Today is called The Transfiguration, the time when Peter, James and John had an incredible mountain top experience of seeing Jesus transformed in front of them. This was not just an experience of seeing Jesus in a different manner, it was also for them, an encounter with the Holy.

Peter, who gives us a glimpse of what his future problems will be, doesn’t really get it. He thinks it would be cool to set up tents, maybe sell some souvenir T-Shirts or buttons but before he gets too far along in that thinking God’s voice cuts in and says, “This is my son, my chosen. Listen to him.” Then Jesus leads them down the mountain, back into the realities of a fragile and wounded world, to continue his ministry and theirs.

In today’s world we would have whipped out our cell phones and downloaded the Transfiguration to You Tube where it probably would have gone viral – meaning tons of people all over the world would have watched it. The mountain top experience, the light beyond all lights, the glimpse of the Holy would have been shared with the world. But can you really show the awe and mystery of God on the web? Can people feel the glory of it all by looking at a small screen? The glory of God will always be mysterious even though we may try like crazy to explain it all, understand every dot and dash of it. That’s why it’s called a mystery – the unknown. Rudolph Otto, German theologian and author of The Idea of the Holy, a book, published in 1917, which has never been out of print, called an experience with the Holy, the “mysterium (mystery) tremendum (terrifying)” meaning the mystery is both terrifying and fascinating at the same time.

John Philip Newell, a Celtic theologian, says the creation story can help us see God's wonder and glory in everything: "From that inaccessible light of God all life comes forth, whether that be the morning light of the burning sun, the yellow brilliance of the sunflower growing from the dark ground or the glow of starfish emerging in the depths of the sea. It is the light within all life." In Pass-a-Grille Florida, at the very tip end of St. Petersburg, people gather on the beach every evening to watch the sunset and they applaud as it sinks below the horizon. I’ve always thought it as God’s way of saying to us, “How do you like that? Think you can top that?”

My daughter Catherine called after last week’s Saints victory parade. She had one of those experiences that even when shown on TV and U Tube is not the same as being there. I guess people in her neighborhood stood in the 40 degree weather for over four hours waiting for the parade to get to them. She said it was well worth it, because it was a unifying experience which brought all kinds of people together. There was a little jostling she said but no pushing, no worry that the crowd was going to get out of control. People were polite and just simply ecstatic and enjoying the glory of it all.

I told her to hang on to that memory, to place it near her heart, then, when the time comes, when things are not going so well, when the world feels a bit off, that will be the time to pull out that memory of that experience, and to be fed by it once again.

Like Peter, we would all like to stay in those places of awe and wonder, those times when life seems so good we can hardly stand it, those memories of the good times that we cling to, just knowing nothing could ever be as good as it is right now.

Churches are like that, big time. We like to reminisce about the good ole days when there were tons of children in Sunday School and standing room only for Holy Week and Christmas Eve services. Or we sometimes hang onto when ‘so and so was here’ whether that so and so was the clergy person or a very active church member or a musician. When so and so was here life was grand. What does that say about the participation of church members if we all depend so much on one or two people that if they leave, church life comes to a grinding halt?

Perhaps faithfulness is not realized by staying put, staying the same, cemented forever into a moment in time but rather by moving on to do whatever needs to be done to bring in the realm of God, to make life real and whole and worth living for other people.

Luckily for us, as liturgical church people we are forced to move on by the changing seasons of the church year. There are some who may skip those changes – preferring only to show up at Christmas and Easter, Christers they’ve been called. I really don’t know how anyone can experience the absolute joy of Easter without ever having traveled down the path that Jesus took. The Church provides a way for us to do that liturgically, with great intentionality. I have to admit I am not big on the topic of sin, but since it means separation from God, and I, like most people, have said or done things that separate me from God, I appreciate the fact that for forty days there is a focus on self-examination as to why I (and others) might do the things we do and how we can change our ways of ill-treating others so as to be right with God.

This Sunday marks the end of Epiphany. We celebrated the birth of Jesus at Christmas. During Epiphany we sang alleluia to Jesus, the bringer of life and light. We heard stories about the signs of his ministry, and his calling of his disciples and now, now we begin to turn our faces, as did he, toward Jerusalem, toward a road that will take us into the wilderness and back.

Today we’ll cram in as many alleluias as we can and then on Tuesday we’ll sing alleluia for the last time until the Easter Vigil, burn palms from last year’s Palm Sunday service, and make ashes so we can mark our heads on Wednesday, as a sign of repentance and of our mortality: “Remember that you came and to dust you shall return.” We’ll bow down low and in deep humility proclaim as a community that we accept the invitation issued in the name of the Church to enter into the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

Beginning with Ash Wednesday we’ll change the colors of our altar frontal from Green, the color of growth, to purple, yes, the color of royalty but also of pain, sorrow, and repentance. On the First Sunday in Lent we’ll enter the church, not singing songs of thankfulness and praise but rather chanting The Great Litany – ancient words – which offer prayers for every imaginable cause on earth and beyond. My favorite prayer is ‘from dying suddenly and unprepared…good Lord deliver us.”

For forty days we will attempt to speak a common language born out of dealing with temptations, fears, sorrows, failures, and a need for comfort. If I say to you, “I feel like I’m lost in the wilderness” you won’t think I’m in need of map directions. You’ll know that I’m thirsting for the living water of Christ and in need of God. One year in the church in Manhattan, when a parishioner’s husband had died, the wife came to church for a while but then stopped. When asked why she said she needed to cry, to mourn, but it seemed to make people uncomfortable because they would say, “Don’t cry.” During Lent we are invited, urged, to be in touch with our emotions, our deepest feelings, the longings of our heart. When we cry or lament it is because we desperately need to release those tears of sorrow and regret.

In the stories we hear during Lent we will learn how Jesus was tempted to use his power for himself. We’ll begin to realize how threatened the authorities were by his call for the radical love and acceptance of everyone. And we’ll learn that at the end, even those closest to him were more afraid of being known as associating with him than their love for him could overcome. What sadness and grief they must have born in silence when they fell asleep when was struggling with his destiny, when they were silent at his arrest and when they left him alone, hanging on the cross. From time to time we’ve all done that to those we love – not been there for them, not been true to our integrity, not acted for the moral good. But it doesn’t mean we can’t change, face our mistakes, repent, turn ourselves around, and start over again. The Holy constantly invites us new life through Christ.

When the joy of Easter comes I guarantee you’ll find that joy is ever so much jubilant and triumphant when we’ve traveled that road of the liturgies offered, when we’ve been on our knees, lamenting the wrongs in our lives while seeking the God who loves us beyond all understanding, the God of mystery and wonder.

The life of Jesus has been called the Greatest Story ever told. I invite you to live and breathe that story for 40 days, beginning on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Immerse yourself in the differing liturgies that will be offered. And in that living and breathing, in that worship, explore your own life and perhaps to find, for the first time, or even the 10th time, where your story and his intersect, and how you can move forward once again, with the mystery of life, the light of the world.