Transfiguration Sunday, Year B+ Don’t Stop+ 2.14.21

 

All Saints’ Episcopal Church
The Rev. Alene Campbell-Langdell

 

Partway through Lent last year, a friend said something that has resonated for me all year:  This is the lentenest Lent I have ever lented.  As we observe this Sunday that marks the transition from Epiphany to Lent, a part of me feels like the last Lent never ended.  And I am reminded as I walk with Peter up to the mountaintop that Peter and James and John and Jesus himself belonged to a country and a people that had been oppressed for a very, very long time.  The last thing Peter or any of the disciples wanted to hear was about more death and oppression.  So imagine that momentary spark of hope that must have shot through Peter when he recognized Jesus’ visitors.  Moses and Elijah were the prophets traditionally understood to be the forerunners of the Messiah.  It had been predicted that when they showed up again, the end was near!  Peter’s comment about building shacks or tents, as funny as that sounds to our ears, makes sense when you remember that Zechariah (14:16-21) associated the festival of booths with the Day of the Lord when all nations would come to worship God together.  At last, Peter seems to be saying, let’s get the Festival started!  I am so done with Lent!

We are invited today into transition space.  We are invited into a story of two men: one of whom will be taken up to heaven and the other will be left to grieve and continue the ministry.  This mountaintop is full of echoes to the past and the future.  The last time this voice was heard in the Gospel of Mark was at Jesus’ baptism.  At both of these events, Jesus is proclaimed as God’s son by a voice from heaven.  At the next mountaintop, the centurion will proclaim that truth as Jesus dies.  Transition spaces are often thought of as places where the veil between the reality of heaven and the reality of earth is thin.  St Paul writes to the Corinthians about a veil that blinds some--preventing them from seeing the light of Christ shining in the darkness of this world. 

 

As if we needed more strange images on this day of transition, today marks the feast day of St Valentine, a martyr who believed in the power of love to transform us.  Love has the power to transform us and the power to bring new life.  But, as St Valentine knew all too well, death and love are not strangers.  And so we watch in our reading from 2 Kings as two men walk together.  As often happens in Hebrew Scriptures, the names of these two men are significant.  Elijah means “My God is Yahweh,” referencing the name spoken to Moses.  The name recalls ancestors of the faith, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.  It is a name that speaks of transcendence and a God who is beyond time and place.  The younger man, walking beside Elijah, is named Elisha.  This is a name that means “My God is Salvation.”  It is a name related linguistically to Joshua and Jesus.  It is a name that emphasizes a God Who is actively at work here and now in my life.  As the two men walk, the younger man is repeatedly questioned by others.  Don’t you know that everything is going to change for you?  Don’t you know that the one who taught you about God is going to be taken away from you?  But the young man refuses to be deterred, “Yes, I know.  Shut up!”  Even the teacher asks the younger man to stay behind and let him take this final journey alone.  But Elisha is determined to keep going.  He is determined to get to the end and see the power of God. 

Can you see that moment manifested again as Elijah and Moses, symbols of God’s presence through the ages, meet with Jesus, the God who saves? Can you hear the echo in Jesus’ words to the disciples?  Don’t tell anyone about this until you have seen the resurrection.  And later, don’t leave Jerusalem until you have been given the Spirit from above, until you have received God’s power. 

In this, the longest Lent of our lives, don’t stop until you see the resurrection.  Don’t stop until you know God as not only the God Who is, and Was, and Is to Come, but also the God who actively intervenes with love and power in your life.  Don’t stop until the God out there has become the God whose love transforms death and the cross into glory and life.

 

As we enter Lent, I am aware that grief and isolation and depression go hand in hand.  It would be easy to use Lent as an excuse to withdraw into our grief and allow the pain to take over.  And so, I invite you into a Lent of a different kind this year.  Now, before Ash Wednesday, make a list of seven things that will help you re-connect with life, that will help you listen to what Jesus has to say, and then do at least one each week during Lent.  To help you get started, here’s my list.  Borrow what works for you and add some of your own. 

Take a walk in nature,
call someone I feel dis-connected from,
 listen to the Gospel of Mark read aloud (there are versions in both English and Spanish on Hoopla and the Bible app),
 do some art or music,
stop and give thanks for the work I have been given,
randomly give someone a gift,
sit in silence for 20 minutes breathing in God’s love.

Whatever you decide to do, don’t stop.  Don’t stop until you see the resurrection, whether that comes in March, April, or next year.  Keep going until the God Who Is becomes the God Who Saves.