Our worship theme, the Broad Way, has been very wonderful, hasn’t it? I want to say thanks to Wilfred Vermerris for his inspired bulletin cover, and to all the musicians, preachers, readers, and participants in each and every week of this interesting theme. What a joy to be able to explore all the ideas it has sparked, the spirituality that led us down paths narrow and wide, to consider all the complexities and beauty. Our next theme begins the season of Lent on Wednesday when we will dial it back and slow it down, maybe take a break from the noise, fast from chocolate or from technology or something. The theme is Unplugged. So the other day, since it hasn’t started yet, I was surfing aimlessly through stuff on my phone like you do, when one of those irritating pop ups did. It showed someone’s hands on the steering wheel of a sleek sports car, and the caption read, “faster is funner.” Yes, I thought, I guess faster is funner– on devices, maybe roller coasters or bikes or cars on country roads but what I want to talk to you about today is…..change… you know, deep transformation…and that kind of change, the transfiguring kind, at least in my experience is less often presto-changeo, faster or funner, more evolutionary…way slower, deeper, and big. Even when it doesn’t seem that way at first. When my daughter Julianna was in about the 4th grade she made this poster that was a little bendy and bright blue and had pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters taped to it. I don’t remember why she made it, only that some of the tape let go and she left a little Hansel and Gretel trail of coins from the car to the classroom. I remember she wrote the old saying in big block letters on the poster, beneath the coins: “There’s no such thing as small change.” Yeah, true enough.

Consider the things, large and small, fast or slow, that have changed you on your journey. The way you were brought up as a child…When you went to school or where … your lovers, your work. That significant encounter that helped or hurt you, the opportunities offered or denied, the kindnesses, the bitterness, the gesture, the loss… The changes can feel sacred or scary, sometimes, moments you pray will pass quickly because you can’t stand the pain, or so beautiful you want to stay in them, reread like a beautiful passage in a book, a lovely moment of grace experienced with friends in this church, or with the God you have seen while traveling or in trees, by the water, with the birds. People who have come into your life, perhaps for a reason, for a season, who changed you and perhaps were changed by you, for good.

In the old stories of our faith when people have experiences of the Beloved One in their midst, often the changes are illustrated with the metaphors of mountaintop experiences, mysterious appearances, and shining faces. In the Hebrew Bible when Moses goes to the top of the mountain and gets the ten commandments that are supposed to change the people for good, he’s so shiny and mysterious from the experience, it changes him so much that the people have to cover his face in order to even get the message. In our transfiguration story for today, Luke says that Jesus changes or at least the way the disciples perceive him does—at least for a moment…but look at this teaching—it invites us to notice what is true in our lives, too. There are moments of great joy—in the story, Jesus is all glowy and powerful and chatting with the top two spiritual heroes of Hebrew history. It is a dramatic and sudden transfiguration, a high spiritual moment, but as it turns out, the disciples mostly doze off during the changes and miss it. And then when they wake up, they are confused about what to do next, so they decide to build a tiny house village and just stay up there, cuz there’s a lot of real world problems down there in the valley. But then, as quickly as it all changes to shiny, it all changes back again, Jesus returns to normal, the ghosts of the prophets past vanish, the disciples go back down to the real world and boom. The real world comes back to them, and the changes the disciples expected have not happened. Different changes are invited: immediately the real world nagging needs meet them—a father with his son so ill, ugly suffering that Luke describes in excruciating detail. And the disciples are asked to help. It is a moment, but the disciples are unable to connect the changes in their own hearts with the needs of the world… they can’t help. Oh, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In a way, it is a microcosm of human experience—we are given life, moment by moment, big and dramatic, fast and slow, asked to show up and pay attention, and then to be the change the world needs. To utilize the changes for good.

And sometimes we do and sometimes we sleep through the moments and miss them or are confused, but the good news is, we human, spiritual beings, get do-overs. All the time because the nature of life is change, and we are always invited to transformation. The disciples eventually do get it—the rest of the Christian Scriptures is the story of how they are changed for good by their time with Jesus and with each other. They believe, we believe sometimes that it is the big glory moments that are changing us most. But sometimes change comes in other ways. This story appears in the other Gospels, but Luke includes a little detail that the other versions don’t and it leaps out at me every time I read it. It’s the reminder of the biggest change of all, the one that helps us understand and value all the tiniest of changes and all the wisdom and the joy and the pain, too. And it appears in verse 30. “And two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory—but they spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” But the word in Greek for “departure” is the word “exodus.” They are not talking about high and mighty religious stuff, they are talking about Jesus’ death. It is an Ash Wednesday moment. Embrace the changes, remember the glory, be present to this life, for remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return. How will we live fully, how will we change, how will we learn, how will we move amidst the suffering of this world, touch one another and make one another whole, change this world for the better before our departure? How was our story changed because of what we learned? Because I knew you. Because you knew me. That we have been changed for the better, that is the call on our lives, our vocation… that we have all been changed by each other for the better so that we can change the world for good.

I think that gradually, we learn not to be afraid of small changes and then, over time, we learn side by side and hand in hand to work up to the big ones like losing our power or our minds or our loved ones or our own lives and finding the peace and the compassion and the light in all of the changes, no matter what they look like, filled with love somehow, in the end. And it is the work on the little stuff with one another for a season, long or short, that helps us transform fear into faith so that when the changes that are for good are required of us, we can move from strength to strength.

So, in addition to working on learning not to be afraid of the big changes, I’m also working on the small ones. So, one of the things I’m not afraid of anymore is mathematics. You know I was very afraid of it before and roaches. They still are not easy for me, not natural, but change often is like that and I’m working on what it can teach me. So I leave you with a spiritual mathematical truth that I hope will bring light to your path. In geometry there are many operations one can do with figures and lines and stuff called Transformations…

And I invite you to remember these three transformations in geometry that also are true in life: one is rotation. Rotation means to turn around a center. The movement, the changes of the life journey sometimes threaten to pull us apart and splinter us into pieces, but remember what your center is and who you really are, and be flexible…be willing to change positions…be like a good volleyball player, rotate! as transformations happen, your divine center can bloom and widen like a flower, opening your very self to more and more Love.

Another transformation in geometry is Reflection. Reflection means to turn and face the opposite direction. In the journey toward change for good, in old churchy language we used to call that repentance. Just turn around, accept, and go at it from a different angle. It’s all transforming, leading to the not-so-small change.

And a third transformation in geometry is Translation. And translation just means journey, moving from this point on. It’s pilgrimage, life, death, life anew. Seasons of the spirit, matters of the heart. You are still you, resting in God, in your center, turn, turn, turn. You might have changed direction, lost a lot, okay. Sometimes we will, and there is still new birth ahead and hope and you are in translation, moving. Moving is flow, like the stream. Change for good, here and there, wherever that may be. I was in a church once where in the toddler class on a beautiful bulletin board were pictures of planets and stars , and the edges of the board surrounded by a great green vine, and pictures of animals and trees and people of all lands, and the words on the board say, “What is my work in this wonderful world?” and that’s the question—how are we changing, changed, by one another, for good, so that in every moment before our departure, we accomplish our unique work, changing for better, this wonderful world. Amen.

Transfiguration              Luke 9