Sunday Sermon 3/4/12

Two terribly difficult readings today, the Transfiguration and Abraham and Isaac. Interestingly both appear on a mountain.

In the Old Testament reading, Abraham is told by God to take his only son, Isaac, his child by Sarah late in her life and the progenitor of the future generations promised him, to sacrifice him on a mountain. Abraham does it, even to poising the knife over the boy before being stopped by God.

In the New Testament reading, Christ is transfigured between Moses and Elijah before three apostles and then tells them not to tell the story until He rises from the dead. There is a lot of confusion among the apostles; they don't really understand what any of this means and Peter, in his incredible, comic and consistent representation of Everyman, wants to build little houses on the mountain to house the transfigured three.

Much has been made of the first reading. Kierkegaard uses this story as the defining difference between an accepting, passive man and the active man of active faith. What is fearsome is the possibility of error, that you may be wrong--or deceived.

The second reading seems to try to help. Who is the Transformation for? Does Christ benefit from this encounter? No, this seems to be for the apostles' benefit. As inept as the apostles are, there are some significant lessons for them that even they can understand. First, Christ's visitors are dead. The Jewish tradition was very vague on resurrection and here Christ visits with Moses and Elijah, icons of the Old testament, and seems to state that there is another world unseen by mortal man and Christ is intimately involved in it. His ministry extends beyond the shocking earthly miracles he performs; there is something universal going on. More, they are told to keep quiet about this until He rises from the dead. The Transfiguration is not an event, it is part of a sequence of unveiling the nature of Christ and his message and Christ's death and Resurrection are integral to it. (Interestingly, Peter alludes to the Transfiguration in his epistles but passively, as if everyone knows about it. Maybe he was embarrassed.) This event apparently is a major event in the Eastern Church; stigmata never appears in the Eastern Church but transfiguration does. Finally, as if the earlier heavenly announcements were not enough, a voice from heaven again affirms that Christ is the Son of God. Mercifully, Abraham's "leap of faith" is made considerably shorter for the apostles.

In these two readings, on these two mountains, heaven meets earth.