available to God; and we need to devise our Lenten rules with that objective in mind.

 

And it’s just possible that even amidst the season’s austerities—indeed precisely in and through the season’s austerities—we shall glimpse the glory of the Lord. Notice that when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, they speak with him of his departure or exodus, which he’s to accomplish at Jerusalem; and this refers of course to his coming death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day.

 

It’s thus a mistake to draw too sharp a contrast between the Transfiguration and Calvary. They’re two sides of the same coin, the wonderful mystery of our redemption. And so, by ascending the mountain with Jesus during this upcoming season of Lent, we open ourselves up to the dual vision of darkness and light, of his suffering and his glory.