EPIPHANY LAST – C, February 18, 2007

As we all know, or as I trust we all know, the story of the Transfiguration which we just heard read, is the Gospel reading every year on this, the Last Sunday of the Epiphany season. This means that I have preached sermons on this event almost 40 times now. My take on what happened up there on that mountain is that this transfiguration experience gave Jesus a glimpse of heaven, something he needed at this point in his ministry. For once he and Peter, James and John descended that mountain, they headed straight for Jerusalem where Jesus was eventually crucified. The Transfiguration, at least in my preaching in the past, was given to Jesus to strengthen him for his journey.

The Transfiguration, as I have preached in the past, is also a very meaningful story for you and me, for us who try to follow Jesus in our daily lives. For like Jesus there are times when our personal journey is difficult, when pain and suffering are either near by or are very real. Those are the times when we need something to encourage us, to see us through, to give us strength. We need a transfiguration experience.

My point in my past preaching has been that God does give us such experiences, such glimpses of heaven. We all have had those moments in our lives when God was very, very alive; when we truly felt God’s presence. Those are God-given moments. God gave them to us so that when we came to places in our life’s journey where we were afraid or felt abandoned or wondered where God was, we could remember that God was and is near, that God will never abandon us, that we need not be afraid.

I have always believed that. But as I have reflected on the Transfiguration this week, it seems to me that I have missed perhaps the most important words spoken at that moment. Those words, as I now reflect back on them, are the reason why I am able to remember those transfiguration events on my own life. Those same words are also the reason why there have been moments when I have felt alone and abandoned.

Those important words are the ones Peter, James and John heard: "This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him." Well, the truth is that there have been too many times in my life when I have not listened. I don’t know about you, but I know about me; and what I know about me is that listening is something I do not always do well, whether that listening is listening to God speaking to me, my wife speaking to me, or even you speaking to me, which, in truth, can be one and the same.

You see, or at least I need to see and realize that God speaks to me more often than not in and through other people: my wife, my children, you. Yes, God speaks to me in prayer, in reading Scripture, in the wonders of nature, in so very many ways. When I stop to listen, truly, listen, to what God is saying to me, it is a transfiguration experience. It truly is. It is an enlightening experience for me and, I dare sate, for you as well.

The issue at hand, however, is to listen. In order to listen, we have to make the time, take the time, to do so. We cannot listen, really listen, if our mind is on something else, if we are listening with half an ear, if that. It is difficult to observe the beauty of the sunset if we do not stop in our tracks, pause and look. It is difficult for me to listen to what my wife is saying to me if I am watching a football game. It is impossible to listen to what my daughter is saying to me if I am reading the paper.

Listening does not happen by accident or by chance. It only takes place when we deliberately make and take the time to listen. It means stopping the car, turning off the television, putting down the newspaper. This is the only way to truly listen and the only way to experience those transfiguration events that come our way more often that we ever realize. It is the only way we can see and hear the truth.

Perhaps the reason why the church has deliberately chosen this Sunday each year, three days before Lent begins, to have us hear this Gospel story, is for us to hear those words God spoke to Peter, James and John back then and the words God still speaks to us today: "Listen! Listen! Listen!"

Lent, if it is nothing else, is a time the church sets aside for us to listen, listen to God, listen to Jesus speaking to us. It is a time to listen to God in prayer and reflection on God’s word in scripture. It is a time to make time to listen to our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends – truly listen to the voice of God, the voice of Jesus. For God speaks to us in many voices and in no voice at all, in and through people and in and through all of creation.

If you are like me, you and I do not spend enough time simply listening to God. As a result, we miss so much of what God is saying to us and about us. We miss so many transfiguration experiences, glimpses of God, glimpses of the heavenly, glimpses that God gives to us both in God’s created order and in all God’s creatures, namely, our fellow human beings.

I’d like to share a poem, a prayer really, that Barbara shared with our clergy colleague group this week. It is by John Shea. He titles it: "a prayer to the god who fell from heaven."

"If you had stayed / tightfisted in the sky / and watched us thrash / with all the patience of a pipe smoker / I would pray / like a golden bullet / aimed at your heart. / But the story says / you cried / and so heavy was the tear / you fell with it to earth / where like the baritone in the bar / it is never time to go home. / So you move among us / twisting every straight line / into Picasso, / stealing kisses from pinched lips, / holding our hand in the dark. / So now when I pray / I sit and turn my mind / like a television knob / till you are there / with your large open hands / spreading my life before me / like a Sunday tablecloth / and pulling up a chair yourself; / for by now / he secret is out. / You are home."

God is home, here, with us. God is not somewhere out there, but someone right here. God is here among us, in us, all around us. God not only became one of us in Jesus, but also is part of us, part of who we are. When we listen to God, experience God, however that takes place, we are transformed, transfigured.

Lent is the time, this Lent is the time to pull up a chair, sit down, turn the knob until we hear the voice of God, and listen. Listen to the voice of God as God speaks to us through the words of scripture in the bible we are holding. Listen to the voice of God in the book we are reading. Listen to the voice of God in the newspaper we are reading. Listen to the voice of God in the conversations we are having with our spouse, our child, our parent, our best friend.

Listen. Listen. Listen. As the psalmist says, "Be still" and listen. Lent is the time to listen to God. If we make that time, take that time to truly listen to the many, many voices of God, we will have many transfiguration and transforming experiences. Guaranteed. But first we must listen.