This weekend was my last one at my home parish (St. John of the Ladder, Greenville SC) and I’m staying for a few days with it’s rector Fr. Marcus before beginning my return to SVOTS later in the week. When I arrived at his home, an hour or so before I would need to leave for evening services (Panikhida + 9th Hour + Great Vespers), Fr. Marcus asked me to prepare a five-minute mini-sermon following the reading of the Matins gospel. Reading the Matins gospel is usually only found when doing a full Vigil (Great Vespers + Matins), but SJOTL received a blessing from Archbishop +DMITRI (pray for us Vladyka) to read the Matins Gospel reading at the end of Great Vespers followed by the hymn “Having Beheld the Resurrection of Christ” and then a short sermon is offered on the Matins Gospel reading or from the feast/saint commemorated that day. Here is what I came up with on short notice for 8/7/21 which had John 20:1-10 as the Gospel reading and in which we are celebrating the Afterfeast of the Transfiguration:
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Gospel we just heard, Mary Magdalene proclaims to St. Peter “The Lord has been taken from the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him.” Upon hearing this, Peter ran to the tomb with another disciple and found the linen cloths, which were the winding sheet wrapped around Christ’s body, and the handkerchief wrapped around Christ’s head and the scripture says the disciple saw and believed, but Peter had already seen many signs and had given evidence of his belief before this, saying that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter saw this not long after he saw Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
The hymns this evening proclaimed that on Tabor, Peter beheld Christ’s glory as far as he could bear it. On Mount Tabor, where Christ shone with uncreated light, the same light as He manifested to Moses as the bush that burned yet was not consumed, and the same light on Mt. Sinai that caused Moses’ face to be changed by exposure to the light to which the word ‘bright’ is as insufficient a word to describe the experience as ‘good’ is to describe God’s love for us. This is why all of our words to describe God can only partially convey God’s goodness and brightness. St. Peter experienced God as far as he could bear this presence on Mount Tabor during Christ’s Transfiguration. Like any theophany, it revealed God to him as surely as Christ’s Baptism did to John the Baptist or Christ’s appearance to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
The Gospel reading ended, “they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead”. Peter had seen so much more in that moment than any of us will likely see throughout the entire course of our lives here on Earth, and yet, even having been filled with light—enlightened you might say—in this way, he still a few weeks later denied even knowing Christ three times and ran for his life from the authorities, in this act running away from Life Himself. After Christ’s Resurrection the Lord appeared to Peter who confessed his love for Christ three times. This is a lesson that even if we are granted the blessing of seeing God’s glory in this world it is not a guarantee of our everlasting faithfulness. We still have to work at it each and every day.
I am not going to spend time tonight on Peter’s triple denial and reconciliation, but what I want to talk about is what happened to him and to the other disciples on the day of Pentecost, which we experienced seven weeks ago. In Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, who John’s gospel promised the disciples would “teach [them] in all things” showed Peter and the others how Christ is the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the messiah in the scriptures and enabled this unlearned fisherman to debate trained scholars to share the light of Christ and go on to share in his own crucifixion for the glory of God. Pentecost completes the journey for St. Peter that started in his declaration of faith in Jesus as the Christ, and continued as he witnessed many miracles that culminated in the brightness of the Transfiguration whose afterfeast we participate in this day.
What does all of that mean for us two thousand years later living in America? The hymns tonight declare, “Come, let us be transformed today into a higher state, piously and joyously being transfigured with Christ who has enlightened and transfigured human nature in His loving kindness.” Unlike St. Peter or the Prophet Moses, most of us will not get to see the inexpressible brightness of Christ in His glory revealed to us in this life. The glory of Christ’s revelation to us is not as an event in time but in the direct revelation of Christ we receive through our participation in the holy mysteries. Peter had to stumble, fall down, and be picked up again before receiving the Spirit, and even we who have received the spirit in Baptism will stumble, and fall down, and be picked up again as we receive God’s love and mercy in our lives to heal what is broken. Moses likewise had to fast and climb a great mountain to see even the backside of God’s glory, and if we have the courage we can fast and climb the ladder of divine ascent to experience the glory of God at each and every liturgy.
As St. Peter shows us, seeing is not necessarily believing, and we must receive the grace of God through the holy mysteries of His Church so that we can be a vessel of the holy spirit and not a whitewashed tomb. So that we can have the scriptures opened to us and to see Christ’s glory as shown throughout the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets. Most of all, we need to receive the mysteries so that we can open our hearts to God and to each other so that we see the uncreated light of the Transfiguration that shines in God’s presence, in the lives of the saints, and which can shine in our own lives if we are courageous enough to seek first the Kingdom. Amen.I think the text was decent, but I read it way too quickly. I was worried that I had more like 10 minutes worth of material, and cranked up the speed. I was also reading off my phone since I hadn’t had time to connect my laptop to the printer at Father’s house, which meant I had to give some of my attention to making sure the phone didn’t go into sleep mode, scroll every other paragraph, etc. Ideally the next time I do one of these (Fr. Marcus has told me he expects me to do a Sunday sermon the next time we visit), I’ll have more time to prepare so I’m not just reading something I’ve written but can present it prayerfully and personally.
Originally posted at: https://gallowaysvots.wordpress.com/2021/08/08/my-first-mini-sermon-at-sjotl/