Transfiguration

Transfiguration  Sunday 2020

Year A Transfiguration Sunday August 0,2020

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

El Cajon, California

The Rev. Phil Loveless AOHC

 

Insight in chaos

Good Morning

Let’s start with verse before our Gospel reading for today. LK. 23: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24:For those who want to save their live will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Why do you think I add this to my sermon? Well the Gospel started with the words: Eight days after these things. Giving time an important part of human life.   Jesus is going to set himself into time as the Son of Man, the savior of the world.

It is the mystical experience of the disciples on the mountain where God confirms Christ as the messiah!

Light and voice are a very important part of our understanding of spiritual insight( insight is a noun-the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person.

Paul also responded to light and voice.

Hildegard of Bingen also responded to light and voice.

“Speak and write!” the voice from Heaven commanded.

But Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval visionary nun, remained silent.

Hildegard was forty-three years old when her visions finally became so insistent that she could no longer contain the secret she had harbored since early childhood: The Holy One, identifying itself as “the Living Light,” spoke to her. It spoke to her regularly, its voice emerging from a swirl of spiraling light. . . .

“Oh mortal, who receives these things not in the turbulence of deception but in the purity of simplicity for making plain the things that are hidden,” the Holy One said that day in 1141, “write what you see and hear. Speak out, Hildegard says. And when you do, when you recognize that inner voice as the voice of God and say what it has taught you, the sickness in your heart will melt away. The fatigue you have lived with for so long that you did not even notice how weary you were will lift. Your voice will ring out with such clarity and beauty that you will not be able to stop singing. To speak your truth, Hildegard teaches us, is to praise God. Speak out, Hildegard says. And when you do, when you recognize that inner voice as the voice of God and say what it has taught you, the sickness in your heart will melt away. The fatigue you have lived with for so long that you did not even notice how weary you were will lift. Your voice will ring out with such clarity and beauty that you will not be able to stop singing. To speak your truth, Hildegard teaches us, is to praise God.

So what do we need to know this morning?

  • Between fear and worship is one disciple’s risk and security in the arms of grace.
  • “disciples would have missed this if they had not said yes to Jesus.”
  • That the trust and risk of one follower of Jesus has an effect on the whole community
  • Individuals who risk boldly and move toward the call of Jesus can make a difference in the lives of others.
  • The presentence of God and the voice and the light are all very confusing.
  • Working out life in confusion is a way of life for a Christian, in this time of pandemic or any other time.
  • Be bold in Christ
  • So do not fear
  • Pray for a swift end to the coronavirus pandemic
  • All the time knowing that God loves you.

Amen