Homily of the Rev. Dr. David A. Killian
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 3, 2008
All Saints Parish
Brookline, Massachusetts
Matthew 17:1-9
I
Last summer on my sabbatical to study Celtic spirituality I journeyed to the isle of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. Iona is where St. Columba and twelve companies established a famous monastery in the sixth century, where the monks produced beautiful illuminated Gospel books, preserved classical learning while mainland Europe was in the dark ages, and from which they brought Christianity to Scotland and beyond. Iona is the home today of a new, thriving ecumenical Christian community that celebrates its faith in stirring liturgy and expresses that faith in conscientious commitment to social justice.
Getting to Iona is not easy. I flew to Glasgow, where I stayed overnight. The next morning I took a four-hour train ride to Oban, traversing mountain ridges that plunge to the sea; at Oban I took a ferry boat across the Firth of Lorn to Craignure on the isle of Mull. Then a three-hour bus ride to the other side of Mull to Fionnphort and from there a ferry to Iona. Obviously, people who go to Iona really want to go to Iona.
The journey was long, but there was something to enjoy and marvel in throughout the journey. A hallmark of Celtic spirituality is the belief that God is not just the end and the goal of our life, but God is in the journey. God is everywhere and in everything. For the Celts, God is in the forests and in the streams, in the lakes and in the ocean. In cattle, birds, and fish. All of creation shows forth the glory and presence of God. But, while the Celts celebrate that God is everywhere, they also believe that God can be experienced in some places more than others. They refer to such places as "thin places," thin in the sense that there is little or no separation between heaven and earth, between the sacred and the ordinary, between God and humanity.
One type of place in particular that they thought was "thin" was at a threshold: a place where two things come together. For example, do you like walking along a beach at sunrise or sunset? That's a very common threshold, or thin place, where air, and earth, and water come together even as day and night are coming together. The Celts would say that one of the reasons we like walking on the beach (especially early in the morning or at sunset) is precisely because it is a thin place.
And so Iona is a thin place because of the many thresholds one has to cross to get there – going from land to water and then land again and across water again and then again to land.
II
Today in our parish we will be celebrating another kind of threshold or thin place at our annual meeting when we mark the end of one year and begin another. We will hear reports on the ministries and activities of the past year. Then we will look at the budget for the coming year and elect new officers, vestry members and delegates. Responsibility will be passed from one leadership team to another.
There are many threshold points in life – when you graduate from school, take a new job, move to a new home. These are all transition points where the Celts would want us to know that God is especially near and present.
Today we celebrate the last Sunday after the Epiphany, which is a threshold as we leave the season of Epiphany and move on to the season of Lent, which we will begin this week on Ash Wednesday.
Today's Gospel story is also about thresholds. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain. Jesus is transfigured and his face shone like the sun. Two outstanding leaders from Israel's past, Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus. Moses symbolizes the law and the Elijah symbolizes the prophets. They symbolize that Jesus has crossed the earthly threshold and now dwells in the divine realm with Moses and Elijah. Peter, James, and John also cross a threshold and get a glimpse of the holy. No wonder that Peter exclaims, "It is good for us to be here."
But as wonderful as it was for Peter and the others to be with Jesus at that moment, they could stay there forever. The ministry of Jesus could not be conducted from the mountain top; it was instead something carried out into the world. We too may have experienced the mystery of God. It may come to us through the appreciation of nature, sometimes, perhaps, on a mountain. But we all have to come back down the mountain and get on with real life, and most of our time is spent at the bottom of the mountain in the valleys of life. Memories of that day would sustain Peter and the early church in later years when they faced struggle and persecution. When the disciples were tempted to give up and think that the Christian service to which they were called was a hopeless cause, they were able to look back and remember Christ as they knew him in the Transfiguration, clothed in glory.
III
This morning, we each left our homes and journeyed to come here. We walked up the stairs, opened the door and crossed the threshold to come into this holy place. We are like Peter, James and John. We have come here because we want to be close to Jesus. And here, in this worship service, we will encounter the risen and glorified Christ, the transfigured one, who will feed us with his Body and his Blood. We will eat and drink and take Christ into ourselves – and, for a few moments, we will leave behind our worries, concerns and human limitations and enter into the realm of Christ where we will be healed, nourished, and transformed.
This is why we are here today. We cross a threshold to enter the realm of the divine. We are changed by our encounter with Christ – maybe not dramatically or hugely – our faces don't shine like the sun and our garments are not dazzling white, but we are changed in spirit. A burden may have been lifted from our mind, a worry may have been left here at the altar; we may have forgiven some one who has wounded us, or forgiven ourselves. We may have sensed that our life is worthwhile and worth living. We may have renewed a commitment to love and to serve. In subtle ways, we are changed. We are transformed. For we have crossed a threshold and met the transfigured Christ in this thin place.
Amen.