August 11, 2024 12th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon Celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration

Most Sundays I like to take note of what has happened in history this time of year.? First of all, some notable birthdays:

Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick.? He lived much of his life in New England, in the Berkshires, near the home of the more famous Nathaniel Hawthorne.? They had a great creative collaboration.?

Wendell Berry a great southern writer, poet and essayist, still alive and still farming in Kentucky.

James Baldwin, born in Harlem, one of many great writers in a movement called the Harlem Renaissance.??

Louis Armstrong, born in New Orleans in 1901, perhaps the most well-known jazz musician of his time and that time included a great many greats.? He was very quotable.? My favorite quotation of his, in response to someone who did not understand jazz and asked what his music was about, he answered:

“Baby, if you have to ask you ain’t never gonna know.”

In terms of history, it was on August 10, 1519?that the explorer?Ferdinand Magellan?set off to sail around the world. Although he was Portuguese, Magellan had sworn allegiance to Spain, and he began the journey with a fleet of five ships and 270 men.? Magellan was killed in battle in April 1521, and the remaining fleet continued on without him. They arrived back in Seville — down to one ship and 18 men — on September 8, 1522.

More recently, about this time of year in 1854,?Henry David Thoreau?published?Walden;?or,?Life in the Woods.? And, in 1974,?Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency.

Grass withers, flowers fade, but the word of God abides forever.

As we begin to consider our Biblical lessons for today, let me pose a riddle:?

What do the first weeks of August have in common with the first weeks of February?? Both in terms of the calendar year and the church year?

It terms of the seasonal calendar, they are both times when a season is at its fullest, yet just starting to wane.? In February we have winter carnivals, the Olympics, various outdoor festivals and celebrations.? It is the height of winter; yet the days are getting noticeably longer and the nights shorter and so we know that winter is beginning to turn into spring.?

Likewise in August, we have our warmest days; the lake or the ocean where we go to swim is at its warmest; and we have just had the summer Olympics.? Yet the first hints of fall are barely noticeable as the days grow shorter and the fruits of the harvest roll in.? Baseball is at its peak; the long hot summer at its hottest; yet football is on its way.? The 49ers are in their training camp as are all the other professional, college and I would guess also high school teams.? It is only 19 days, 8 hours and 40 or so minutes until kickoff at College Station Texas when Notre Dame takes the field against Texas A&M.? But who's counting?

In terms of the church year, the answer to my question “What does this time of year have in common with early February?” ?is that whereas we celebrate the feast of Candlemas in early February, a celebration of the complete, total end of the Christmas Season; now we celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration, a celebration of the day some of the disciples fully realized and understood the nature this teacher they have been following.? So this time of year, in the fullness of summer, we celebrate the fullness of the ministry of Jesus, not just the teacher, but the savior.

Appropriately then in today's responsive reading, we proclaimed:

Christ has been raised from the dead, ????the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.?. . For as in Adam all die, ????so in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia.

And we read in Isaiah the poetry made familiar by Handel in the Messiah:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings,

And:

The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

And we read further from Paul's Letter to the Corinthians:

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.? For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.?

Thus Saint Paul brought the good news to all the world.? Paul believed that Jesus was the Messiah spoken of in the scriptures, by Isaiah and many others; that this Messiah had risen from the dead and thereby opened the gates of heaven to all.? He preached the Good News in a great curve of land from Jerusalem to Damascus, to Greece, to Rome.?

What is the Gospel, the Good News?? There are many answers to that question, some better than others, but no answer, in and of itself, is complete.? Part of the Good News is that Jesus was a great teacher.? He was certainly that, but more.? He was also a savior.? That is the heart of the matter.? That Jesus was more than a teacher, but a savior as well is what we celebrate on this Transfiguration Sunday.? How we understand, how we respond to the teacher transfigured as savior is the hard part.? Nonetheless, respond we have, for century upon century, with no end in sight.

Our Puritan ancestors, those who began our denomination way back when, often get a bad rap for being nature-hating killjoys, but that is not at all fair.? It indeed took a while for our Puritan ancestors to warm to their environment, for they did not come here to be inspired by nature, but to worship God in the proper way and to institute a godly government, as they called it, a commonwealth.? Eventually, however, a sense of wonder came upon them; their very environment became transfigured.? They came to view the natural world as a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven and as an expression of divine love.? How could they not, with this great continent all around them?? So draw a trajectory from the Pilgrims and Puritans to Thoreau at his cabin seeing God in every sunrise and every drop of water of Walden Pond to F. Scott Fitzgerald, born about this time of year in 1896, at the end of The Great Gatsby:

“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

May you have a wonder-full summer.

Responsive Reading

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; ????therefore let us keep the feast,? Not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, ????but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.

Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; ????death no longer has dominion over him.? The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; ????but the life he lives, he lives to God.? So also consider yourselves dead to sin, ????and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia.

Christ has been raised from the dead, ????the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.? For since by a man came death, ????by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.? For as in Adam all die, ????so in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia. - 1 Corinthians 15?

Isaiah 52:7-10

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns." Hark, your watchmen lift up their voice, together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the LORD to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem; for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

?1 Corinthians 15:21-25

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.? For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.? But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.? Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

?