Last Epiphany A 2026; 15 Feb.
Exodus 24:12-18; Matt. 17:1-9
Jack Hardaway
LOVE TRANSFIGURES THE WORLD
Moses was having a day.
God was speaking.
Climb the mountain consumed in a devouring fire storm.
Meet God there to receive the gift that will bring the world back together. The Torah.
He held out his hand and entered the cloud and began to climb into the storm.
A mountain top, an experience of the Holy that causes us to tremble, to start over.
Elijah was having a day.
He had barely escaped with his life.
He had made the wrong people angry and Jezebel was after him.
He came up the mountain to hide, but that didn’t work.
God spoke to him and told him to go back, God spoke in a whisper.
Not like Moses and the firy mountain, this was a whisper, a still small voice, a gentle breath.
Elijah had run to God for protection and God sent him back to start a revolution, to preach regime change, and to find another subversive.
Faith always asks more, to take bigger and bigger steps into the unknown.
Jesus was having a day.
He was on the mountaintop. The last mountain was for the sermon that started the world again. This mountain was something different. Transfiguration. Communion with the Father. Words of love and adoration. And the blessed company of those who spoke the word that pulls the world back together, Moses and Elijah.
The mission of the Messiah who will suffer rather than dominate is confirmed.
The world is about to begin again. Transfigured by love.
Peter, James, and John were having a day.
Walking with Jesus suddenly became a mind altering experience.
The blazing light of transfigured flesh.
The unexpected company of those who reestablished the boundaries of the world when the margins of creation were falling away, Moses and Elijah.
They were supposed to be with God, not here before their fragile lives and frail minds. Then the clouds and words of adoration and love and command and then just plain old day again, walking down the mountain with Jesus, told to keep it quiet.
The world was beginning again.
Peter, James and John. What would become of them in this new way?
Lent.
We begin this Wednesday.
It will be a day.
We walk down the Mountain with Jesus, Peter, James and John and we face the power of sin and death, not only in our lives but on our world.
Facing that power that is eroding the world is an act of faith, stepping out into the unknown, trusting God with our future and our past.
We step into the consuming fire that is love, the freedom that chooses love. Do we choose that freedom?
The world needs a reset. A do over. Start again.
Lent is about that.
We intercede for the world, and we carry it with us as we start over.
We carry the pain of the world with our own pain and we touch the pain of Jesus on the cross.
Love transfigures the world.
So we begin.
Have a day.