Aug. 6, 2023
Feast of the Transfiguration
The Rev. Deborah Hawkins
The Episcopal Church of St. Martin
“Transfiguration. Now what?”
Why do we come to church on Sunday morning?
At the 10am service we will be having an instructed Eucharist during the first half of the service, the liturgy of the word. In the catechism of the Episcopal church (BCP, on page 857) the question is asked, “What is corporate worship?” The answer? “In corporate worship, we unite ourselves with others to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God’s Word, to offer prayer, and to celebrate the sacraments.”
At 10am I will be talking a little bit about how we do those things at different points in the service. Questions of ‘what’ always lead us to the questions of why, why are we doing these things? Why are we here?
There are many, many answers. Here are some.
*We are here for comfort in times of sorrow and emptiness
*We are here to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, as Paul has stated it.
*We are here to offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies to God (BCP, p. 342)
*We are here to be challenged to look beyond ourselves and what we feel and we think today. To be part of something more than our little, self-referential selves.
Others?
*We are here for pardon, for forgiveness, for absolution
*We are here for a source of values for our children and ourselves
*We are here because church gives us a sense of security and stability
*We are here to have our thinking and our actions challenged
Specifically we are here today to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. We hear this story every year on the last Sunday of Epiphany, a season of light and the revelation of God in the world and also on the Feast of the Transfiguration itself which this year, as it does sometimes, falls on a Sunday.
In the story, Peter and James and John journeyed with Jesus to the top of a mountain where they had a mountain top experience. They had a shared vision of Jesus in dazzling white, all of him shining. He stands between Moses and Elijah.
Like all mountain top experiences it didn’t last forever. When it was over they came back down the mountain and continued with their lives, not talking about it much for a while. Eventually, what they saw, and other experiences they had, would have such a cumulative effect on their lives, they would share their vision with others and that is how we continue to hear about it today.
In Luke’s story of the gospel, eight days before climbing the mountain Peter acknowledged Jesus as the son of the living God. “Who do the crowds say I am?” Jesus asked. And then he asked, “But who do you say I am?” “You are the Messiah of God,” Peter replied.
In the accounts of the Transfiguration recorded in Matthew and Mark it was 6 days after Peter answered the question, ‘who do you say I am?’ that they climbed the mountain. Matthew and Mark link this story to Good Friday and the crucifixion.
Luke, though, says it was the eighth day. Friday is the 6th day of the week. Saturday, the sabbath, is the 7th.
The eighth day is Sunday, the day of resurrection, Easter Day, the Lord’s Day, the day of a new creation, a new creation in Christ. That is the day Luke says those three disciples saw Jesus in a new light, and it fundamentally changed their reality.
Are they the only ones to have mountain top experience? Of course not. Just this morning we heard about another one.
Moses went up the mountain to talk to God and came back changed. His face was transfigured. He glowed with such a beautiful light people had to turn away. Elijah is another with a mountain top experience. In the cave on the mountain he heard the voice of God in the sound of shear silence.
One of the reasons we are here in church, not just this morning, but every Sunday, has to do with mountain top experiences – those of Jesus and Peter and James and John and Moses and others in our sacred stories – and of ourselves.
All of us at one or more times in our lives have had or will have mountain top experiences, although not all of them will occur literally on a mountain.
They are experiences that change the way we see the world and the way we live in it. They might be sudden or gradual, we might recognize them in the moment or not until long after, but they change the way we view the world and often others notice a change in us.
The problem with them is that generally, on their own, the changes they bring about are not permanent. For that we need more than just a mountain top experience because those experiences are not ends in themselves.
We are not to stay on the top of the mountain. If we do, it means we are stuck. We must come back down and move back into our lives asking, “now what? Now that I have seen that about God, now what?”
We need a place to take our expanded vision and use it or it will eventually fade and be forgotten.
One of the ways we can avoid losing the gifts of our encounters with the divine is by recognizing that every moment in our lives has the potential to be life changing. Church, and by that I mean all of us together, helps us do that.
Martin Luther said,
“This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.”
(stewardshipoflife.org. Feb 6, 2013, Rev. Sharron Riessinger Blezard)
Why do we come to church on Sunday morning? Lots of reasons and some are:
*We are here to listen to stories that echo in our own lives and help us find meaning in the chaos.
*We are here to be in a place and with a group of people where the cumulative effects of transforming actions of God in our lives have the time and the support to do their work in and among us.
*We are here for community, for a shared purpose and to journey and work with other Christians, to be willing hands to bring God’s dream for the world to reality.
* Most of all, I think we are here because this is where we belong. Christ Jesus called us here to be with him to journey up mountains and down and through the valleys of life. We may not really understand it, but that is what happened, and we are here to unite ourselves with others who have also been called to be here.
Until the kingdom comes and the day dawns and we are changed from glory into glory and the morning star rises in our hearts.
Thanks be to God.
Did you miss the Instructed Liturgy of the Word at 10am? Read below.
Script to Instructed Liturgy of the Word
The Rev. Deborah Hawkins
August 6, 2023
1.Opening hymn, collect for purity, song of praise (Standing next to celebrant, comments before Collect for the Day)
What are we doing here? In the catechism of the Episcopal church, in the BCP, on page 857 for those who like to follow along, the question is asked, “What is corporate worship?” What are we doing when we gather for worship on Sunday? The answer? “In corporate worship, we unite ourselves with others to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God’s Word, to offer prayer, and to celebrate the sacraments.”
This morning, in spots indicated in the bulletin with “comments” in Italics, I will be interrupting the service to point out some of the ways we are doing what the prayer book describes.
Everything we have done so far this morning in church was about gathering us together. We come together singing, which unites us deeply. We greet one another with ritual words, reminding ourselves why we are here. We sing a song of praise which is always about the glory of God.
In a moment Ernie is going to offer the collect of the day. There is a collect specific for each Sunday of the year as well as for special occasions. Each names something about God, as well as something about ourselves, and suggests themes or echoes we might want to be listening for throughout the service. This morning I’ll give you a hint. Pay attention to words like light and shiny, and feelings of wow.
2. Collect of the Day, the people are seated (Standing at the eagle, before the first reading)
At this point in the service, we have one or two readings and a psalm portion. We follow the new revised common lectionary. We are given the readings we work with each week. This summer the OT readings cover a long stretch of genesis and exodus. A psalm generally follows the OT reading and is a response to it. We chant or say it together. The NT epistle readings for this year are from Romans, Philippians, or 1 Thessalonians. There could be a response to the second reading but generally here, unless there is no reading from the OT, we don’t include one.
Typically at St. Martin’s on the first Sunday of each month we hear only one of the first two readings.
Often we lift up our bulletins and read along. That is okay, but I would recommend that sometimes you not, but instead close your eyes and imagine what is happening. We hear differently when we just listen. It is easier to pick up the echos that sing out in the collision of the readings with the hymns and the prayers, and our lives. You may only hear part of story that way, but you will hear what you need to hear.
Now Pat is going to read you a story. It is over 3000 years old. Wow!
3. 1st reading and psalm (Standing at the eagle, before the Gospel hymn)
Next we are going to sing the sequence hymn which often has a lot of alleluias in it. Alleluia means ‘all people, praise God.’ Sometimes while we sing that acolytes, or helpers, get the lit torches and stand in front of the altar and wait for the deacon. Their purpose is to shine light on the gospel. If we don’t have any acolytes some Sunday the gospel procession occurs without them. The light of the gospel shines either way and either way, while we are singing, Deacon Margaret picks up the gospel book and carries it into the middle of all of us gathered here.
The gospel is the center of our lives. The deacon, someone who, in the Episcopal church, is called by God and ordained by the church to help guide all of us in serving Christ in the world, reads out the Good News. When the deacon announces the gospel, many of us silently say a private prayer asking for the gospel to live in our understanding, on our lips, and in our hearts.
We stand, as we are able, as a sign of the importance of the gospel in our lives.
4. Sequence hymn, Gospel Reading (The center isle: Interactive sermon)
What did you hear?
Feast of transfiguration
Light and shining
Mountain top experiences
Slow work of transfiguring us so we shine forth with the light of Christ
5. Nicene Creed (Standing at the eagle, before the intercessions and confession)
After the sermon and a brief time of personal reflection, together we say the Nicene Creed. It was composed by an ecumenical council in 325 and amended by another council 381. It summarizes our faith. You may on occasion argue with parts of it, but it isn’t yours or mine, it is ours. It is what I once heard a bishop call ‘Our Song.’
After the saying Creed, we intercede for the world through the Prayers of the People. There is no set format for these prayers but they always include (BCP p. 359) intercessions for the Universal Church, its members, and its mission; the Nation and all in authority; the welfare of the world; the concerns of the local community; those who suffer and those in any trouble; and the departed. This is also when we read the names of those who have asked for our prayers.
After looking outward, we turn inward and notice where we seek transformation. After a moment or two of silent reflection, we say what we call the general confession. Week after week, no matter what our individual confessions, it holds them all. A bishop or priest then gives us absolution. We are all called to forgive one another our trespasses, of course. The formal act is a sign and a function of the ministry of reconciliation committed by Christ to the church.
6. Intercessions, Confession, absolution (Standing next to the celebrant, before the peace)
The Liturgy of the Word has one more action. We have received absolution, so we can stand up. Now we share with each other the same greeting the resurrected Jesus shared with the first disciples: Peace be with you. It is not simply a time to greet those we love and like. It is a sacred time when we look from face to face to see if there is anyone whom we need to go stand before and offer that peace which passes all understanding. It can be a very risky time but as Jesus said in the sermon on the Mount, “when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that’s your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
