About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him. They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem. Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him.

As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—but he didn’t know what he was saying. Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe.

Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen.

Last weekend and the first part of this week was dominated by the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, or at least it dominated the attention of those of us who are always tuned into denominational machinations. The United Methodists sent their worldwide cohort of 800 or so delegates to decide on the issue that has beguiled and stressed them over the last 20 years, and most of mainline and progressive Christianity – the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and clergy in the church. The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline lays out the social principles of the church, which forbid things like drinking, gambling, and the practice of homosexuality. LGBTQ+ folks are named as people of sacred worth, but the actual doing of homosexuality, so to speak, is forbidden and is one of the reasons those seeking ordination can be barred from being approved to serve as clergypersons. Now, that is the official position of the church, but various more liberal conferences like the one here that covers Chicago, have basically ignored that official prohibition and ordained LGBTQ+ with a kind of a wink and a nod, and a liberal interpretation of the world “practice.” Of course, if charges are filed by a layperson or another clergyperson against them for their sexual practice, they can be defrocked in a church trial – yes, some churches still do this sort of thing – but in a more liberal conferences that is rare but not unheard of. Clergy are also forbidden to perform same-sex weddings, or even same sex unions, which is why I’ve done a few weddings formembers of Methodist churches as a favor to their not so courageous pastors. Yes, I get my judgmental tone, but at some point you have to do the right thing by the people you pastor – and you may pay the cost for doing that right thing, but no pension, no guaranteed church appointment, nothing is worth not following your own conscience, and doing the just and inclusive thing. Pawning off your ministry towards your church members to me in order to protect yourself, well, it is not a good look, but I helped these clergy out because the couples involved wanted a religious marriage service done by a clergyperson and they deserved to have one.

All of this came to a head this week in St. Louis, with a proposal before the delegates that was called the One Church plan, a plan that was endorsed by the majority of the bishops. This plan would allow the various parts of the church to make their own decisions around the calling of LGBTQ+ clergy and to discern their own positions on the morality or immorality of homosexuality. The more conservative American parts of the Methodist Church, along with the even more international parts of the church, could enforce their own particular rules around this issue, while allowing more progressive parts of the church to finally openly allow the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy. But it was not to be, because of a very large coalition of conservative international delegates and a small band of conservative American delegates defeated the One Church Plan and brought forth their own plan, called the Traditional Plan. The Traditional plan passed with the help of the conservative those national and international delegates. This conservative plan defined the definition of “practicing homosexual” to make it harder for the few LGBTQ+ to get through the legal loophole of trying to define the word “practicing.” In addition, it created a mandate that any United Methodist clergyperson would be automatically suspended without pay for one year for conducting a same sex service, and would be permanently defrocked if they ever did a second one. In the United States, many United Methodist churches are fairly progressive on the issue of homosexuality itself, but because of the international nature of the church, they will likely never be able to become what we in the United Church of Christ, as well as the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America have become – welcoming of LGBTQ+ in all parts of the church, including the ordination of openly LGBTQ+ clergy. As a product of a good United Methodist seminary myself, and who has many Methodist clergy friends, I was deeply grieved by all this, and it touched me personally because of my own struggle to be ordained with integrity and wholeness 25 years ago in the Presbyterian Church (USA) when they were not as open as they are now. There was so much pain in the air at this conference that you could almost feel it through the internet streaming video. During the debate, a young gay seminarian named Jeffrey Warren spoke passionately to the Conference, expressing his hurt and warning that the church was about to lose a whole generation under 40 that simply wouldn’t tolerate being members of a church that wouldn’t welcome their gay friends, their lesbian sister, their same-sex parents. In the picture on the first page of the bulletin, you see Bishop Tracey Smith Malone holding Jeffrey’s face in her hands after the passing of the Traditional Plan, trying to comfort him, perhaps reminding him that he is loved by God, loved by her and supported by many others, despite the fact that he will likely never be able to serve as a clergyperson in the United Methodist Church, as it now constituted. The horror of it all for Jeffrey must have been witnessing this series of votes right before his stunned and heartbroken eyes, something that even I didn’t have to experience. You can’t see it in the black and white picture but in the color version you can see the redness around his eyes, likely coming the tears he had just shed.

Friends, I want to invite us to consider that such a moment, such a picture, such light in a place filled with darkness, at least for the losers of this fight for justice, that such a moment was a moment of transfiguration. That moment captured by that picture was like the one when God scrubbed off the human veneer of Christ on that high and holy mountain and showed us the fullness of Jesus, that light within him that was white like lightning. Matthew, Mark, and of course, Luke share this story of Jesus shining forth on some mountain, accompanied by his disciples and welcomed there by Elijah and Moses, the latter whose face once shone in this manner hundreds of years earlier. This trio talk of Jesus’ departure, his death, and I suppose his ascension as well, and the disciples bask in this heavenly splendor, and they offer to build a shrine for all three, build some sort of permanency to hold onto this amazing moment. God will speak to them in a cloud, affirming that Jesus is indeed God’s own Child, and the disciples should listen to him. Later, the scene of light and splendor will disappear, and they will make their way down that mountain and being to make their way to Jerusalem, not quite understanding that despite the joy they will surely know along the way, the path is towards Jesus death, his cruel and unfair crucifixion, and that these disciples will be shattered by it all, at least for a while. The disciples and maybe even Jesus, they needed this moment of transfiguration, this reminder that there is light in this world, that underneath everything there is light, light like white lightning, a truth they would need to recall in the coming days and even years as they followed after the way of Jesus their whole lives, until their own deaths, often as martyrs. To witness Bishop Malone hold Jeffrey’s face so tenderly, so gently, it is a transfiguration, a moment when light shines so powerfully and often so unexpectedly, a moment that will need to be recalled in the many dark and difficult times ahead for Jeffrey and so many others in the United Methodist Church. Like with the disciples, a moment like this will be something he will need to remember when the darkness comes crashing down upon him and the people who love like him. We get the transfiguration we need in order to survive moments when there is no light, when the dark is so deep it feels as if you are in the deepest part of the sea, below where no light can make it way through the water above you. Moments of light, moments of tenderness, of kindness, moments of joy that we witness between ourselves or we witness in strangers, and even our enemies, those moments are gifts from God, moments given to us before we head out to our own Jerusalem’s, times before we yet know of our own eventual resurrection. Simply put, underneath it all, there is the light of God’s goodness, beneath it all.

To be clear, transfiguration is not transformation, it is not transformation. The gift of moments when we witness the light pouring into or out of a person, a place, a crowd, a simple flash of divinity given to us just when we needed it, and a memory we can call forth when there is seemingly no light, that is transfiguration, a moment that reveals the world as it really is, as the disciples fully saw Jesus for who he was on that high and holy mountain. Transformation, however, is not just a moment or moments in time, but something longer, something more difficult and yet even more joyous. When we come into our spiritual own, when we decide to do the work of Jesus, and the work of justice in Jesus’ name, that work, that journey is a life-long one. Salvation, or wholeness as the Greek word is probably better translated, wholeness doesn’t happen in one moment, and rarely in moments like the ones we just read about in Luke’s Gospel. No, it happens in the day in and day out choices we make to turn around our lives and go in the right direction, to choose that long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson puts it, and it is the choice to help the world turn around and go in the right direction. As I said in a sermon a few weeks ago, nothing is harder to change than the human heart, or the soul, if you want to get more spiritual about it and that is why our transformation, our wholeness takes as long as it takes, and likely continues into eternity. And this path into eternity also happens in the world we are co-creating with God if we are to believe the last two chapters of the book of Revelation, where a new heaven and a new earth, a truly transformed earth, one of compassion and justice and love will complete and renew the world we’ve slowly sought to transform. We should to continue to do that work until, as the Shaker song Simple Gifts says, Till by turning, turning we come 'round right. Soul work is hard work, justice work is hard – and the victories in our lives and in the work of justice, they do not come as often as we want, but the whole of those victories and even some of the defeats, do their work of transformation, of setting our souls and the world in the right direction, it does it over the long haul, slowly, but also relentlessly.

There is so much I want to say Jeffrey Warren, the young Methodist whose pleas for inclusion and justice were rejected by a majority of the United Methodist delegates on Tuesday. I would not probably say it to him anytime soon – the pain is to fresh – and I think it would be hard to hear for him. I would speak about the difficult choices we all have to make about whether or not our presence in a community that officially rejects gay people is an act of complicity if one stays any longer. But I would also remind him that there are other places, other denominations, other homes, where God can be met, something I think he already knows of course, – and, like me, he might find himself loving his new home as much the one he left behind so broken-hearted. God finds a way when there seems to be no way. However, I do know, Jeffrey, that whether or not you stay, you will find moments of transfiguration all the time, moments when God shows herself to you so fully that you will find yourself stunned by the glory of the One before you. My friend Mark gave me one of those transfiguration moments this week. Mark is a gay United Methodist clergyperson who came out late in late in his life and career, but who has chosen to remain celibate and to follow the rules put before him in the Book of Discipline. Mark gave an interview to a local TV station about the recent decision made at the General Conference. Here is a Facebook post he made after seeing himself during his TV interview the night before. I was privileged to be interviewed by WOOD TV yesterday. It was aired last night, Wednesday, Feb 27th. I watched it and was horrified by what I saw myself say. I spoke out of fear when I said that I would not perform same gender wedding ceremonies. I abandon that fear, I repent of that stance. I WILL PERFORM SAME GENDER WEDDING CEREMONIES! Who am I do deny the unconditional love of God that can flow through me, God's called conduit of grace, justice, peace, and love. I cried when I read those words, after being a witness to so much of Mark’s personal struggle, and his commitment to integrity and honoring the vows he made at his ordination decades earlier. But here he is, putting his career, perhaps some of his pension, his health insurance, on the line only a few years from his retirement. Our transformation can take a very long, long, time but it comes, always it comes. Now, I invite you to turn back to the front of your bulletin, and look at Bishop Malone with her hands holding Jeffrey’s face, and I want you to imagine the Bishop being the very presence of God, the one who is nothing but light, nothing but goodness, nothing but compassion, telling Jeffrey, tenderly, “I love you, I love you, you are one of My Beloved, you are my child.” The transfigurations in our lives, in the greater world, are glimpses of God shining forth, reminders to us of the God who is Love, a reminder that underneath the surface of everything, good and bad, of every joy and heartbreak, there is God, who is draped in light, in goodness itself, a reminder that, as writer of the Gospel of John says in his first chapter says, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not, would not, and will not ever extinguish the light. Amen.