This is the last Sunday after Epiphany – the last Sunday in a cycle that began on the 1^st Sunday of Advent, continuing through the 12 days of Christmas, leading to Epiphany and these Sundays that follow. Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas. Christmas is a time of thinking about the incarnation – God becoming truly human and dwelling among us. And Epiphany, and the weeks that follow are focused on the unveiling, or revelation of God in Christ. So on this last day of this cycle, before we switch gears and begin our journey through Lent and Easter, I think it’s important for us to consider anew how the revelation of God in Christ through our proclamation of the Gospel in word and in deed is happening, and how it’s unfolded through the Scriptures we’ve read together in these past 12 weeks…

 

So let’s consider a question, first, based on Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians: Is our gospel veiled? Is it clear to any and all who come through our doors that this is a place of welcome, and grace, and forgiveness, and freedom in Christ Jesus?

 

You know, sometimes we can be doing things, and thinking that our actions are communicating one thing, while those who experience our actions are receiving a different message. So maybe I should just sit down now and give the mic over to some recent visitors so that they could tell us the real answer to this question.

 

Paul goes on to say that the God who spoke creation into being reveals God’s glory to us in the face of Jesus. Which, then, begs the question of where and how we see that face. Martin Luther, of course, teaches us that God is always found in the opposite form of what we expect. We might expect God to be revealed in shining glory, like we see on the mount of Transfiguration, but God might look like something very different.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of a starving refugee from the horn of Africa, or one living in a Jordanian refugee camp having fled the violence of ISIS, or the abuses of Al Qaida.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of an Ethiopian Ebola patient, or someone infected with Measles right here in the states.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of a child, or even an older person, living with developmental delays, or mental illness.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of an undocumented day laborer, standing out on a street corner in Long Branch every morning hoping to earn enough money to survive another day.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the faces of the same-sex couple living next door, rejoicing that they finally enjoy the same legal recognition and the same legal protections offered to the rest of us all along.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of a battered woman, one of the hidden masses, living in 50% of American households.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of a bullied child, or the one who feels so alone and hopeless that they self-mutilate, or, in utter desperation, take their own life.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of someone who has a different faith perspective or belief system that we have.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face you see in the mirror each morning.

 

Maybe the face of God is found in the face of the person sitting next to you on the bus or train, or at the desk next to yours at work or school, or in the pew next to you in this very moment.

 

However God in Christ chooses to appear we should keep one thing in mind, we shouldn’t be surprised if it seems veiled under some opposite form of what we expect, or if it happens in an unexpected way…

 

As we’ve gathered together over these past 12 weeks since the first week of Advent we’ve heard readings from the Scriptures that speak about some of the surprising ways that God in Christ chooses to be revealed in, through and among us. Here’s a summary of some of what we’ve read together.

 

God is our Father, and also our maker – the one who forms us like a potter forms clay.

 

God is the One who calls us to keep awake, and to watch for the signs of Christ’s coming among us, and to recognize them when they do come, for they will and do come.

 

God is the One who calls us to comfort one another, and to announce the good news of his coming, crying out from a high mountain, saying: Here is your God!

 

It’s this God who loves justice and hates wrongdoing, who baptizes us with water and the Holy Spirit, and clothes us with garments of salvation and robes of righteousness.

 

It’s this God who becomes truly human in the womb of a virgin mother – a virgin mother who demonstrates for us the most important step toward living as faithful followers of Jesus as Mary says: Here I am, the servant of the Lord; Let it be with me according to your word.

 

God is the One who shines as a great light into the world’s darkness, as he’s born to peasant parents who are living as homeless refugees, manipulated by an uncaring oppressive empire.

 

God is the One who sends his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. to deliver us from the law, so that we might live as God’s own adopted daughters and sons, heirs together with Christ Jesus to the full inheritance of all of God’s blessings.

 

God is the Word, and the Word is God, and the Word dwells among us in human flesh, full of grace and truth.

 

God calls us to arise and shine in the light that has come and the glory that has risen upon us, and basking in that glorious light we are to be radiant, and to rejoice.

 

God is the One who calls on unexpected people to serve as witnesses – peasants, shepherds, an aged prophet and prophetess living in the Temple, Magi from a foreign place who practice forbidden rites.

 

God is the One who calls light into being on the first day of creation, and who is named and claimed by God the Father as a beloved Son, as he’s baptized in the Jordan river, standing in solidarity with us and all the baptized children of God from every time and every place.

 

God in Christ is the One who calls us to lives of faithful following – inviting us to come and see, come and follow, come and fish for people, come and experience both my desire and my power to deliver, to save, to heal, to restore.

 

These are the ways God in Christ has been revealed in and through the Scriptures, as we’ve journeyed together through these weeks…

 

And today, on the Mount of Transfiguration we see yet another manifestation, another revelation. Christ Jesus brings his closest friends with him up the mountain, and they, and we along with them, catch a glimpse of his glory. But again, God is revealed in an unexpected way. I mean, look, we’re not surprised by a God who shines in glory. That’s what we expect from our God. But that’s not the whole story here, is it? Verse 9 is where we both find our transition into the next season of the Church year, and where we come face to face with the deepest revelatory work of God.

 

When it comes down to it, as Luther says in his preaching about the incarnation, the reason why God comes in the flesh, the reason why the Christmas event is significant at all, is because this babe born in Bethlehem, this Word made flesh, this Christ child, has come to die! That’s why he needs a body. That’s why he’s revealed in the flesh. So that that flesh can be torn apart on a bloody Roman cross. So that he can die! And that’s the transformational truth of this day, and of this story that we read from the 9^th chapter of Mark.

 

In the 9^th verse of this 9^th chapter, Mark writes: As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

 

It’s all well and good, it’s miraculous, indeed, that God comes in the flesh, and dwells among us, and reveals God’s glory in subtle, and, in the case of today’s text, not so subtle ways. But if God came only to get all shiny every once in a while, and to do some miracles here and there, and even to tell us how to live together in peace and reconciliation, we’d have a very different God on our hands. But that’s not the God we have, is it? Our God comes to die, and calls us to follow in the way of the cross. Our God comes and reconciles us to God – dying to destroy our death, and rising to restore our life.

 

This is where it all leads, you see. This is why we’ve taken the journey we have over these past 12 weeks. In order that we might come to see God in Christ revealed in unexpected ways, and to realize that in the end the deepest epiphany of all, God’s most profound unveiling, is encountered in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord, the Word made flesh. Amen.