Why Transfiguration Sunday?

February 15, 2026

Matthew 17:1-9

            On this Transfiguration Sunday, we’re going to have just the one reading… the story of the Transfiguration as told in the gospel according to Matthew.  Listen as God speaks to you.

            READ

            You know by now that I do tend to laugh a bit at Transfiguration Sunday… because it’s such a strange little story to somehow merit having its own special Sunday.  I mean… if I was on the committee determining special liturgical Sundays, I would probably choose a story more like the calling of the disciples… a story we missed this year because of the ice and snow.  Those sets of stories seem like an important piece of theology to lift up and pay special attention to year after year.  We can probably relate more to the calling of the disciples… a yearly reinforcement of our own call to be disciples of Christ… seems like a no-brainer, right?  Seems like that would make much more sense than a weird story about a brightly glowing Jesus on a mountaintop. 

            But no… we have Transfiguration Sunday as part of our liturgical calendar.  And really… really… despite everything I say… that’s not a bad thing.  The whole purpose of the calendar is to help us… every year… walk through the familiar parts of the gospel story.  The ritual creates hooks upon which we can hang this familiar string of theological ideas… helping us to practice through familiarity… helping us to connect to the whole of the gospel story so these strange moments should begin to work within us… forming a discipline… helping us internalize these stories until they become an easy framework for how we live out our discipleship.  The gospel stories and our stories finding a rhyme or a harmony of sorts.

            And I know… I know what you’re thinking… what kind of gummy did Dr. Thom eat while writing this sermon.  It can be hard to put the experiential aspects of worship and faith into words.  It can sound a bit trippy… but this is a trippy story to begin with.  Am I right?

            Liturgically, Transfiguration Sunday is a great set-up for our entering into the season of Lent together… that annual period that is supposed to be characterized by our own self-reflection… our own acts of repentance… that sloughing off of the sin that keeps us separated from one another… preventing us from living into our calling to discipleship.  Repentance… the awareness of our disconnection from God and our living into God’s kingdom.

            The story of the transfiguration has God showing up in the thundercloud and saying to the disciples on that mountaintop, “Will you shut up for a minute and listen to what my son is telling you.”  Well… maybe not in those exact words… but that’s the gist of it.  Listen to him!  The translators of the NRSV… the translation we read from… even went so far as to put an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence.  Listen to him!  Exclamation mark!  God’s not fooling around here.  It isn’t a suggestion.  I’m sure we can say it less aggressively… if you’re put off by the aggression. “This is my Son… the Beloved… I am well pleased with him… so you might want to shut up and listen to what he has to say.”  I guess that’s still a bit aggressive.  But, really… it probably needs to be because of all the noise that fills our ears and the poison that seeps into our hearts… all the bile that we get fed day after day… repentance cannot be a gentle correction.  Repentance has to pick you up and shake you around a bit… be an experience that is like getting caught in strong thunderstorm while standing on top of a mountain.  If you’ve had an experience like that… you’re not quick to forget it.

            What is that quote from John’s gospel?  “I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me.”  They know because they know his voice… they know what Jesus sounds like.  To use the language of that passage, the hired hands speak… but their voice isn’t that of the good shepherd.  Those who follow the good shepherd know the difference.  This annual journey we take through the liturgical calendar helps us to know better the voice of Christ… to listen better to that voice… to be able to discern the difference between the good shepherd and the hired hand.  There’s a lot of Christian voices out there… talking and talking and declaring and proclaiming and threatening and scaring… lots of voices… but… but… Transfiguration Sunday tells us to listen to the Beloved… to get to know the voice that not even the disciples on that mountaintop knew fully yet.  They had gotten bits and pieces, but their ears were still full of the noise of all these other promising ideas and expectations. 

As we enter into the season of Lent this Wednesday… and we hear the familiar temptation story next Sunday… listening to Jesus on this Transfiguration Sunday will better prepare us to hear how many of the hired hands… especially at this moment in time in America… how the hired hands sound more like the voice of the devil promising the kingdoms of the world and the world’s splendor.  The hired hand tries to disguise their voice using words and phrases that sound like Jesus… but the substance of the gospel is missing… the Spirit of the gospel is missing.  Jesus fulfills the Spirit of the Law and the prophets.  The hired hand justifies themselves through the letter of the Law and creates a heavy yoke from the Law to place on our shoulders.  The hired hand emphasizes the fear and the destruction… the threat of the prophets… but makes little time for the promise of the prophets.  I shared Isaiah 58 with you last week to illustrate the promise of the prophets.  There’s also the familiar words from Amos … “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”… or Micah… “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”… or Jeremiah… “For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.”… or even Zechariah… when was the last time you thought about or heard something from Zechariah… “Thus says the Lord of hosts:  Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.  But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear.”

            This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!  Who would have thought that Transfiguration Sunday would remind us of the relevance of the prophet Zechariah today?  Listen to him!  Learn to recognize the graceful truth from which that voice speaks.  The temptations of the wilderness lie ahead.  We won’t make it through without first listening. 

            And maybe… maybe… that is the other lesson that is always important for us to learn through Transfiguration Sunday.  The journey of faith… the path of discipleship does not lead up to the mountaintop.  Sometimes we find ourselves on mountaintops.  Sometimes we find ourselves in wildernesses.  Mostly we’re in the everyday, mundane world.  Jesus is the incarnated word of God come down.  The word of faith takes us down… to wherever we happen to be… and not up… not a means of escapism.  Peter wants to build three dwellings on the mountaintop.  His response to what’s happening in this weird little story is to stop and stay on the mountaintop.  How easy it is to imagine the first three dwellings being expanded.  The initial crude buildings become larger and more substantial.  People come up the mountain… they come up believing this will bring them closer to God.  The buildings keep expanding.  A monastery is formed… separation from the below is created.  To be up is Godly and good.  To be down is earthly and bad.  Jesus, the incarnated word that came down… at the end of the story… goes back down.  The creative living word is among… not separated above.  Jesus goes to the lowest points… taking the living creative gospel word with him to whomever it is that needs to hear and be loved.  And who doesn’t need to hear?  Who doesn’t need to know God’s love?  What is it we say every week… Jesus will descend into hell.  There is nowhere the gospel word isn’t going to be… not even in the depths of hell.  Wherever God dwells that is where God is.  Highest high or lowest low… no longer matters. 

            Jesus leaves the safety and the sureness of the mountaintop behind and turns toward Jerusalem where our sin will result in an arrest, an unjust trial, a conviction, and a state execution. 

              So… on this Transfiguration Sunday… we once again go down from the mountaintop… leaving behind the noise of the hired hands and the glitter of false promises. We follow the One whose voice speaks through the storm… the One who leads us toward justice, mercy, and truth. In a few days, Lent will invite us to tune our ears again… to clear out the poison from our hearts… and to listen for the voice of the Beloved who speaks to us resurrected life.  Amen.