A Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany

On this day when western Christians reflect on the Transfiguration, I'm at St. John's in Athol. The readings for today can be found here.

It’s not unusual for God to speak on mountaintops in the Bible. Perhaps it is for the same reason that so many of us feel closer to God when we hike up a mountain and look out over the vista. We speak of “mountaintop experiences” as a metaphor for our own spiritual epiphanies, I think, because the landscape itself very often helps us to open our eyes to see God’s hand at work in the world around us. In such moments we may have the experience of knowing God more fully and of being more fully known by God.

Over the course of these past eight weeks, since the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem, we have been reflecting on a whole bunch of little epiphanies. (Might I even say little transfiguration moments?) At the Jordan River where Jesus (and we) have been claimed as God’s beloved. At Cana in Galilee, where water is “transfigured” into wine. (The good stuff!) In the nets full of fish after a long hard night of work with nothing to show for it. In the sermon that turns the world upside down: blessed are the peacemakers.

Indeed. When we pray, it is always political. We pray for the polis, which is to say we pray for this town of Athol and for cities and towns across this diocese. And for the city of Kyiv, and the cities and towns of Ukraine and for all who are subject to violence and degradation around this fragile earth, our island home. 

To accept the call to be blessed as peacemakers is to accept an active role in the world as those who trust that one day we really will beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and study war no more. And there will be peace on earth and good will to all. We surely are not there yet. So, in the meantime, we come here to imagine, to dream, to pray, to hope and then like St. Francis to ask God to make us instruments of peace. Where there is hatred, may we sow seeds of love.

And so today we reach the top of the mountain. You can go there today; in fact I’ll be there in just two months again. It doesn’t much matter whether it’s this particular one or that mountain over there – we can go up and we can look out and we can imagine that thin place where heaven and earth meet, that thin place where Jesus is revealed in all of his glory, fully human and fully divine.

There is a shadow side here, however; or at least a temptation. Such moments are always fleeting. Yet it is tempting to want to try to hold onto them forever, and maybe even of trying to make them normative. To do that is a form of idolatry. I think this is primarily what is going on in the disciples’ desire to build booths on the Mount of the Transfiguration. In truth, every moment is fleeting. The good times, the hard times, times of pandemic and times of health, times of war and times of peace,: time really is an ever-flowing stream. So those mountaintop moments in our lives are precious and a gift, for sure. But the journey of faith is not one long extended mountaintop experience as today’s gospel reading makes abundantly clear. No sooner do Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain than a world in need confronts them. On top of that mountain, we hear the Voice of God saying: this is my Son, pay attention to him. And at the bottom of that mountain we hear the voice of a desperate parent: this is my son, pay attention to him.

Liturgically, the wisdom of remembering the Transfiguration on this day is that it sums up what these eight weeks since the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem have all been about, even as it prepares us to take the next steps in the journey of faith into Lent which begins this Wednesday. Once again we will remember that we are dust, which is not a threat. Rather, it is code language to those who remember we are creatures and not the Creator; it is simply a reminder that we do not have all the time in the world, and therefore we would be wise to make the most of each day. For Christ’s sake and for our own sakes, we are invited into a holy Lent.

There is one caveat I need to share with all of you. Everything that I have said to you so far today is shaped by the Western Christian liturgical calendar. While there may be differences between Methodists and Lutherans and Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, we all follow this same basic path from Three Kings Day to the Jordan River and ultimately to the Mount of the Transfiguration and from there to Ash Wednesday and ultimately to Easter morning where “cross and Easter day attest, God in [flesh] made manifest.”

While my own experience of the Christian tradition has been quite ecumenical, it has mostly been very western. In May, however, as I already mentioned, I will be heading  on my sixth pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group from our diocese. It is there, especially, that I’ve been reminded of the rich traditions of Orthodoxy that are rooted in the Church’s experience in the east. Especially in the old city of Jerusalem, there are the ever-present reminders that Christianity is, at its roots, an eastern religion that spread to the west, not the other way around. You feel that and you smell it and you see it when you walk into a place like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher! On this day, my heart is feeling close to our Ukrainian Orthodox siblings in Christ, especially, and perhaps as we pray for them today we might remember that in Christ, there is no east or west. 

Alexander Schmemman was the Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, New York, a leading liturgical scholar in Orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century. More than a decade ago, I read his book on Orthodox Lenten practices, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha.  As much as I love the Epiphany season and find this journey we have been on is familiar to my western mind, reading Schmemman’s book challenged the way I thought about preparing for Lent.  For Orthodox Christians, the weeks leading up to “Great Lent” are very different from what I have been describing to you. In the five weeks before Lent, the Orthodox focus on five themes:

1. Desire for God (the story of Zacchaeus)
2. Humility (the Publican and the Pharisee)
3. Return from Exile (the parable of the Prodigal Son)
4. Last Judgment, and then finally... 
5. Forgiveness Sunday. 

The Orthodox are clearer than we have been in the west that Lent is not a time to wallow in guilt or shame. Rather it is an invitation to enter more deeply into the paschal mystery which is always about the depth and breadth of God’s love. Empowered and emboldened by that love, we are freed tp embrace our vocation to become instruments of God’s peace and ambassadors of reconciliation as we participate in Christ’s victory over sin and death. God became human so that we might be changed for good.

Sin is the experience of division, opposition, separation, and hatred. We experience those things in deeply personal ways and sadly, even sometimes in the most intimate of relationships. And we also experience them on a global stage. The first chink in the armor of the mighty fortress of sin, Schmemman says, is forgiveness, which opens a pathway to unity, solidarity, and love. It is a breakthrough to a new reality, to God’s reality. “To forgive,” Schmemman writes, “is to reject the hopeless dead-ends of human relations and refer them to Christ.”

Orthodox Easter will fall a week later than our western Easter this year. We will celebrate on April 17 and our Orthodox siblings will do so on April 24. So next weekend (March 6) will be Forgiveness Sunday (also called Cheesefare Sunday) for eastern Christians.  On that last Sunday before Lent begins, there will be an elaborate kind of dance where each person in worship says to every other person there, “Forgive me, for I have sinned.”

Now I am not going to ask you to dance today, St. John’s. But I want you to think about what it would look like for just a moment. What it would be like today for you to ask each person in this room to forgive you? And for them to ask you to do the same? And to imagine that dance extending beyond this room to all whom you have hurt, and all who have hurt you. I’ll pause there, for just a moment.

I don’t need to tell you how hard it is to forgive someone who has hurt us very badly. But at the very least, even when we aren’t yet able to forgive someone, we can remember that God forgives all who confess their sins and are truly penitent. On this point, there is no east or west in Christ: we all agree that it is God forgives sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. So the correct liturgical response to the one who says, “Forgive me for I have sinned” is not “I forgive you” because (let’s be honest) that just might not yet be true. The correct liturgical response is: “God has forgiven you.” 

Forgive me, for I have sinned. God has forgiven you. The spirit of Lent, Schmemman says, is an invitation to experience that mysterious liberation that makes us “light and peaceful” by illuminating an inner beauty that he compares to “an early ray of the sun which, while it is still dark in the valley, begins to lighten up the top of the mountain.” 

I have come to believe that this image brings us full circle and back to the Mount of the Transfiguration. Back to the face of Jesus, in whom there is no east or west, in him no south or north. I have come to believe that while we get there by different paths, eastern and western Christians return to this mystical experience before we dare to remember again that we are dust. In that place where the Mount of the Transfiguration converges with Forgiveness Sunday, we are taken once more to what that theologian, Don Henley once called “the heart of the matter” which is always about forgiveness. Because forgiveness “opens a pathway to unity, solidarity, and love…[and] breaks through to a new reality, to God’s reality.”

Imagine yourself both saying those words to someone whom you have hurt, and then imagine someone whom you have hurt saying these words to you. Maybe this Lent you will find you need to go say them for real and in person or in writing to someone. But for today, let’s just practice: forgive me, for I am a sinner. Listen even now for good news even if you are not yet ready for it: God forgives you, be at peace. Listen even now for the Easter alleluias that we’ll sing again on Easter morning.  

The work of Lent is this work of forgiveness; the work of healing and reconciliation and of finding ways to bring peace on earth, and good will to all people. Pray today for this nation. Pray this day for the people of the Ukraine. Pray this day for the people of Russia. Forgive us, for we are all sinners. God forgives us, be at peace, Cure us, O God, of our warring madness and grant us wisdom and courage for the living of these days!

In the meantime: be gentle with each other. Be patient and kind; not arrogant or rude. For now, pray this simple prayer of confession, that it will lead us into a holy Lent, until we once again sing those alleluias and embrace the new and liberating life that is ours in Jesus Christ: the new life characterized by hope, boldness, freedom and abundant life; the new life that breaks us open to a new reality: God’s reality. 

"But in fact..."

Today I am at St. Mark's in Leominster. The readings for today can be found here.

My name is Rich Simpson and I serve on Bishop Fisher’s staff as his Canon to the Ordinary. For those who did not study Latin (and that includes me) the Ordinary is a just a fancy name for the Bishop, who (among other things) ordains. So I bring along with me today the greetings and good wishes of our ordinary, our bishop,  Doug. He and I are both grateful for all of you, including and especially your interim, Fr. Will, and your vestry and officers, especially your senior warden, James. And the members of your Search Committee, led by Terry. I know that group has been on pause, but we are ready to get going again, and I remain hopeful about your future. (Always with God’s help!)

Although I’ve gotten to know those leaders pretty well over these past eight and a half years that I’ve served in this position, especially since Fr. Jim’s retirement, this is only my third time among you on a Sunday morning. I was here on February 2, 2014, and then I was here again after Jim left, on October 20, 2019. The world has changed a great deal since then, and so I’m grateful to be back with you this morning and grateful to re-open the search for your next rector.

Today is the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany. Over these weeks we have had an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the Incarnation and of our shared vocation to be the Church – to be light of the world, and salt of the earth. The magi reminded us on January 6 that the Christian life is a journey toward Christ and that once we behold him we are changed for good. We get there by hints and guesses and we bring our gifts, and also there is no going back to the old dispensation; we must find another way home.

And then on the first Sunday after the Epiphany we found ourselves again at the Jordan River, where Jesus is claimed as God’s beloved. So, my friends, are we, in Holy Baptism. I’ve renewed my own vows more than once in those same muddy waters of the Jordan, as has Fr. Will and perhaps others here as well. It’s a moving experience. But you don’t have to go to the Jordan to remember that we have been claimed and marked and sealed as Christ’s own, forever. You can remember every day when you wake up and every night when you rest your head on your pillow that you are God’s beloved and everything we say after that about God, about our neighbor, and about ourselves is rooted in that claim on us. As our Presiding Bishop likes to say, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

And then Jesus shows up at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee where the party is so good they run out of wine. Remember? Perhaps you know that Bishop Fisher’s favorite Biblical story is the feeding of the 5000. Bread and fish for everyone, with leftovers. It’s a good story. But for my money, the miracle of all that water into wine is even better and at least a companion to the bread and fish story. What is more glorious than a table with fresh fish, fresh-baked bread, and plenty of wine? Cana of Galilee becomes shorthand language that reminds us to look for signs of abundance in our lives, to look for miracles at weddings and funerals and all of the moments in between. And, I think also to remember that the best is yet to come. Who serves the best wine last? Well, God does!

I could belabor this but then I’d never get to my text for the day. So I’ll just mention the overflowing nets full of fish we heard about last week and the beatitudes today from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ words turn our worlds upside down – in the first century and in the twenty-first century. It is the opposite of a prosperity gospel. It insists we stand with the poor, and those who are hungry, and those who weep. Next week will be a continuation of the Sermon on the Plain, and then we’ll get to the Mount of the Transfiguration where we will behold his glory. And then it will be Lent...

Almost unnoticed over this same time period, however, have been our epistle readings. Since January 16 and continuing through to next Sunday we get six weeks of readings from just three chapters of Paul’s first letter to the early Christian community in Corinth.

Do you remember their story? They were a mess! Even in the snippets we’ve heard over the past month you can piece that together. You don’t need to be a Biblical scholar; just a close reader. Paul is trying to remind them of who they are. He is trying to remind them that they are God’s beloved. He is trying to remind them that they need each other. You don’t need to do that when everything is going well. They were fractured and divided and hurt and maybe even polarized as we find our own world to be these days. And so he tells them:

… there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 

He is reminding them they are on the same team. That they need each other. And then he tells them:

Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

And then those words addressed first, not to a couple of their wedding day but to a congregation where people have run roughshod over one another:  

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth…. (you remember how it goes, I’m sure) And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

But there’s more. Last week we got to chapter fifteen and we heard these words:

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.

The hints were already there, but that pivot makes it abundantly clear. All that talk about many gifts and one Body and all that talk about love is addressed to people who are in danger of forgetting. People who think there are some “real” Christians in their midst and some posers. People who are tempted to believe that they are the most gifted and that others are not gifted enough. People who have been acting as if others don’t matter. It is in places where arrogance and boasting and rude comments and irritability and resentments take hold that you have to remind folks not to rejoice in wrongdoing, but to rejoice in the truth. Right? By chapter 15, it’s even clearer. “I would remind you,” St. Paul says. (My siblings in Christ!) I remind you of the good news I proclaimed and you received! So live like you believe it!

Which brings us to today. I know it’s taken me a while to get here but I can move quickly from here, I promise. Imagine that first-century community gathered in someone’s home, in a time before church buildings, receiving this letter from Paul, much respected but also complicated and opinionated. A good pastor willing to step into conflict when necessary.

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

And I can break it down from there into just a five-word sermon. Ready? Now if…but in fact.

Now if Easter didn’t happen, now if Christ wasn’t raised, now if the tomb wasn’t empty, now if Jesus is not alive, then we are of all people most to be pitied. If the resurrection isn’t real, then we may as well pack it in. We can let polarization and fear and arrogance and domination and bullying and win. We have no hope of a better life or a better world. Now if we are just here going through the motions, trying to keep a building open, trying to hold onto the past, it’s not worth it.

But in fact, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. But in fact we are an Easter people. But in fact, even at the grave we dare to make our song. But in fact in these weeks between Epiphany and Transfiguration we find signs of God made manifest all around us, signs of new life, signs of new beginnings. 

But in fact, we see signs of Easter life signs of faith, hope and love across this diocese. And they give us the strength to carry on and to not lose heart. But in fact we carry in our bodies already signs of the resurrection, and in this Body of Christ here and in the work we are called to as servants of the risen Christ to bring hope and reconciliation to the neighborhood. But in fact we do not lose heart. 

But in fact, Christ is risen/the Lord is risen indeed.  

Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.