The purpose
of the Epiphany season is to remind us, beginning with the arrival of the Magi
after Jesus’ birth right up to the Transfiguration on the Mountaintop, of who
Jesus is, what God is up to in the Incarnation, and how people recognize the
fullness of God in the person of Jesus.
Of course,
encounters with God aren’t new. Moses went up to the Mountain and received the
law from God. His encounter with God literally left him aglow with the holiness
of God.
The amazing
thing is that these encounters go both ways. God reveals Jesus. And Jesus
reveals to us the true nature of humanity—what God intends for us to be. Notice
how in the Gospel today, how on the mountaintop both Moses and Elijah, who
represent the fullness of the Law and the Prophets, come to Jesus.
Then in
today’s Epistle, we hear Peter, one of the first apostles, talk about how his
experience of meeting, knowing, and following Jesus changed him.
Sometimes,
when we have these encounters, instead understanding them as the springboard
they are, we want to hang on to the moment and to the feelings that come with
it. I remember hearing about a man, a devout Christian, who every Sunday night
for over forty years, would stand up at his Baptist Church and recount his
salvation moment and quote the same passage, John 3:16. It is good to be saved,
and good to give testimony, and I am convinced that God wants us to remember
his saving love and grace. God also wants to grow and mature in our faith.
Jesus’
disciples also wanted to freeze their mountaintop moment in time by building
booths, a kind of religious shelter, to commemorate both the moment and the
spot where heaven and earth, law and prophet, God’s time and our time, came
together. But just as they are ready to head to Home Depot and buy a
do-it-yourself booth kit, a voice from heaven interrupts them and tells them
that the way to understand and remember the moment is to listen to and follow
Jesus, God’s beloved Son.
The
transfiguration reveals Jesus’ true nature, that he is at once fully God and
fully human, and also showed us God’s purpose to bring heaven to earth. But, camping
out in a building or a shrine, Jesus’ true self is shown as he teaches, heals,
and empowers ordinary people to take part in God’s work of reconciling humanity
to each other, creation and to God.
In both Moses’
and Jesus’ encounters, our need for God and our need for reconciliation is put
square in our faces.
As I said,
crisis often reveals character, and we are seeing it again. On this celebration
of the Transfiguration, I am mindful of the many people who, in the moment of
decision, chose against all odds to do the right thing, for the right reason,
in the right way.
One of those
people was a man named Allan McDonald. You may not have heard of him, but he
was an aerospace engineer for the company that built the solid rocket boosters
for the space shuttle, back in the 1980s. Forty years ago, he got into trouble
because he refused to certify the launch of the shuttle Challenger slated for
January 27, 1986, because he knew that the unusually cold temperatures on the
Space Coast that year would make the “o-rings” on the solid rocket boosters
brittle and liable to fail. His bosses over-ruled him, and the launch proceeded
where, as we all know, the shuttle exploded about 78 seconds into its flight
killing the crew. During the investigation, McDonald did not keep silence, and
was promptly demoted. It was only after members of Congress threatened to strip
the company of all future space and military contracts, that they changed their
mind and McDonald was put in charge of rocket engine safety protocols and
engineering, and the changes he led allowed the shuttle program to resume.
In an interview after his retirement, McDonald said something which has become
something of a mantra for me. He said, “always do the right thing for the right
reason in the right way at the right time with the right people and you will
never have regrets in your life.” He was a person whose character was revealed
in a transfiguring moment.
The late
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died four years ago at 90 years old, told the
story of his own transfiguring moment. It happened when Tutu was 9 years old,
while he and his mother were walking down the street at the height of the
Apartheid era of his native South Africa. They were approached by tall white
man dressed in a black suit. In those days in that place, when a black person
and a white person met while walking on a footpath, the black person was
expected to step aside, even into the gutter, to allow the white person to pass
— and to bow his or her head as a gesture of respect. But that day, before unbelieving
eyes of a young Tutu and his mother, it was this white man who stepped off the
sidewalk. And as they passed, he tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to her!
The white man
was the Rev. Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican priest (later a Bishop) who was bitterly opposed to
apartheid. And that tip of the hat changed Tutu’s life. When his mother told
him that Trevor Huddleston had stepped off the sidewalk because he was a “man
of God,” Tutu found his calling.
“When she
told me that he was an Anglican priest I decided there and then that I wanted
to be an Anglican priest too,” he said. “And what is more, I wanted to be a man
of God.”
Huddleston
later became a mentor to Tutu; and he later said that encounter was his
‘transfiguration’ that led to the transformation of a people and eventually a
nation.
In his review
of Philip Yancey’s book, Rumors of Another World, Keith
Parkins talks about the spirit of mercy that pervaded South Africa after Nelson
Mandela was released from prison.
“As apartheid
drew to an end and Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island, Mandela
could have called upon the blacks to rise up and seek vengeance on the whites,”
Parkins wrote. “He did not; he showed grace and appointed Desmond Tutu to head
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There was an understandable desire for
[revenge and] retribution; instead, the path of forgiveness and reconciliation
was chosen.”
South
Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a transfiguring moment for
both that nation and the world. The rules were simple — the perpetrators needed
to tell the truth, the whole truth; and their victims were given the
opportunity to tell the truth of their experience as well. The victims would
also be given the opportunity, but not be forced, to forgive. Many of the
atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de Broek told of how he
and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth, then burnt the body. Eight
years later they went back, took the father and forced his wife to watch as he
was executed then incinerated in front of her. Many years later, she was in a
courtroom and the Commission to hear van de Broek confess. After he was
finished, the judge turned to the woman and was asked by the judge what she
wanted.
She said she
wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and
gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial; van de Broek agreed.
She then added a further request.
“Mr. van de
Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give,”
she said. “Twice a month I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a
day with me so I can be a mother to him.
“And I would
like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive
him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”
Spontaneously,
some in the courtroom began singing “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made
her way to the witness stand. But van de Broek didn’t hear the hymn; he had
fainted, overwhelmed. It was a transfiguring moment, where the true character
of these persons was revealed.
It is in moments
like these, we see God’s transforming, transfiguring, transcendent love at work
infusing our lives, and healing our relationships. In these moments, we see the
character of God’s people as they make room for God’s restorative justice to
flourish.
The
transfiguration shows us Jesus’ true nature. Here we see the lengths that God
will go to reconcile humanity to Godself and to make us the people God meant us
to be. He we see Jesus—100% God and 100% humanity, in the same person,
undiluted-- on that mountain top. And it here that we see God’s true intention:
to restore all people to unity with God and each other and creation, which is
the Mission of the Church… our mission. [Look it up! It’s in our catechism (p.
855).] Over and over again, we discover that we can daily cooperate with God’s
reconciling work whether it’s a small act of kindness, or a righteous stand for
reconciliation, or a bold proclamation of the Gospel. And when we do, we, God’s
people the church, shine with Christ’s radiance! And we show our true nature as
baptized people whenever we go into the world living practical, useful,
transforming acts of justice and love.
This is how
we communicate the Gospel and reveal the breadth and depth of God’s love for us
and all humanity. Our encounters with the Risen Jesus, on the mountaintop or in
everyday life, shows that we have met God’s beloved Son, that we are listening
to him, and displays the radiance of Christ for all to see.
+ + + + + + + + +
Scripture for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A, February 15, 2026
Here is the bulletin for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for February 15, 2026
Here is the website for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida
Here are the videos of the worship services (8 am here at about 17:05 & 10 am here at about 29:28) at Holy Trinity, Clearwater, February 15, 2026
Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here
