To Be Transformed

 HOMILY, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY – LAST EPIPHANY, YEAR B

FEBRUARY 14, 2021

 

TEXT:                        2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9

 

 

            If I am honest with myself – and with you – I acknowledge that under the best of circumstances I barely touch the surface of the scriptures we read each week.

 

            That is especially true today.

 

            We have two powerful lessons – one from the Old Testament, and one from the Gospel according to Mark.  They tell us very important stories – stories at the center of salvation history.

 

            A rabbi, studying Tanakh – the Jewish scriptures we call the Old Testament – would view this story through thousands of years of tradition, poring over the many nuances ancient sources would disclose to him.  He would reveal the many layers of meaning to the story of Elijah’s assumption into heaven, like peeling the layers of an onion.

 

            Likewise, a Christian scholar would look at Mark’s account of the transfiguration.  The scholar would look at the text, the ancient language in which it was written, the placement of the passage in the gospel, the words chosen, the history of interpretation, and would certainly connect the transfiguration narrative to the story of Elijah being taken into heaven.

 

            But we cannot do all that today. I do not have the time, and you would not be able to stay awake! You would likely rather watch paint dry.

 

            I do, however, want to point out three things about these two passages, here as Lent is at our doorstep.

 

            First, these are not random stories – and they show us that both Elijah and Jesus are regarded as great figures. Elijah is known as “the prophet” in Judaism.  Jesus is known as the Christ… the Messiah… the Anointed One in Christianity. Clearly these passages tell us that God views them as truly special.

 

            The second thing I would note is the connection between these two stories.  In the first, Elijah is taken up in the whirlwind as his successor, Elisha, cries, “My father, my father!  The chariots of Israel and its horseman.”  Then Elijah is done.

 

            Then, in an ecstatic moment on the mountaintop, Elijah appears again 1,500 years later, along with Moses, the greatest figure in the Old Testament.  And they are talking with Jesus, even as his clothes glowed with what is called the shekinah – the radiance of God’s presence.

 

            The third thing I would point out to you is the most mundane, but perhaps the most important thing for our lives and journey of faith:  transfiguration.  While we are unlikely to glow with the shekinah – the radiance of Moses coming down from Sinai and the beaming of Jesus on the mountaintop – we can anticipate that we may experience something just as important: transformation.

 

            Just as Peter, and James, and John, were dramatically impacted by that trip to the mountaintop and by their relationship to Jesus, we, too, can be changed.  The things which matter in our lives – those things which obstruct right relationships with God and one another – can be transformed… changed… altered in ways that can make our lives new.

 

            But it involves going to the figurative mountaintop and giving ourselves up again and again and again.  The transformation may be subtle, but it will come.