Ordinary Transfigurations- Rev. Wallace W. Bubar- March 2,2025
The Rev. Wallace W. Bubar
First Presbyterian Church
The Transfiguration of the Lord, Year C
March 2, 2025
Ordinary Transfigurations
Now I’ll be honest. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a good sermon on Transfiguration Sunday. My own included. I tell you that at the outset so you can keep your expectations fairly low for today.
I once heard the woman I consider one of the finest preachers in the English language preach on Transfiguration Sunday. She spent the whole sermon just giving an extended travel narrative of her recent trip to Ireland. Go figure!
Another time, I was in a Lutheran church on Transfiguration Sunday. The young pastor took out a pair of sunglasses as a prop—he was illustrating the radiant glory of Christ on the mountaintop—and proceeded to wear them throughout his entire sermon. I mean, how cheesy is that?!
But that’s what the Transfiguration does to us, I guess. How are we supposed to talk about this?! Probably one of the most enigmatic scenes in all the Gospels. Almost anything a preacher can say about it is sure to miss the mark.
So what are we supposed to make of it all? The blaze of light. The mysterious cloud. The heavenly voice. The ghosts of Moses and Elijah. What in the world is going on here with this Transfiguration story?
I guess the main purpose of it seems to be to shed some light—literally, shed light—on who Jesus is. It’s like the fullness of who he is is on display here. His origin as the Son of God, his fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, his baptism, passion, resurrection, ascension—all of it is compressed into this one moment, which practically explodes in a dazzling display of glory.
For a fleeting moment, it’s like the present is filled with eternity. Everything becomes clear. And the truth of who this person really is comes shining through.
* * *
I don’t know about you, though. But I haven’t had too many experiences like that. I guess I identify more with the disciples who stayed at the bottom of the mountain, and were like, “What’s going on up there? What are we missing out on?” It seems so far removed from human experience.
But I’ll tell you when I started thinking about the Transfiguration in a new way.
I once had the great fortune in seminary to have a class with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa. It was a seminar at Emory, He was a visiting professor there one year. About fifteen of us sitting around the table. Lasted a whole semester.
And the course he taught was about the struggle—led largely by Tutu—to end Apartheid, and forge a new, free and democratic nation where whites and blacks could live together peaceably. His course was titled—rather obscurely, I thought—“Transfiguration, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation.”
Transfiguration?! “Why Transfiguration?” I wondered.
Well, on the first day of the class, I found out why. Tutu began by telling the story of April 27, 1994. Over thirty years ago, now. The old regime had fallen, and this was the day when black South Africans could vote in a democratic election for the very first time ever.
Tutu was 62 years old at the time—an Archbishop, a Nobel Prize winner—had lived in South Africa his whole life, but had never been allowed the right to cast a vote. After decades of oppression and discrimination and humiliation, now it was a new day.
Tutu described walking into the polling booth, proudly folding up his ballot, stuffing it into the box—something we take for granted here, or don’t even bother to do, many of us. But Tutu—along with the rest of his black countrymen—he was giddy with excitement that day.
In his book on the subject, he describes it like this: “It was like falling in love. The sky looked blue and more beautiful. I saw the people in a new light. They were beautiful. They were,” he said, “transfigured. I, too, was transfigured.”
Tutu drove around, surveying the long lines of South Africans eager to vote, eager to move forward. He continued: “It was a veritable spiritual experience. It was a mountaintop experience. The black person entered the booth one person, and emerged on the other side, a new, transfigured person. She entered weighed down by the anguish and burden of oppression, with the memory of being treated like rubbish gnawing away at her. She reappeared as someone new—transfigured—as she walked away with head held high, the shoulders set straighter, an elastic spring in her step.”
So according to Archbishop Tutu, April 27, 1994 was not just election day in South Africa. But a sort of Transfiguration Day.
* * *
His experience reminds us that transfiguration is not only something that happened to Jesus. It’s something that can happen to us mortals, too—when we’re aligned with what God is trying to do in the world. God’s glory didn’t just shine once upon a time on a mountaintop in Galilee. We all of us have the possibility of sharing in that.
Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the great fathers of the early Church, said it well: “The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.” That’s one of my favorite quotes. The glory of God is a human being, fully alive. When we are fully alive—when we’re standing at full stretch, exercising all of our God-given potential—then our faces, too, shine with the glory of God.
* * *
Best I can figure, it works like this. According to Scripture, we human beings are made in the image of God, right? All of us. And the whole purpose of human life is, as the old catechism puts it, “to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” We’re created for glory, and destined for glory. We’re made to share in that radiant divine life and light. The human soul—it could be said—is like a mirror of the Eternal.
But of course, that mirror can become tarnished and fractured sometimes. A result both of what we do, and what is done to us by others. And the image that mirror reflects can get distorted and marred and blurry. We sometimes may not even recognize ourselves in it.
But every now and then—maybe only once or twice in a lifetime—but every now and then, there are these flashes of brilliance and clarity. When the deepest truth of who we are—as people fantastically fashioned in the image of God—comes shining through.
* * *
For Jesus, it came while he was praying. When he was intentionally seeking out the presence of God. It was like that for Moses, too, in the Old Testament. There, atop the holy mountain. And maybe that’s when transfiguration happens for us. A moment of prayer or contemplation. When our wills somehow line up with God’s will, and there’s a cosmic convergence that takes place. When we sense the presence of God and hear the still, small voice speaking our name.
But I don’t know that transfigurations have to happen in a religious context at all. Maybe, like Archbishop Tutu experienced, it can happen when simple human dignity is honored. When someone is—at long last—allowed to breathe free. To stand tall and proud after years of oppression and dehumanization. When someone’s full humanity is restored and celebrated. As Irenaeus said: when someone is fully alive, at full stretch, that’s the glory of God right there.
Or maybe it’s one of those times when your vocation and your purpose become clear. When you’re blessed to receive some insight about who you are. To grasp the meaning of your life. To know with confidence that this is what you were put here on this earth to do. And it’s like a ray of light has just pierced through the darkness, and shone right on you.
Or maybe it’s when we’re simply true to who we are. When we dare to strip away all the tired pretensions and illusions, and risk being authentic for a change. When we summon the courage to live as the person God made us to be, and do that with integrity and honesty. And we find that the self we discover is a reflection of God’s own Self.
Frederick Buechner writes of the Transfiguration: “Even with us, something like that happens once in a while. Every once and so often,” he writes, “something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.”
Whenever and wherever that happens to you, may the splendor of God’s glory shine upon you, illumine your days, and transfigure your lives.
Amen.
