Today is Transfiguration Sunday. It is celebrated the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and it is the day that we see the unveiled glory of God shining through Jesus Christ. We first hear about the veiled glory in Exodus (34.29-35), when Moses goes up on a mountain to talk with God. He comes down the mountain with the tablets of the law in his hand, and because God’s glory, God’s majesty, God’s importance so overwhelms him that his face shines so in the glow of his divine conversation. People, including his brother Aaron cannot bear to look at him. He had to put a veil over his face to hide the glory, it was too much.

Sometimes God can be so revealing – in a tug at our spirits, in a moment of prayer and discernment, in that instant when we know that God has moved us to do something we would not ordinarily do, to take a leap of faith, to face our fears and do the thing anyway. When God is revealed to us in powerful life-changing ways, the first instinct may be to avert our eyes, to put a veil on our face and to turn away because the thing stands too brightly before us and we can’t quite look at it yet.

We hear about veils again in the reading from Corinthians. Paul tells us in the first reading that Jesus Christ is the glory of God from which we have no need to veil ourselves, and yet we do. Veils can be seen through but they can also obscure our vision from seeing clearly what it is that God is calling us to do. They become a barrier that keeps us from overcoming our fear, hopelessness, anger, faithlessness, lack of vision, lack of forgiveness, lack of trust in God, and in each other, it all veils our faces and our spirits to the glory of God.

Think of a veil not so much as a piece of translucent cloth covering the face of a bride, preserving the tradition of not being seen by her groom until the wedding ceremony; think less about a widow who wears a veil to shield others’ eyes from her tears and grief. Think of a veil as more than a sign of modesty and privacy worn in various ways by Islamic women.

Today, a few days before we enter the solemn season of Lent, we catch what I like to call a glimpse of unveiled glory. We see it because the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, his change from teacher and preacher to a light bearing source of God, lets us see the light of God shining through him as we put ourselves on that mountain with Peter, John, and James.

For Luke, the transfiguration takes place eight days after Jesus has said, "If any want to be my followers, let them take up their cross daily, and follow

me…(9.23), and "what does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves" (9.25). He has been preparing them for the time of his death, they have not quite understood what he is saying, but they go with him up the mountain to pray.

That is when it happened. As Jesus is praying, his face is transformed, then his clothes, then the lives of the disciples who are with him. His face begins to glow, his clothes look like they are bleached white, his whole being has an aura around it, and he is as bright as lightening on a summer evening. He is as filled with the light of God as he can be, and Peter, John, James, you and I are there to witness him in all of his God given glory. The sight is indeed glorious, we are in awe that we can witness this incredible thing and live, and that we see it without the need for a veil or even our sunglasses. No sunglasses are necessary to see this bright God light, and we find ourselves whispering with the hymn, "Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious".

But that is not all we see. This is Jesus talking with great men of faith, he is talking with Moses the giver of the law and Elijah, one of God’s great prophets. We get to listen in as they speak about Jesus’ departure, his leaving his earthly life to go live with God forever and to go prepare a place for us to be with him and with God forever too.

I don’t know how far up the mountain they were, or how long it took them to get to the top. What I know is that Luke says that Peter, John, and James were roused from sleepiness when they saw the glory of God. That must have been some wake-up vision.

William Willimon describes the scene this way:.

"Jesus leads his disciples up a mountain. He was forever making them go places with him that nobody much wanted to go. But this was different. Mountains are good, quiet, restorative places for Sabbath retreat, rest and renewal. The pace had been hectic, so they headed for the hills.

"But on the mountain everything changes. The disciples’ solitude is intruded upon by the dead. If Peter hoped to ‘find himself,’ forget it. He is discovered by the two great figures of faith, Moses and Elijah. There is stunning, transfiguring vision and inspired speech. Peter, jolted awake, listens in on the conversation between Jesus and the patriarchs.

"This is Christian worship as good as it gets. In fact take this encounter as a description of what we want at every service, talk to the dead, conversation that is law-prophet-gospel determined, vision and response. We, who do so much talking, fall silent, recipients of revelation. The baptismal voice (Luke. 3.22) again speaks through the parted curtains of eternity, just in case we missed the first time, ‘this is my Son, my Chosen, hear him!’ Luke specialized in subtlety, allusion, story, and inference, so it’s great to hear these lines, which are direct, indicative and imperative.

Peter blurts out, ‘Let’s stay here forever! Can’t we go past noon, just this one Sunday?’ It’s an understandable wish. Forget the building program. Shut off the conversations, turn off the lights and be with ’Jesus only.’ But revelation is a gift, not a possession" (www.christiancentury.ort/article/lasso?id=2841 William Willimon, "Come On Down").

Imagine being roused from sleepiness to receive a glorious revelation from God. Now is the time to throw off the veil and wake up. It is time for us to take off the veil that gets in our way and for us to sit down and say by the glory of God in us, we will, every last one of us commit all that we can to being a learning church, a giving church, and a growing church.

Take off the veil that says we are too small; we are not to small to learn, to give, to grow.

Take off the veil that says we are too old; we are not so old that we cannot learn, and give, and grow.

Take off the veil that says it is too late; We will never again be the same as we were 50, 40, 30, 20, even 10 years ago, we will be different. Different can be worse, it can be better, or simply not the same as before. We want to be not the same, and better. We can rouse ourselves from sleep, take off the veil, and learn, and give, and grow.

But we must be careful. It is so easy to get caught up in these special moments and places. Luke reminds us that Peter is really just so caught up in the moment, he decides to build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one more for Elijah, that he does not know what he is saying. "He just wishes to reduce the terrifying glory of Christ to something he can understand, a dwelling that might be visited from time to time. He learns the lesson that must continually be reinforced, that God’s glory can be neither reduced nor controlled" (Texts for Preaching – Year C, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994; p.171).

Our most human tendency like Peter’s, it to want to stay and possess those places dear to us. I have not lived in California since May of 1982, that is nearly 25 years. I have in the meantime lived in Washington, DC; Indianapolis, Indiana; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbus. If people ask me where I live, I will say, "Columbus, Ohio". If they ask me where I am from, memories of the beach and mountains, and family and church, and school and friends, and favorite, meaningful places flood my spirit, and I will say, "I am from California, but I live in Ohio". Some part of us will always be connected to the places and people and events that have meaning for us, that is why we remember in some detail that first car, or house, or place of our first really meaningful kiss; it’s the place where we first met Jesus, it is Camp Christian for so many here in Ohio, it is Loch Leven in Southern California for me. It is the first place where we were baptized or married, or from which a loved one was taken to their eternal rest.

We want to stay but we cannot, we understand Peter’s urge to mark the place so that everybody knows that this place is historic and spiritual to us, but we cannot. We have to leave the place, and hold it in our unveiled memories.

The glory of God is for us to see, to experience, to be transfigured, changed from the inside out. It helps us to see Jesus in his bright light and when the clouds come, to see him in the coolness of his love for us.

Once the glaring brightness went away, Peter, John, and James were afraid, in the aftermath of their glorious sight, it was as if a veil went back on, and they were not sure if what they had seen was true. Did we really see Jesus with Moses and Elijah? Did we really have a moment of crystal clarity and know that God has called this church and each of us to our own time of deep change so that together we will be the church of our dreams and God’s?

Did we really hear the voice of God say to us, "this is my son, I chose him, listen to what he has to say?"

Yes, they really did; yes, we really do and it is in the coolness that we hear again the prediction of death and the promise to be with us always. It is in the coolness that we can step back, and stand up, and be stirred to hear what Jesus is really saying. We are about to enter the six weeks that define the church of Jesus Christ. It will look like a slow march toward death as we come to Good Friday. But there is more. We might want to shield our eyes and cover our ears and shout, "let it not be so". But from this day to the day of Christ’s resurrection, we will glimpse the glory of God.

It is a lot to take. It’s a lot to take in. That may be why the disciples told no one what they experienced. It was hard to find the words. They knew that it had something to do with Jesus standing with God’s chosen messengers. They had heard a hint of his death. They have also been allowed to take off their veils and to see the current and future glory of Jesus.

II Corinthians 3 says, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (v.17). Because they have been freed in Christ, they three and others will find the words and when they will speak words and perform acts of healing and hope, grace and compassion, words of faith and deed of mercy. They will speak of redemption and reconciliation, and love and life. They will do it because they did what we must do. Remove the veil, leave the mountain, live in the valley, and bring the light of Christ with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.