Glory to Glory

A Sermon given on the Last Sunday of Epiphany, 2/18, 2007 at All Saints Anglican Church, Barboursville, WV.

Collect: O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Intro: Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus from an apparently normal human being to the Glorious Son of the Living God. As I studied the readings for today, the Collect seemed to encapsulate very well the overall message of the Old Testament and Gospel lessons. So, what I’d like to do is to break down the collect phrase by phrase to examine the nature of our God, the nature of His glory, and what it means for us to share that Glory. We begin, of course, with God.

“O God”: What kind of God are we addressing? Let’s look at our Psalm for the day, 99. What attributes do you see listed? (Individual Responses) The Lord is King. He is enthroned on high, powerful and great, Awesome. Three times we read He is the Holy One. This means to be Set Apart, to be utterly different than us. He is the lover of justice, the one who forgives our sins, yet punishes the people for their evil deeds.
This is the same God we speak about in our Gloria: Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory, Hosanna in the Highest. Glory = splendor, honor brightness or weightiness. Scripture tells us that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the God whom Moses saw face to face and his own face shone because of it. The Israelites were afraid because of the Brightness on Moses’ face. The God that Moses was spending time with is Holy as pure light is Holy. This kind of light pierces everything it touches, exposing anything impure. It should rightly cause us to fear, and yet we are attracted to it as well.

This light is pure love and all benevolent. It’s no accident the Love chapter from I Corinthians is juxtaposed with these passages that illustrate the glory and purity of God.
John says in his Gospel: We beheld his Glory, glory as of the only begotten son of the father, full of grace and truth.
This is the God we address when we pray, the Mighty One, Glorious in Holiness.

“Revealed his Glory”: As God revealed the Glory of the Son, He was also revealing that Jesus was God – of one substance with the Father, God From God, Light from Light, True God From True God , begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father, as the Nicene Creed tells us. It is the same Glory, the Father and the Son are One.

Before the passion; "To strengthen Jesus, Moses and Elijah came to talk to Him. They stand at the top of separate mountain peaks to the left and right of Christ. They are bowing toward Christ with their right hands raised in a gesture of intercession towards Him. Saint John Chrysostom explains the presence of these two fathers of the faith from the Old Testament in three ways. He states that they represent the Law and the Prophets (Moses received the Law from God, and Elijah was a great prophet); they both experienced visions of God (Moses on Mount Sinai and Elijah on Mount Carmel); and they represent the living and the dead (Elijah, the living, because he was taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire, and Moses, the dead, because he did experience death)."

The disciples also beheld the glory. Peter declared how good it was for them to be there and expressed the desire to build three booths for Moses, Elijah, and Christ.

"This reference to the booths could imply that this occurred during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles when the Jews would be camping out in the fields for the grape harvest; for this Feast had acquired other associations in the course of its history, including the memory of the wanderings in the wilderness recorded in the Old Testament book of Exodus." (Quotes from the Greek Orhtodox Archdiocese of America website).

This association with the Exodus is significant, as the word in our Gospel text ‘departure” is actually “exodus”. Moses and Elijah were talking about Christ’s departure or exodus from the world and how he would return to Glory. Christ temporarily reassumes the former glory he had known, in order to have this conversation.
Peter sees all this and suggested the three booths be built, “not knowing what he had said.” He was like us. We witness something taking place in our lives and we respond in some way, but the truth is that we usually don’t have much of a clue about what God is up to. Immediately after Peter’s little outburst, The Voice Of God speaks from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” This is the same cloud of God’s Shekinah Glory that guided the people of Israel: a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by Day. The purposes of God in that moment are so much greater than anything Peter or the others could have imagined that they are just dumbstruck and fall to the ground.

“Beholding by faith the light of his countenance”: Peter, James and John were chosen to behold the manifest Glory of God in Jesus Christ. We on the other hand must now behold the light of His countenance by faith. Through prayer- and sometimes through an open revelation of God’s glory, we see God. In his light we see light, says the Scriptures.
“We may be strengthened to bear our cross”: It is the presence of God that we experience through our prayer and worship, and through practicing God’s presence that we are strengthened, so that we can bear our cross. This means death to our own selves and our own desires. As we submit to this process we will:

“Be changed into his likeness from glory to glory” 2Cor. 3:18. God’s highest and best desire for us is to be changed into the likeness of Christ. He wants us to go from ‘one degree of Glory to the next” To grow in our Christian lives and to become like Moses, reflecting that radiant glory of God so that people may know that we have been with God; indeed that we live up to the appellation “Christian, or little Christ”.
As we behold the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are to bear Christ and His glory out into our world. In 2 Cor. 3:12-18, Paul proclaims that we are to be very bold in taking this message to the world. We are not to hide our faces like Moses did, but to go out with ‘unveiled face’ proclaiming the Glory of God.

People react in one of two ways. They are either fearful or repelled, as the Jewish people were, and hide from the Glory of God behind a veil, or they are attracted and allow themselves to be changed by that Glory. In 2Cor. 3:16, Paul says that when a person becomes a Christian, the veil is removed and they begin to behold the face of God.
I’d like to relate this to our recent efforts regarding the house at 1410 Charleston Ave.

My initial thought about the house was as a simple memorial to kids who had died a brutal death. It struck me forcibly but, like Peter, I really had, and have, very little idea about all the things that God wants to do through this project. Here are just a few things that have happened.

We began to make contact with the neighbors in the area.
The news media covered our story and told about what we were doing.
We met and ministered to three men who asked for help in dealing with addictions.

I received a call tow weeks ago from a woman in Graywon Kentucky who heads up a group called Parents of Murdered Children. She sent me information about the national support group, and encouraged us to start a local chapter.

I have also made contact with a group of folks headed up by Delegate Don Perdue who wish to start a drug treatment center in our region. Tim White from the Huntinton Housing Authority invited me to a Friday evening meeting last week and the project at 1410 was presented to a goups of folks active in the drug treatment arena, and seen as an excellent adjunct to a long term treatment center.

We have also connected with the Mayor’s office regarding a community service on May the 19th. He has specifically given his endorsement to the service being held in conjunction with the annual victims of crime service.

We have also been able to link up with the Rev. John Perkins, a nationally known Christian author and activist. Lord willing, he will deliver our message on May 19.

I could not have anticipated any of these things that fall morning when I drove by the house on my way to work. But God knows. He has his own plan for the ministry at 1410 Charleston Ave. He desires to do something there, and like Peter, I don’t have much of a clue what it is. I can only say that this is what He seems to be leading us to do. In the process He will glorify Himself and accomplish his own purposes in the earth. Such has it always been. Amen.

Sermon close with singing of "This little light of mine"
DOM