Imperfect Prayers, Fumbling Responses, and Broken Gifts

This homily was preached at All Saints Park Slope on February 11, 2024. A recording is available on All Saints' podcast here. 

Greetings All Saints. It is wonderful to be here with you this morning. As I think I say every time that I am here, All Saints has a special place in my heart. Not only is it the parish where my husband and I were married in 2019, but it is also one of the two churches that is supporting me in the ordination process – that is, in my journey to become an Episcopal priest. So this a spiritual home and it is always great to be back here.

Today I thought I would reflect on the Gospel reading from Mark. The passage that we read today is one of the most dramatic moments in Jesus’ earthly life, an event called “the transfiguration” - or “the metamorphosis” in Greek. This moment of metamorphosis has always been a source of fascination for artists, and recently I had the chance to see a wall-sized, 16th century oil painting of the Transfiguration by the artists Giovanni Francesco Penni and Guilio Romano.

In this painting, Jesus floats above a mountain in a cloud in dazzling white. On his left and on his right are Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets. The drama of the painting, though, or at least what most caught my attention, was how the three disciples who witnessed the transfiguration were depicted. For the story goes that Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain and that these three disciples were the witnesses of this great change.

In the painting, one of the disciples shields his eyes and looks down, as if to suggest that the transfigured Jesus was as bright as the midday sun. The second disciple is curled up on the ground and is covering his head, suggesting that the transfiguration was holy and awesome but also very terrifying. And then there is Peter in the center of the painting whose posture and body language were painted very precisely. In this painting, Peter is straining to look up at Jesus, but he can’t quite do so because Jesus is so bright. He is leaning forward and appears as if he’s just about to speak.

In Mark’s Gospel, we hear that Peter says: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Mark adds that Peter said this because “He did not know what to say for they were terrified.”

But Jesus doesn’t respond to Peter’s exclamation or suggestion of building those three dwellings. Instead, a cloud overshadows the scene and Moses and Elijah disappear. Then a loud voice proclaims “This is my Son. Listen to him!” The vision then dissipates, they all descend from the mountain, and Jesus tells the three disciples to tell no one what they’d seen.

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As I noted before, the Transfiguration is one of the most dramatic moments in Jesus’ earthly ministry in that there are a lot of moving pieces and special effects. Over the past two millennia, Christian theologians have repeatedly tried to understand and interpret all the symbolism going on in the story. Some have focused on the mountain and clouds; others the way that Jesus’ importance surpasses Moses and Elijah. For me, though, I thought I’d share two insights that I think are especially relevant today.

The first observation comes from a fourth-century theologian John Chrysostom who was attuned to issues of power, wealth, and poverty. In his homily on the Transfiguration he notes an interesting commonality between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah – namely, that all three are examples of faithfulness in dangerous times; faithfulness in the face of tyrants.

Speaking of Moses and Elijah, Chrysostom observes “Both the one and the other had courageously withstood a tyrant: one the Egyptian, the other Ahab…And both were simple unlearned men. [Moses] was slow of speech and weak of voice. [Elijah] a rough countryman. And both were people who had despised the riches of this world. For Moses possessed nothing. And Elijah had nothing but his sheepskin.” Chrysostom goes on to say that Jesus matches this description and so all three holy figures on that mountain were examples of what integrity and faithfulness look like in an period of violence, danger, and abuses of power. And in this, sadly, I think there’s a lot for us to draw on today.

A second insight that I want to share this morning comes from biblical scholarship. In Mark’s Gospel generally, and in this story particularly, Peter is portrayed as a faithful follower of Jesus who only half understands what is really going on. Peter calls Jesus “rabbi” only to have a divine voice say that Jesus is more than just a rabbi, he is the “Son of God.” Peter’s suggestion of building three dwellings in honor of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah is simply ignored. Jesus doesn’t even address this suggestion because it is so misplaced. This is similar, by the way, to another moment earlier in Mark where Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah but then fails to understand what that title actually means.

And so, interestingly, as Christians, one of the most important portrayals of discipleship that we have is, frankly, someone who doesn’t ever quite get it right.

Jesus eventually calls Peter his “rock” and the Church has always insisted this was meant as a compliment. But the Gospels themselves seem to enjoy playing with the idea that Peter, the rock, was a bit hard headed; Peter, the rock, could be a little thick-skulled. This Peter, then, the first among the disciples, is repeatedly portrayed as struggling to understand Jesus’ true identity and what following him actually meant.

And I just want to say that I find this to be frankly such a relief and Good News indeed.

After all, who is Jesus to you? By what particular titles do you feel most comfortable calling him? And how do you think Jesus is going to reshape - or transfigure - your life? If you don’t have immediate and very clear answers to all of those questions, well, you’re actually in pretty great company. Because the Gospels go out of their way to reassure us that Peter himself - this “rock” - regularly struggled to answer those questions too.

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I think, then, that the Church oftentimes isn’t well-served by two-dimensional depictions of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus, and I suppose this is why I’ve always been drawn to the more complex portrayals of Peter as faithful but frequently mistaken; faithful but also scared and deeply flawed. It’s also why I think Chrysostom’s observation is so important - that a part of our collective faith story - from Moses to Elijah to Jesus - is about people who are a bit rough around the edges, with varying levels of talents, serving as best as they can manage, in times of danger and when the stakes are frighteningly high.

The last thing I want to say this morning is personally just how much comfort I find in these more complex depictions of faithfulness. Maybe this isn’t the wisest thing to admit from a pulpit as a person trying to become a priest, but I’m not a very certain individual. Gratitude to God comes easily to me, but the words of prayer frequently do not. For me, faithfulness has never manifested as “rock-like certainty” but rather it has always felt more like Peter’s only grasping bits and pieces, or, even better, Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel of the Lord.

Faith for me is about struggling to understand, struggling to live out, struggling to use well the gifts I’ve received. I could never describe my faith as marked by “blessed assurance." My overarching faith journey is a story of fits and starts, and my journey to the priesthood has included multiple attempts, multiple self-imposed pauses, a further delay so I could spend a year in Spain, as well as many long stretches of doubt.

For all these reasons, I genuinely draw a lot of comfort from the Gospel’s depiction of Peter’s flawed faithfulness, as well as writers like the Prophet Isaiah who insisted that a humbly made offering is far better than a perfect one, for God sees the love and the faithfulness with which we render our imperfect prayers, our fumbling responses, and our broken gifts. Amen.