Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday (Last Epiphany)
Today’s sermon had a rather unusual opening.
The rest of it will make more sense if you watch the following video (2 minutes).
Sermon audio:
How are you feeling after that?
That’s an honest question, not a rhetorical one. Really check in with yourself.
You might be feeling amused.
You might be feeling a little scared.
You might be thinking, I think our priest has finally lost his mind!
Whatever it is, just sit with it for a moment.
You don’t need to fix it or judge it.
Just notice it.
Because that reaction—whatever you’re feeling—is actually where today’s Gospel begins.
In Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, everything is turned up to full volume.
Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain. And while they are up there, the story erupts into spectacle. Jesus’ face shines. His clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the Torah and the prophets. A bright cloud overshadows them. And then a voice from heaven booms out:
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
This is the kind of moment you would expect to end with a thunderous command or a cosmic revelation. This is spiritual fireworks.
And the disciples respond exactly the way human beings tend to respond to overwhelming stimulus:
They fall to the ground, terrified.
Their bodies hit the floor before their minds can catch up.
Fear takes over.
And then—almost surprisingly—the story changes direction.
The cloud lifts.
Jesus walks over to them, touches them, and says, quietly and simply, “Get up. Do not be afraid.”
That’s it.
After all that buildup, the divine message is not a cosmic revelation or a new set of commandments; it’s just reassurance:
“Do not be afraid.”
Dramatically speaking, that feels like a letdown, but humanly speaking, it’s exactly right.
When fear has taken hold, what we need most is not more information. What we need is grounding and presence. We need something—or someone—that can interrupt the automatic fear response and bring us back to sanity.
Jesus doesn’t argue with them, or shame them, or dismiss their feelings.
He meets them where they are, puts a hand on their shoulder, and steadies them with reassurance.
That should tell us something about what real power looks like.
We tend to assume that power proves itself by being louder, bigger, more overwhelming than everything else. But the Transfiguration suggests the opposite. The glory is real—but it resolves into gentleness and expresses itself as reassurance.
True strength does not need to shout.
That matters, because human beings are deeply responsive to spectacle.
Evolution has hardwired us to pay attention to whatever is loud, dramatic, and overwhelming. Biologically, that makes sense. For our early human and pre-human ancestors, the things that announced themselves loudly were often dangerous. If something came crashing through the underbrush or roared unexpectedly, they didn’t pause to think about it. They just reacted, which is why they survived.
The trouble is that we now live in a world where almost everything is loud.
The news is loud.
Social media is loud.
Politics is loud.
And so we find ourselves living in a constant state of low-grade activation—always braced, always alert, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over time, we begin to assume that whatever is loudest must also be most important. Whatever stokes our fear must deserve it.
That’s not moral failure.
It’s human nature.
People talk to me all the time about how overwhelmed they feel by the state of the world. But over the years, I’ve noticed something: The loudest forces are rarely the strongest ones.
I sometimes picture it like this:
I imagine evil as a little yappy chihuahua. It barks and yips constantly, trying to convince everyone that it’s a very big deal.
And then I imagine goodness—love, truth, whatever name you give it—as a much larger dog. Like a mastiff. Big enough to be calm. Big enough to endure the noise without needing to match it.
The little dog has to shout to feel strong.
The big dog doesn’t.
We’ve all seen this in real life. And it teaches us something important: Noise is not the same as power.
We see that in human behavior. The best people are rarely the loudest. Emotional maturity looks calm. Regulation looks quiet.
And that is the promise at the heart of today’s story.
When human beings are afraid, we almost always assume that whatever comes next from God will be just as loud and overwhelming as the fear itself.
We expect holiness to overwhelm us rather than steady us.
And it’s exactly that expectation that the Transfiguration quietly overturns.
Notice what happens on that mountain:
God does not leave the disciples overwhelmed by light and thunder and fear.
Instead, the vision fades and the cloud lifts—until all that remains is Jesus, standing close enough to touch them.
God zooms in: From cosmic glory to a hand on a shoulder.
That’s the gentle glory that we get to experience in the gospel story of the Transfiguration.
It’s also the same gentle glory that we get to experience every week in our celebration of the Eucharist.
The Eucharistic Prayer begins at the edge of the universe—naming galaxies, stars, deep time, the long unfolding of creation. It is as cosmic as prayer gets.
And then, very quickly, it narrows.
From the vastness of the universe to a table.
From deep time to a human life.
From cosmic language to bread and wine placed in your hands.
We don’t encounter sacramental grace through ideas or abstractions. We encounter it through our bodies—through touch, repetition, and practices that train our attention and calm our nervous systems.
That’s why the center of Christian worship isn’t the sermon, but the sacrament.
After all the cosmic language of the prayer, the climactic moment comes in six words, as you and I look each other in the eye and I say to you:
“The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Small.
Ordinary.
Quiet.
And yet—everything is there.
The world may be loud.
Fear may be persistent.
Voices may demand your panic.
But the deepest forces shaping reality are not the noisiest ones. They are the ones that endure.
In both the Transfiguration and the Eucharist, God always seems to move in one direction.
God moves inward.
From the universal to the particular.
From glory to grace.
God zooms in so we are not overwhelmed.
And then, once we have been steadied—once we have been touched and fed—we are invited to move in the opposite direction:
To zoom back out.
To regain perspective.
To see our fears in proportion.
Fear traps us in the narrowest possible focus—this moment, this threat, this noise. But reassurance restores our ability to see the bigger picture.
That’s why Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples on the mountain at the end of the story. He leads them back down.
And that’s why the Eucharist doesn’t end at the altar.
It ends with a blessing and a sending.
So let me offer one very small, very concrete practice for the week ahead.
The next time you find yourself pulled into an argument—whether it’s in person or online—the next time something makes you angry, indignant, or afraid, try this:
Don’t respond right away.
Wait a while.
Not because the issue doesn’t matter, or because you’re avoiding it, but because not everything that demands an immediate reaction deserves one.
Loud voices thrive on urgency. They need us to react quickly in order to stay loud.
But steadiness doesn’t.
Steadiness can wait.
Waiting gives our nervous systems time to settle.
It gives us perspective.
It helps us tell the difference between the yipping dog and the steady one.
And sometimes, after some time has passed, we realize how to respond in the right way, or sometimes that we really don’t need to respond at all.
If God is strong enough to be gentle, then we don’t have to mirror the noise of the world to be faithful.
We can endure.
We can stay grounded.
We can act without panic.
Not because everything is okay and nothing is wrong, but because Scripture tells us:
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).
After all the sound and fury of this world has faded, the most important voice we should listen to is the quiet voice of Jesus telling us:
“Get up and do not be afraid.”
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 