The World’s Glory or God’s?
Year C
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-43a
May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth…
There are plenty of Transfiguration Sunday sermons… which simply talk about how the presence of Moses and Elijah… and then their disappearance… means that Jesus incorporates… the fullness of the Law and the Prophets… into himself… that Moses and Elijah find their fulfillment… if you will… in Jesus… and while that may be true… it’s not the whole story…
Like the three disciples… we too… are witnesses to a pivotal moment in history… we’ve moved from a baby in a manger… with angels and shepherds… to preaching and healing… and crowds which have gathered… to both a literal and a figurative mountaintop experience… a numinous thin place… which provides a moment of transcendence… and in particular… a significant revelation given by God… which is both seen… and not seen… yet still experienced…
The Rev. Sarah Henrich… a professor from Luther Seminary… wrote that because Jesus’ tangible glory is a visible aspect of God’s holiness and majesty… witnesses were vital to handing on the experience of that glory… puzzling and yet hope-filled… the passage turns on seeing the appearance of Jesus’ face… and the gleaming clothing… such as only heaven could bleach them… represents the entirety of the outer world… because what begins in Jesus’ interior… flows out into the world… and it reflects the path of how Spirit becomes flesh… and the visible cloud which once protected Israel from the sight of God… now also shields Peter, James, and John from seeing God… but not from hearing God… the voice at Jesus’ baptism… which spoke only to him… is now heard through the cloud… and the words… Listen to him… shatters the cloud… and reveals that Moses and Elijah are gone…
When I prepare a sermon… I often ask the Holy Spirit… what do the people I serve need to hear during this time… what words of insight… of hope… of Good News… tie this day’s readings… to what they may be thinking… to what they may be feeling… and to what’s going on in the world… and so I share an allegorical story about our own country’s history…
King George III… was the King of England when the American colonies declared independence… and fought the American Revolution… gaining freedom from an absent king who imposed harsh restrictions and injustices… thirty years later… the King decided that America was too much to give up… and so he invaded from the east… seeking to regain and improve the footprint of his domain… his assets… and his honor… after all… America was England’s child… so he attacked the capitol in Washington DC… forcing the leadership back to Philadelphia… where independence… where something precious… began… I don’t think that would have gone over well…
But Boris Yeltsin was the President of the Soviet Union in July 1991… when about a month later… on August 24, 1991… the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence from the Soviet Union and renamed itself Ukraine… thirty years later… in February 2022… Vladimir Putin decided that Ukraine was too much to give up… and so he invaded from the east… the north… and the south… forcing its leadership to retreat from Kyiv… from the city… where something else… something more precious to Putin… began…
Kyiv was the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church… and it’s an unfortunate truth… but religion and politics are too often intertwined… and in an article published on Wednesday by Episcopal priest Diana Butler Bass… and in a parallel article published on Thursday… by British journalist Giles Frasier… who is also Fr. Frasier… they both tell a story… share a historical perspective that’s not been shared in the media… that this is not simply a conflict over territory or resources… but over who is going to control the geographical home of the Russian church… they both explain that… in the year 988… when Christian Emperor Basil II of Byzantium… was threatened with a coup by his military leaders… he reached out to his enemies… to pagans in the land of Rus… and to one pagan in particular… named Vladimir… Basil said that if Vladimir would help him crush the revolt… Basil would give him the hand of his sister in marriage… now this would be a game changer for Vladimir… the marriage of a pagan to an imperial princess was unprecedented… but first… Vladimir would have to convert to Christianity…
And so Vladimir returned to Kyiv in triumph… and proceeded to summon the whole city to the banks of the river Dnieper for a mass baptism… and this singular event becomes the founding… of Russian Orthodox Christianity… it was from Kyiv… that Christianity would spread out… and merge with the Russian love of motherland… to create a powerful brew of nationalism and spirituality… in the mythology of 988… it was just as if… the whole of the Russian people had also been baptized… and Vladimir was declared a saint…
Centuries later… Soviet Communism tried repeatedly to crush all this… but failed miserably… and since then… in the post-Soviet period… thousands of churches have been built and re-built… and though the West thinks of Christianity as something in decline… in the East it is thriving… and at the heart of this post-Soviet Christian revival… is Vladimir Putin…
In their two articles… the two priests write that few people appreciate the extent to which the invasion of Ukraine is nothing less than a spiritual quest for Putin… the Baptism of Rus is the founding event of the formation of the Russian religious psyche… and the Russian Orthodox Church traces its origins back here… that’s why Putin’s goal… is Kyiv itself… and it’s a fair question… to ask whose glory Putin is seeking… the Rev. Butler Bass writes… There should be no doubt that Putin sees himself as a kind of Vladimir the Great II… a candidate for sainthood who is restoring the soul of Holy Mother Russia… and that’s a real problem… because when it comes to Russian Orthodoxy… Kyiv is essentially Jerusalem…
While Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus… Peter John and James… were weighed down with sleep… yet stayed awake… this is code language for saying that they both got it… and they didn’t get it… as perhaps we do and we don’t… that’s because spiritual truth comes in stages… they’re like the man in Mark’s Gospel who Jesus had to touch twice… in order to heal his blindness… the first time the men he saw looked like trees… the second time Jesus touched him… he saw people clearly…
The effulgent light which radiated from Jesus… and the light in his words and actions… exposed the darkness of the world… and when they came down from that mountaintop… a plot to kill Jesus… began to take form… in a way… we have been on that same path to the cross for almost two years now… deaths among our families and friends… and the death of our sense of normalcy… and perhaps now even our safety… and I spoke a few weeks ago… about how responding with violence… is never the best choice… and personally… I still hold on to that… but in some ways we find ourselves at another pivotal moment… and I don’t know how we do nothing in response to Russia’s aggression… and the unimaginable suffering that’s happening in Ukraine… I just don’t know…
Throughout history… the church… has in whole or in part… committed brutal atrocities against Jews… and Muslims… and against other Christians… this Lent… I think I’ll reflect on this history… and ask God’s forgiveness on the church… and maybe more so than in recent memory… it would be a good time to start getting logs out of our own eyes… so we can see the specks… in others’ eyes… and the Good News… is that in deforesting our eyes… we can begin to see each other… as God sees us… and that vision… will inform our actions… and it’s our actions… that will bring about more of God’s kingdom…
If you are interested in reading further, here are links to the two articles I referenced in this sermon:
