Several years ago, a guest priest came to Holy Trinity to lead a wellness event on this very same date, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. He had also agreed to preach at all our Sunday services. So, early Sunday morning, I joined him in the chapel to prepare for 8 o’clock worship. While the altar guild went about its usual routine, our guest brought forward a small suitcase. Opening it, he withdrew a slithery heap of golden ropes of tinsel. Entering the sanctuary, he began piling and draping the tinsel all around the high altar, weaving it in and out of the candlesticks. “What is that for?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “This is heaps and piles of glory. I’m going to talk about the glory of God.”
So he did, and after the service, while he greeted folks at the door, I went to the sacristy to prepare for 9 o’clock worship. A moment later, a kind and gentle altar guild member poked her head in the door. “Ginny,” she asked, “what on earth must I do with all this glory?”
It was a good question. In fact, it might well have been asked by Moses and the Israelites, or by Peter, James, and John as they stood on that mountaintop with Jesus.
What on earth must we do with all the glory?
On the mountaintop with Jesus, in the moment, sleepy-headed Peter was simply babbling. The scripture tells us he spoke “not knowing what he said.” And, like many of us, Peter’s urge was to DO something. He was only trying to be helpful, and surely it was easier to ACT than it was to stand there slack-jawed. God stopped him short, not with a slap upside the head, but with the verbal equivalent: “This is my son. Listen to him.”
The desire to do something concrete and to cling to the glory of a heavenly moment is human, but dangerous. William Blake said it bes
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.
Glimpses of glory are just that – glimpses. They are not permanent fixtures and they are not sent to transport us away to God, but rather to remind us that God, glory and all, is with us here, in this moment, in this world.
Moses had a somewhat different response to God’s glory. In ancient times, it was customary for the priest to veil his face before entering the Holy of Holies. But Moses reversed the process, standing unveiled before God, and covering his face when he came down the mountain. Moses wanted to protect the people from the blinding radiance of God’s glory, now reflected on Moses’ own face.
Moses brought another form of glory down the mountain as well, for he carried the precious tablets containing God’s gift of the Law – ten commandments given to show the way for God’s people to live together. By contrast, on the Mount of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John received only one commandment: “This is my Son. Listen to Him.” This commandment too, was intended to enable God’s people to live together. But this commandment is very different from anything that God has ever done before.
Luke gives us a clue that something different is coming, because he begins his telling of the story with the words “Now about eight days after…” In seven days, God accomplished creation. So if we are on the eighth day, God must be doing a new thing. Indeed, it is in Jesus that God has done a new thing, not telling us, but showing us, what love lived looks like.
The second clue that things are going to be very different comes in the conversation that takes place between Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Our translation says they were talking with Jesus about his “departure.” The Greek word here is “exodus” and the minute we hear it we are connected to the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. What Luke tells us is that now, through Jesus’ death and resurrection there will be a new exodus, a new liberation, for all humanity. This time God will free us from the ultimate bondage of death.
Now, because of Jesus, instead of a departure into an unknown darkness, at death we will be drawn into God's own amazing light, into a new reality. Life will not be ended, only changed. The glory of God filled this moment on the mountaintop because, in Jesus, God transformed death forever. Jesus’ transfiguration heralded our own transformation.
But still, what, on earth, do we do with all this glory?
MICHAEL RAMSEY, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, loved to preach about the glory of God. His memorial stone in Canterbury Cathedral is inscribed with the words of Irenaeus, bishop to the church in the second century. It reads:
"The Glory of God is the living man; And the life of man is the vision of God."
To put it another way: The transfiguration reveals Christ's identity, and, gives us a picture, in him, of our destiny.
Like Jesus, we too, are made in God’s image. St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians says we reflect God’s glory “like mirrors.” It is not our glory, of course, but God’s. Nevertheless, we are called to be “glory bearers” or, in words more suited to the Epiphany season, we are called to bear the light of Christ in a world darkened by fear.
Luke tells us that the disciples “kept silent” after their amazing experience, and “told no one any of the things they had seen.” It’s not surprising. How do you put the extraordinary beauty of a sunset into words? How do you capture the magic of a baby’s first smile? They knew better than to tell others they “should have been there.” What do you do with glory?
In three days, fresh from this celebration of the glory on the mountaintop, we will come back to this building, and present our foreheads to be smudged with ash. Far from reveling in glory, we will instead, be reminded that we are but dust, and to dust we will return. In the weeks that follow, we will encounter our besmirched humanity repeatedly. We will hear the voice of the tempter telling us: “You have failed. There is nothing more you can do. Give up. You are ill. You are too young. You are too old.” Each of us will hear the voice that is unique to our own situation. We will wander in the wilderness – but we will not be lost.
We will not be lost because the glory of God has been revealed to us on the mountaintop and has gone before us and waits, shining from the mouth of the empty tomb. The journey of Lent is bracketed with glory. However veiled it may be, each one of us carries within some reflection of that incredible glory. No one of us is commonplace, no one of us is ordinary. Nor is this world we live in common. On this earth, in us and through us, God has already begun the extraordinary work of redemption.
So – what on earth must we do with all this glory?
First of all, we must remember it. This is not an intellectual remembering, but remembering in the same way that the Eucharist remembers the Body of Christ. We must keep our eyes open for the tiny traces of glory that are all around us, in friends, in nature, in the beauty of art and music. These we take into ourselves, feasting on them just as we feast upon the bread and wine, for glory too, will give us strength.
Second, we must honor the glory we see in others, the glory we see in creation. We must remember that every human being – EVERY human being bears this incredible divine image. We must learn to cherish that image. We must care for this creation, tending to its needs, repairing its wounds, because it too, bears the glory of God.
Finally, we must pray. At the Transfiguration, as so many other times, Jesus had gone up the mountain to pray. The ability to pray is God’s gift of connection. Prayer links us to one another and to God in a chain unbreakable by human hands. Mother Teresa of Calcutta tells of the time she was crossing into Gaza. Stopped at the checkpoint, they asked if she was carrying any weapons. “Oh yes!” she replied. “I’m carrying my prayer books.” Prayer can move mountains. Prayer can part the seas. Prayer can bind up the wounds of the human heart. Prayer can lift the weary soul to God.
So there it is. This is what we must do with all this glory: remember it, honor it, and pray. These things, this glory will not rescue us from the journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter, but rather will make the journey possible.